Today was one of the best snorkeling days. We started the day snorkeling on the back reef. We were doing a diversity study and were trying to collect as many species as possible. There were so many different organisms. Immediately, we stumbled across a baby nurse shark hiding in the seagrass. A few minutes later, a spotted eagle ray appeared and swam by us. I have decided that my favorite fish are a porcupine fish and a trunkfish. They both look like they shouldn’t exist and are defying nature. While searching for the different species on the reef, I saw some very large lobsters.
On the back reef, I also finally saw all of the herbivorous fish on my taxon sheet. I finally saw the juvenile Pomacanthus paru French Angelfish and a Juvenile Pomacanthus arcuatus (Grey angelfish). The final fish I saw was a Acanthurus chirurgus (Doctorfish).
At around 10:40, we got back with all of our organisms. While sorting through the all the material, I discovered a baby octopus sliding toward the drain. I quickly scooped him out and placed him in a bucket. When he entered the bucket, I saw him ink a cute little splotch of black ink. We also found some fire worms, brittle stars, and lots of crabs. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
For most of the afternoon, we did data analysis and presentations. But after we finished everything, we went for a quick snorkel before dinner. The water was really rough but it was really fun! We saw a really huge nurse shark! Today, was really fun!
The highlight of today was checking out the same patch reef we did on the first day. Except with stronger currents and more experience. And that worked out pretty well!
In the morning we checked out a backreef on another side of the island. It was very shallow compared to the one yesterday but it had a larger variety of organisms there which was awesome! Unfortunately I did not take my camera with me so I do not have photographs of them. I’m pretty sure I saw a Nassau grouper, and most of the organisms in my annelid taxon ID card. We then collected many of them to bring back for further examination in the wet lab. I picked up a queen conch (Lobatus gigas) on the way back to add to the collection.
Queen conch (Lobatus gigas) that I caught! You can see its eyes clearly in this picture.
We then split up the organisms we caught and presented on them. We caught several bearded fireworms (Hermodice carunculata) and I gotta say I spent too much time trying to provoke one of them and bristle its parapodia. It was interesting seeing the organisms that we have learned about and watching their behaviors. I witnessed a hermit crab actually changing its shell which was so cool!
Bearded fireworm (Hermodice carunculata) that we caught.
After lunch, we returned the organisms back to the sea, had some presentations and did data analysis on the trash that we collected yesterday. We finished our report efficiently and as a reward, we got to go out to the patch reef which we examined on the first day. I was surprised by the strength of the current and it was challenging even swimming out. However after a while I managed to find inner peace and stopped struggling to swim. Instead, I decided to drift with the current to the patch reef which I eventually did. Being in the same area brought back memories of the first day and how I was struggling so badly with just staying afloat, and it felt really good to know that it took just a couple of days for me to be able to confidently snorkel and dive down to check out a patch reef. Reflecting on a deeper level, I realized that I have learned and grown so much these past few days. I’m able to identify so many new aquatic organisms now, feel more confident snorkeling, and understand so much more about field biology. Additionally, the whole group of us have been growing closer and sharing more stories with each other, and that’s always fun.
This morning, my class and I explored one of Glover’s backreefs, noting densities of Christmas tree worms (Genus Spirobranchus).
A beige Christmas tree worm on a hard coral
While my own data collection was less than fruitful, the outing marked a major victory for me as a tropical field biologist. I encountered interesting echinoderms like a donkey dung sea cucumber (Holothuria Mexicana) in a sea grass bed and a West Indian sea egg (Tripneustes ventricosus) partially covered with algae. Both were neither in motion nor interacting with other animals. My most memorable sighting was a Caribbean reef squid (Sepioteuthis sepioidea) swimming by.
I swam after the squid for a while, trying to get a better look. The animal was iridescent and translucent, a visual schema difficult to describe with an ordinary color pallet. There is something about the ocean that compels organisms to take on the most astounding colors and sheens; it’s simply breathtaking.
This same day, my classmate Isaac gave a presentation about the expansiveness and damaging ecological impact marine debris can have. My class also spent the afternoon collecting and measuring the debris accumulation from some of the shores of Middle Caye, which lies adjacent to a protected marine area. In my ordinary life back home, I contribute little to resolve this issue. Like most Americans, my status quo involves unbridled consumerism. An ordinary shopping trip involves buying excessively packaged goods from an energy-inefficient grocery store and taking them home in a disposable plastic bag. It is both interesting and unacceptable that such an irresponsible course of action is deemed ordinary in American society.
Despite how ingrained reckless consumerist behavior is, conservation and preservation of ocean creatures is non-negotiable.
Every living thing deserves a chance to not only survive but to thrive. Waste accumulation in our oceans, the direct result of human negligence, strips many living things of their chance for survival. For the long-term wellbeing of all living things, from reef squids to the human race, communities need to make thoughtful decisions regarding their own waste production and disposal.
