Today we did a joint beach cleanup-marine debris study. We collected over 90 pounds of garbage in an hour, and only touched a tiny section of the island. The amount of garbage that covered the beaches was truly horrifying. The beach is made up of coral skeletons, and from afar it was looked relatively pristine. However, weathered Styrofoam looks surprisingly similar to coral, and in some spots the beach was nearly half Styrofoam. Plastic bags are generally the target of anti-pollution campaigns, so I was very surprised that we found very few. Instead, we found large amounts of Styrofoam, countless bottle caps, shoes, toothbrushes, and even a few syringes and injection vials. When we returned, we learned that they do a beach cleanup every week, so everything we had collected had washed up less than a week ago. If hundreds of pounds of garbage are washing up on this tiny, uninhabited island weekly I can only imagine how much worse the situation is in other areas. 

We couldn’t possibly go 2 days without our quadrats, so we took them out to the back reef to take 3-dimensional data on stony coral coverage. The class last year took the same measurements on the same colonies, so it will interesting to see how the colonies have changed in the past year. While on the back reef, I saw several species of red algae, including Tubular thicket algae and Amphiroa fragilissima. I also found something that looked like red algae, but it was yellow with pinkish tips. I still haven’t seen a tunicate.

After dinner, we had a very interesting presentation by the Belize Fisheries Department. Then, we went on a night dive. I was so surprised how different it felt to snorkel without in the dark. The entire reef felt more calm, and we saw lots of species that we never see during the day. Tomorrow we are doing “aquatic jazz.” Can’t wait to see what’s in store for us 🙂