Hello! Today was our last day in Glover’s Reef!  Today we began the morning by picking up trash to give back to the island. I was amazed how much trash we found and picked up. We only had 6 garbage bags which unfortunately put just a dent in the amount of trash we found washed up. While we were doing a trash pick up, we came up with a research project. We were looking at the amount of trash and trash distribution around the island. We were curious how the type of beach (mangroves, sandy, or dead coral) would contribute to the amount and type of trash that was on the shore. We didn’t notice a significant difference in this, but we noticed that the unprotected side of the island facing open ocean had more trash then the atoll protected side.

We then dissected a lion-fish! Lion-fish are invasive to Belize so our professors had speared some that we had found snorkeling.  We opened up the lion-fish and looked at the sex and stomach contents. Our fish had three digested fish and one whole shrimp!

We ended the day with free time where me and a few others went for a last swim at sunset! While I didn’t see any eels personally, Dr. Solomon and Dr. Evans saw a couple green moray eels over the duration of our stay!