After breakfast today, the water was very choppy so we could not go out on the reef. Instead, we did our presentations in the morning and learned about Mollusks, Annelids, and crustaceans. Next we went through the mangroves of death which were very un-deathy to get to a patch of back reef. There were a few mosquitos, but they were not huge swarms of biting insects. While on this reef, we were looking for Christmas tree worms and were trying to measure host preference. Unfortunately, there were very few Christmas tree worms on this reef. The current and waves were also very strong. While on the reef, I saw a Caribbean squid and lots of fire coral.
While on the reef, I continued to see lots herbivorous fish. The parrot fish on this reef were also bigger then on the little patch reef off the dock. I saw for the first time the intermediate stage of the Blue tang.
I continued to see Sparisoma Viridi (the stop light parrot fish), Chaetodon Striatus (Banded butterfly fish), Chrysiptera parasema (the yellow tail damsel fish), Stegastes paritus, the Bi-color damsel fish, and Scarus Croicensi (the striped parrot fish, initial and terminal phases). I see the parrot fish species and the Chaetodon capistratus (the four eye butterfly fish) the most. While this is very antidotal, I preserve these species to be more abundant.
After lunch, we did data analysis and of the Christmas tree worms. Although our data sample was small, we saw a slight preference for Christmas tree worms on brain corals. Next, we designed an experiment to analyze what types of marine debris are the most prevalent. We picked up trash from the beaches and mangrove areas. There were a surprising number of shoes and toothbrushes washed up on the beach. We found a little hermit crab within the trash that was using a bottle cap as a shell. It was very sad. Once we counted and weighed all the different types of trash, we had free time for the rest of the night.
Tonight, we say on the dock and put dive lights under the water. We saw a crocodile, a possible shark, and a few stingrays. It was really nice just to relax for the night and watch the stars.
Today we really got down and dirty. In the morning we got into the backreefs which was beyond the mangroves on the other side of Middle Caye. So we had to waddle through the mangroves, making sure to shuffle our feet to avoid stingray stings. Reaching the backreefs, initially I felt sad seeing that the reefs were much smaller than the ones in the patch reef areas which we have been snorkeling in the past few days. However, after snorkeling around for a little bit, I feel like a huge reason for that was probably because of the stronger currents in the open ocean. That said, I became impressed at how life can survive even in these harsh conditions.
We were supposed to look around to study the host preference of Christmas tree worms (Spirobranchus giganteus) in the backreef, which suits me perfectly as it was my taxon group! However, we completed the study quickly as there weren’t that many worms about.
After the backreef study, we came back for lunch and had a presentation on marine debris. Which led us to our land activity of the day: picking up trash around the coastal areas of Middle Caye and doing a project on the types of trash found. In half an hour, the 11 of us managed to pick up 38 kg of trash around the coast. There was trash of all types, from plastic bottles (a lot of them) to Styrofoam to McDonald toys and Lego pieces. I’m glad that we did this and helped (however much slightly) make this island a better place.
At night, because of the strong currents, we did not do night snorkeling. Instead, Scott and Adrienne set up naval lamps by the dock and we sat there to observe the fishes that were attracted to the light. It was fascinating to see the different species that come out at night that I don’t see in the day and definitely mesmerizing fishwatching and stargazing at the same time. Kind of sad that we have to leave this island in a couple of days… In any case, I’m done for today.
Today was similar to the previous day in terms of the diving activities, as we redid the patch reef data collection and sea urchin collection on an area outside of the marine protection zone. We then compared the two data sets, analyzed them based on our project hypothesis and came up with a final poster to showcase our results.
My first takeaway of the day was how adorable sea urchins are. After seeing how they move about using their spines, my perception of them changed completely. And having to handle and measure them also made me like them so much more. Just see the picture below to see how close we’ve gotten.
Black sea urchin (Diadema antillarum) on my back!
It was also fun surveying another patch reef area, and after the experience from the previous day, I was much more confident with collecting data and also identifying organisms in general. Below are some of the creatures I managed to capture (with my camera)!
It’s a Christmas Tree Worm (Spirobranchus giganteus)!
There were Christmas tree worms everywhere!!! And I saw a new mollusk species which I have never seen personally, the Cyphoma gibbosum (flamingo tongue shell):
Flamingo tongue (Cyphoma gibbosum) right in the middle
Exciting times. I’m looking forward to the next few days because we will get to check out other reef types such as the backreefs and forereefs, and I’m eager to see how different they will be from path reefs.
