Hi Blog,
Today was our first full day on Glover’s Reef. We headed over to breakfast at 7 AM, and almost stepped on multiple hermit crabs and said hello to several coconut crabs along the way. After breakfast, we changed into our diving gear, then headed over to the dock at 8 AM where Dr. Evans and Dr. Solomon were waiting for us. We began with a swim test where we all, in pairs, swam to Dr. Solomon. Then, we all swam to the patch reef to look for species from our taxon.
We were all each responsible for checking on our buddy as we swam, so that is what my buddy (Ian) and I did. Mostly due to my inefficient swimming, we were quite a bit behind the others for a while, but we were eventually able to catch up. We ran into Dr. Evans, who then pointed out some baby parrotfish among the reef and grabbed a queen conch for us to see!
Shortly after, we all started to head back to the dock, which was quite honestly farther than I anticipated. I started to get nauseous in the middle of my swim back, but nevertheless made it back to land. Dr. Evans told me that it may be due to ingesting too much seawater and advised me to drink lots of water and electrolytes for me to recover before our next snorkel at the aquarium at 1:30 PM. Since we had around 3.5 hours until our next snorkel, I napped for about an hour after drinking electrolytes (which was very kindly provided by Lily) to try to minimize my nausea.
At 1:30 PM, we all went on a boat ride to the aquarium to play “Pokemon Scan” (identifying our taxon). On the way, we saw two separate resort-style islands, where there was a fancy boat parked at the dock. We got out at our first snorkel site, and we saw multiple cool species such as a nurse shark, a colony of blue tangs, some parrotfish, and many many corals!
Also, I saw a school of Blue Tang surgeonfish swimming near some seafan corals which was SO cool! This was my first sighting of my reef taxon. My phone camera did not cooperate, so all of my surgeonfish pictures that I had attempted turned out super blurry, which was disappointing. However, Claire D had borrowed a dive camera from Dr. Evans and got a cool picture of them! I do not have the access to those images, but they are somewhere in Dr. Evans’ possession…
On the way back to the boat, I almost ran into fire corals due to the congregation of corals in a shallow area and the high traffic of all of the TFB’s heading back the boat all at once. After getting back on the boat, I started to feel nauseated again feeling the rockiness of the boat as well as the smell of motor oil.
Lily was not feeling great as well, so we switched partners to be Lily & I and Elise & Ian. We sat on the boat for a while, but the coast guard advised us to get off as being stationary on the boat will make our nausea worse. As we got out, we mainly stayed on our shallow reefs, but our efforts were mainly focused on keeping ourselves contained, as Dr. Evans informed us that once you start throwing up, you will not stop until you get back on land. I felt slightly better than before, but with the natural rockiness of the currents, the nausea persisted.
Although the day didn’t proceed 100 % as anticipated, it was surreal to see all of the coral reef ecosystem spread out in front of my very own eyes. Even in the second session where i was not actively snorkeling, I was mesmerized by the sheer beauty of the scenery. I was encapsulated by the different shades of blues coming together, such as turquoise and deep blue. There was no land on sight, minus the couple islands nearby our snorkel zone.
I really hope this night’s sleep will nurse me back to health and that I would be able to participate to my fullest tomorrow.