Today, in the morning, we got together as a group and analyzed our data from the fish follow surveys we did yesterday. One thing that was a little surprising to me was that the parrotfish were not regularly eating coral, but instead seemed to be scraping or pulling algae off the coral. I had thought that their diets would be primarily coral, but we learned that most parrotfish don’t actually eat living corals. We made a poster with some illustrations and tables showing what we had found and presented it out on the dock. At this point, by our third poster, we know the procedure by heart.
Later in the morning, we waded out into the shallow sea grass beds to collect critters for observation. We had to learn the stingray shuffle for safety—instead of taking big steps, take little shuffling steps, so that you don’t accidentally step on a stingray. That kicked up a ton of sand, so it was hard to see the bottom of the sea grass beds, but it still was possible to collect little sea creatures. We didn’t have to go far to find interesting things, and very quickly we were picking up small fish, crabs, and little arthropods. I was particularly won over by a larger snail we collected, which would intermittently shoot water at us out of the bucket. On our way back in, Elise caught a box jellyfish by accident, thinking it was something else. We quarantined it in its own tray for safety. We all came away unscathed, if a little sunburned.
Back in the lab, we broke out the microscopes to look at them closer. The seaweed samples we collected were teeming with life in the form of tiny epiphytes, and the creatures looked so interesting under the microscopes. We separated the crabs into an observation bucket as well—we couldn’t put them under the microscopes, of course, but we had little hand lenses we could use to look at them closer. We observed them until lunch and then, after lunch, released them off the dock.
In the afternoon, we hiked the interpretive trail around the island. It took us to the coral graveyard, a beach absolutely covered in fossilized coral. There were so many different types, although the branching corals did not survive as well as the mounding corals—because of their more fragile structure they tended to be more broken up. There were also fossil shells, including conch shells. Because they became more brittle when they fossilized, they were often broken and you could see the internal structure, which was super cool. I also found one which still had some of the original shell poking through the fossilized portions, which was neat. Unfortunately, the beach was also covered in trash, possibly from large storms. That was true for a bunch of the trail, which was a bummer because it was otherwise quite beautiful.
In the evening, we had planned to do a night snorkel but it was too windy and conditions were not safe. Instead, we dropped flashlights off the dock to attract fish and other interesting sea creatures. We caught some of them and put them in a bucket temporarily for closer observation. These included glass eels, the larval stage of the bone fish we had been seeing. Eventually we started to attract predators, including a small squid. We were all impressed, and started joking thst we should try and catch it. It was swimming close to the dock, but I assumed we wouldn’t be able to do it. Claire D gave it a shot and pulled it out of the water first try! It was super impressive. We observed it in the bucket for a little while watching it swim around, change colors, and even ink. Eventually, we decided it was time to release it and call it a night. What an experience! It’ll be hard to top.