After snorkeling, we spent the afternoon analyzing our data and creating our poster to present to Adrienne and Scott. And then right before dinner we had a friendly pickup game with some of the island staff. Got to sweat it all out! I have to say, Alessi is pretty tenacious when it comes to fighting for the ball, and Therese and Isaac are great technical players. Meanwhile, Deepu is definitely the star striker like Cristiano Ronaldo, scoring 2 of the goals for us. This is my brief analysis of EBIO 319’s soccer team.
All in all, today went by really quickly and I thoroughly enjoyed both the snorkeling experience and the free time to mingle with the other people in Middle Caye. Looking forward to more tomorrow!
I lie on my back on the hammock, swaying gently side-to-side in the breeze. My eyelids float down after a busy morning and afternoon. I witness deep oranges and rusty reds shifting, bursting, and intertwining on the backs of my eyelids, luminescent projections of the intense tropical sunlight. Needless to say, these entrancing visions were enough to lull me to sleep.
This morning I felt quite different – energized and adventurous. Soon after breakfast, my classmates and I measured the sizes of the urchins we caught yesterday at the Marine Protected Area (MPA). We then snorkeled at a non-MPA and carefully collected urchins there. Interestingly, the urchins tended to be larger and more numerous at the MPA. However, the non-MPA was home to the largest urchin we found, a long spine sea urchin (Diadema antillarum) that measured 5.8 cm in diameter.
With its mounds of different corals, the reef visited today was teeming with a plethora of diverse colorful creatures. Some notable sightings included a green sea urchin (Lytechinus variegatus), spiny brittle stars (Ophiocoma paucigranulata), and numerous ctenophores. The green sea urchin was about 4 inches in diameter and found on the seafloor. The spiny brittle stars, found under rubble, had central disks of about an inch in diameter and arms about 3 inches long. The brittle stars would try to move back under the rubble when exposed. None of the echinoderms were visibly interacting with other organisms. Today’s most spectacular sighting was a spotted trunkfish (Lactophyrus bicaudalis); its dynamic black and white speckles contrasted with the mellow blue backdrop of the ocean.
After spending the afternoon discussing my class’ data collected and observations noted, I was exhausted. We had an hour until dinner, so I lied on my back on the hammock.
We began the day by continuing our comparison of reef health in the marine protected zone and the non-protected zone by measuring the urchins we had collected the day before. As a group, we collected 144 in the protected area. After, we performed another graudrat and transect experiment on a reef outside of the protected zone. There was definitely more sea grass and macro algae present in this region then in the protected area. The benthos was covered in red coralline algae and there were lots of Ctenophores (cone jellies) floating around. One jelly road around on my mask for a while. When we collected urchins from this reef, we were only able to find and extract 60 urchins. While snorkeling around the reef, I saw my first nurse shark of the vacation hidden under the coral. I also saw lots of worms and brittle stars while searching for the urchins.
While on the reef, I saw a large number of herbivorous fish. For the first time on this vacation, I saw the terminal phase of the Sparisoma Viridi (the stoplight parrot fish) and Chaetodon Striatus (Banded butterfly fish). I continued to see all the other herbivorous fish mentioned in previous blog posts. In the Non-MPA reef, the fish tended to be bigger especially the parrot fish and the blue tangs. I believe that this is primarily due to the fact that this reef was deeper than the MPA reef. This was also the first time, I saw a school of Blue tangs and surgeon fish swimming around the reef picking macro algae.
After our experiment, we ate lunch and began our poster write up for the experiment. It turned into a 4-hour long catastrophe. Our final project turned out pretty good, but the road to getting there had many ups and downs involving many calculation errors. Let’s just say that basic arithmetic does not mix well with the heat and high levels of exhaustion. I have never laughed more about math in my life.
After, dinner we listened to presentations on green, red, and brown algae. One of our marine safety officers gave a talk on Belizean culture that was very interesting. Finally, I gave my presentation on the factors affecting coral reefs today and in the future.
Today was so much better, and yes, I have indeed survived!
We started the day with a lesson on field sampling, and we were taught how to use the quadrat that we made the night before, together with a transect, to get rudimentary field data. It was a nice touch the way we were taught, where we started with a case study on land, before moving to a case study in the nearby seagrass, and finally to a patch reef area which we have to take a boat to. From each case study, we reflected on the problems that popped up, and constantly refined our technique to make the case study more focused each time, and also make the data collection method more accurate. This is how engineers design our systems too! Using iterations of testing and refinement to finally reach a satisfactory end product.
From chasing down hermit crabs in the morning, I moved to avoiding interesting looking inverted green jellyfish right before lunch. I certainly preferred the latter as at least I got to finally see organisms in my taxon! And I definitely felt myself getting better at snorkeling and in general being more comfortable in the aquatic environment. Below are pictures of organisms from my taxon group that I saw in the seagrass:
Mollusc I foundBad photo of bearded fireworm on the pier.
