We moved in to Glover’s Reef today, starting traveling from the TEC at 6 am and arriving at 10:30. (It is seriously amazing how much we can pack into one day.)

The water started getting beautifully clear as we approached land.

On the boat ride here we saw pretty big mats of Sargassum fluitans, one of my brown algae, which I sadly didn’t get a picture of. Then we settled in to our cabins at Glover’s, greeted by tons of lizards, hermit crabs, and the awesome manager Kenneth (Sargeant Safety).

Then we had our first snorkel, a scavenger hunt on a patch reef. I am slowly adjusting to breathing with my face underwater…

The picture quality is surprisingly good underwater. It’s actually clearer than what I saw through my foggy snorkel mask!

The reef was covered in more brown algae, Turbinaria and Padina (mostly Padina jamaicensis). They seem to always to grow together.

After drying off, we hiked to the coral graveyard, aka the skeleton pile, aka Adrienne’s paradise. There were so many amazing coral skeletons, and we spent a couple hours learning to identify them:

Another brown algae comment, the shore next to our cabins have mats of washed-up Sargassum. It seems like it’s either floating in the open ocean or washed up on a beach, but not over reefs—maybe because the currents either push it far out to sea or onto the shore?

Overall, it was really cool to see what I’ve been reading about out in the wild! It’s such a relief to be able to identify exact species; all that research paid off!