I felt like such a tropical field biologist today (with training wheels of course). We started off the day with a land activity using transects and the quadrats that we made yesterday. Liliana and I got some practice using the gear and with the methodology by gathering data to characterize what percentage of the measured area had evidence of hermit crab movement through the sand. Here is a photo! (The square is the quadrat, the line is the transect, and the orange rectangle is a very fancy dive clipboard)

Then, all of the TFBs put our heads together and came up with a question to test with this procedure out in the seagrass beds. We chose to investigate how the density of penicillus (a green algae) changes with the distance from the shore. We decided on a uniform methodology and got to work! I saw a lot of warty corallimorphs and great Caribbean sea anemones in the seagrass beds! After we collected our data in the water, we came back to the wet lab and compiled our data. We all made a poster that reflected the entire experiment, including results, discussion, and figures (one of which is a taped-on penicillus in a quadrat heart).

While working in the wet lab, I ate some freshly husked coconut as a snack!

Later in the day, we went to what Adrienne called the “coral graveyard,” and which she also described as “the most amazing place on the planet.” It really was amazing! The field of coral skeleton rubble was extremely well-preserved, and we were able to identify a lot of the species! One thing that I was particularly excited about was seeing and correctly identifying Montastraea cavernosa fragments. I took Adrienne’s coral reef ecosystems class, and my semester-long research proposal centered around this coral. It was so gratifying to get to hold a piece of its skeleton framework!

Besides the few sightings I got in during our penicillus data collection, I didn’t have a lot of time or opportunities to focus on my taxonomic group today. However, I am now so much better at recognizing great Caribbean anemones and warty corallimorphs!

Although my collection of mosquito bites has grown to be rather impressive, I can’t wait to get more if that means I can have more days like this!

– McKenna