I was particularly excited to see the bearded fireworm (Hermodice carunculata) as I was expecting it to be swimming around among corals, and not sticking itself to the side of the dock! It looked really gorgeous though I’m well aware of its danger. Actually “though” shouldn’t be the right word to use here as those two things do come together frequently.
After the seagrass experience, we had lunch, and got ready for the second dive. We decided to study the distribution of corals in patch reefs, and counted the amount of live stony corals, dead stony corals, soft corals, sponges, and sand areas in each quadrat sample. Adrienne convinced us to separate the corals into two groups and also to identify sponges though it clearly wasn’t part of the study. Little did we know… it was all part of the grand scheme of things which will be revealed later!
Anyway, after doing the study, I saw more creatures that are part of my taxon groups! Here are some pictures for my eager fans:
A Christmas Tree Worm (Spirobranchus giganteus) on a coral.A Star Horseshoe Worm (Pomatostegus stellatus) right in the middle.
Yes, that is what you think it is. It is the beautiful Christmas tree worm!!! The one that I wanted to see so much. It actually took a while for us to become friends and it retracted into the coral that it was perched on when I went in for a closer look, and took its own sweet time to come back out to say hi.
With that, I’ve seen 3 of the 9 species of annelids found in Glover’s reef. I’m gonna find them all!
After that, we went sea urchin catching. It felt like hide and seek except when you find and catch the hiding ones, they prick you. Not that painfully though, and I managed to catch 4 of these little pin cushions. Proof that I actually caught one of them is below:
I caught this cute little sea urchin
After dinner, we had a guest lecturer called Dr. Alex Tewfik who talked to us about his work in Glover’s Reef. He talked about the importance of sponges in the coral ecosystem and how they may have been overlooked in the past and may actually be the key to completing the food web in this ecosystem. Adrienne then referenced the earlier case study when we were only going to count corals but were suggested to count sponges too, and how these additional data often can turn out to be useful. That was cool how she tied it back to what we learned in the day!
Oh by the way, as I am sitting down typing this right now, I feel like I am still on the boat, as I feel the drifting sensation in my mind even as I am sitting down here. Kind of disorientating, but kind of interesting too! And it’s been a long day, so I shall end here for now.
Till next time,
Damien the slightly-improved snorkeler
Today was my first day snorkeling and it was quite an experience. My only snorkeling experience before this was in the Rice Recreation Center swimming pool and that is definitely not even close to what we went through today.
Before analyzing my snorkeling experience, I will go through chronologically the events that led up to it. I woke up at 5am (!), and we had a quick PB&J breakfast before heading to the dock to take a boat to Glover’s Reef. From the dock, the journey to Glover’s Reef took about 2.5 hours. While it was long, it was fascinating to see some of the things that I have been learning so much about, such as the reef crest and atoll formation. It was obvious when we were entered the lagoon of Glover’s Atoll, as the water became really shallow and the captain of the ship had to navigate carefully to avoid hitting reefs or accidentally running the boat ashore.
Looks like the start of something beautiful.
After some careful navigation in the lagoon, we reached Middle Caye, which is where the Glover’s Atoll research station is located. Middle Caye is a quaint little island with a very rustic feel to it. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of self-sustainability the island community had integrated into their daily lives, with a wind turbine and a solar panel array to generate electricity, recycling toilets named Clivus, and desalination facilities as a few examples of this.
Solar panel array looks magnificent.
Walking around the island, I was reminded of a video game that I used to play back before college, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag, which is an action game set back during the Golden Age of Piracy. A huge part of the game was spent exploring atoll islands such as this, hunting iguanas and finding dead pirate skeletons on lush tropical sandy beaches, so strolling around the island definitely took me back a little bit to my younger days.
What I think I look like in my mind.
Pardon me for digressing! And let me continue with the rest of the day. After settling in on the island, we finally got to snorkel! Getting into the ocean waters was reprieve from the sweltering weather, and we edged our way out into the open ocean, swimming to the closest patch reef that we could find. And having not seen coral reef systems in person before, I have to say, IT WAS BEAUTIFUL!!! The ecosystem is so vibrant as expected, and while floating on the surface I stared in awe at the creatures just minding their own business and milling in and out of the crevices created by the corals. I saw fishes that I couldn’t name (though I found out thereafter that I had at least seen parrotfishes and surgeonfishes), I saw a spiny lobster which was part of my partner’s taxon group, so that was great! I saw many corals of different sizes, which I would get to know in much more detail in the afternoon courtesy of Adrienne’s passionate tour of Middle Caye’s coral graveyard. After the snorkel trip, I was handed a shell from Adrienne, which I believe is a triton and belongs to my taxonomic group.
Looking back, while the coral reefs were really fascinating to explore, it would have been much better if I knew what I was doing. Then again, it comes with experience and I am looking forward to the next few days with renewed hope. I’ll let y’all know how it goes in the next few days.
