We started the day by meeting as a group to make conclusions about Parrotfish feeding behaviors and presented a poster to our professor. We decided they are primarily algaevores.

In the afternoon we visited a coral graveyard on the island where we could see the 3 stages of the coral: living, dead, long dead. The newer dead coral was bleach white with some crustose coralline algae growing on it. The coral that had been dead much longer was a charcoal black/grey color and lost some of its definition.

At night it was too windy to do our night snorkel so we instead hung dive lights off the dock and attracted some of the marine life. We were able to catch some sardines, shrimp, and glass eels. There was finally one predator attracted: a squid. I was actually able to grab her with the tiny fish nets.

We put Angie, as I have named my squid, in a bucket and observed her camouflage color changes, and she even inked in the bucket. The coolest part was when she came in contact with the green net that was spotted with ink, she would change from translucent to a darker color with black speckles to match her own ink on the net.

Since no snorkeling today – no trumpetfish or seahorses! 🥲