Today was our first complete day on the reef. I can’t really put into words how lovely it is here. Sure I have sand on just about every surface of my body, but I am thoroughly enjoying my time here. The day was centered on two tools: the transect and quadrat.

First, we tried to quantify the percent cover of crab holes on the paths around the station (using the quadrats/transect on land). Honestly, my group did not get that much data (only one half of a square was covered over our entire transect).

This was then scaled up for our afternoon activity, transects searching for two geneses of green algae (Halimeda and Penicillus). We were trying to answer a similar question to the percent crab hole cover. We wanted to know if Halimeda or Penicillus would be more abundant in the sea grass bed.

Again, my groups struggled to find anything on our transect, with it being placed in some of the thickest grass. Either way, our data showed a significantly higher amount of Halimeda over Penicillus.

On the reef I continued to see Gorgonian sea fans, as well as whips and rods. I think that the future challenge that I will face is distinguishing between soft corals that are branching, yellow/brown, with them all being of similar morphology. Tomorrow on the more distant reef, I hope to see more.