2022

Day 4: A Field Aquarium

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Starting a new experiment today, the group came up with the research question “What is the correlation between the percentage of live coral and the sea urchin prevalence? How does this change in a protected versus unprotected zone?” We will be collecting data for this experiment over the next couple days, starting with today. After coming up with the experiment layout, we had some extra time before lunch so we went to the shallower sea grass area on the North side of the island to try to collect as many organisms as we could find into buckets. We were able to find conch, mantis shrimp, a lobster, a Diadima antillarum (a venomous urchin), corallomorphs, anemone, and even some Crustose Corralline red algae! One cool fact that I learned today is that spiny lobsters don’t have claws, unlike the ones that we see in the US. It was like our own little aquarium (which releases the animals back into the ocean of course).

After lunch, we went out on the boat to begin collecting our data. We first went to a patch we went to wasn’t a Marine Protected Area and was pretty shallow. Here, there was a lot of coral rubble and diseased coral, and it was pretty difficult to keep still with the current. To estimate the number of sea urchins in the area, we were all given 10 minutes to collect as many as we could. I was able to find a couple, but they were both underneath rocks that I couldn’t break. We ended up finding 20 different urchins! Also Dr. Correa picked up some Galaxuara spp. (a red algae) that was actually all over the sea floor. We then moved onto a MPA and got to snorkel around, just to explore. There was a huge difference in the landscape (obviously there were topography factors involved in the difference but still) with an abundance of health coral, super diverse grouping of fish and coral, and it was absolutely stunning. Here, I was even able to identify Jania spp. (a red algae) which was actually everywhere throughout the reef. I also was able to identify  Fire Coral, Sergeant Fish, Dusky Damsel Fish, French Angel Fish (maybe one of my favorites now), White Scroll Algae, Boulder Star Coral, and Whitestar Sheet Coral. AND Dr. Solomon was able to spear a Lion Fish so we will be making that into some delicious Lion Fish ceviche tomorrow or so!!

– Sophia

Eucidaris tribuloides
Crustose Coraline Algae!
Possibly another variety of Crustose Coraline aglage!
Diadema anitllarum
Carribean Spiny Lobster
2022

Day 4: Never Seen a Reef, Never Seen one Atoll

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I must say today has been my favorite day so far, yet I am sure that will be replaced soon. We snorkeled two different patch reefs (one in a marine protected area and one which was not), in addition to examining many organisms up close in the wet lab. For the wet lab activities, we collected a variety of life from the shallow waters which surround the island. Crabs, lobsters, damsel fish, mantis shrimps, corallimorphs, a ton of algae species, and many more organisms were transferred to buckets and trays of seawater. Much like I experienced with stony corals, seeing an example organism with your own eyes provides a far different picture than the unrealistically perfect images of textbooks. We did collect a few pieces of Porites divaricate, which we were then able to look at under a microscope and see the small polyps in much greater detail. I will say when I was out in the shallows, I saw a small Nurse Shark! Which was a very cool find. This was definitely a fun activity overall.

However, my favorite part of today was snorkeling the two reefs. Packed with a multitude of stony corals, soft corals, sponges, fish, and much more, snorkeling these reefs was incredible. I saw my first patch of Acropora cerviconis, which is critically endangered due to a few devastating diseases (which I also presented about during my topic lecture tonight). I saw a vast number of Orbicella, Porites, and brain corals. By fanning a light current onto the Porites divaricata, I could see the polyps retract and the fuzzy texture of the coral become smooth. I believe I also saw a few colonies of Siderastrae radians scattered around. Also as you may have seen in other blogs, a Lionfish was found and speared. Something I had not seen until today.

This may not be everyone’s ideal “beach vacation spot,” but being here on the atoll is probably one of mine. It was discussed briefly on the boat (while shivering in our still wet dive suits) that fun doesn’t always have to be comfortable, and that was a very applicable and true point.

~Rusty

Porites divericata close up

2022

Research? More like reef-search!!! (Day 4)

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Hi all, it’s Faith with Day 4 updates from the 2022 Belize trip!!!

Today we started our attempt to answer our new research questions: “ What is the correlation between percent live coral and the sea urchin population?” and “How does that correlation change between mpa and non mpa reefs?”

Our hypothesis are as follows:  we think that areas with moderate amounts of sea urchins will have the highest percentage of live reefs. Additionally, we think that the unprotected reefs  will have an abundance of sea urchins and therefore have less live coral. We think this because unprotected reefs are susceptible to overfishing, which reduces the amount of creatures that prey on sea urchins.

Our methods were to lay out 50ft of transect tape in random, radial direction s from one central point. Then, at every 5 meters we would count the squares of live coral and dead coral using a quadrat. Our final part, would be collecting as many sea urchins as possible in 10 minutes, which we would identify later.

This method sounds easy in practice, but let me tell you. Counting. The. Corals. Was. Hellish. Don’t try to tell me,  “Corals are delicate, don’t touch them because they’ll get hurt.” * I now know the truth. They will cut you, burn you, and make you lose your quadrat to the current. If I wasn’t wearing a wetsuit, I would be covered in the wrath of a fire coral right now. So, yeah, getting the data from the West patch reef was very difficult, but collecting the sea urchins wasn’t easy either. Most of the time, the sea urchins were 1cm-2inches burrowed in the remains of hard corals (specifically the ones with a little algae overgrowth). They were hard to see at first, but after awhile they were easy to find. I saw many types, and as the echinoderms expert, I knew exactly what they were (mostly). The most common find was a Common reef urchin, Echinometra viridis, identifiable by the dark body, orange spikes, and small white rings on their spines. We saw a few reef burrowing urchins, Echinometra lucunter, and 2 pencil slate urchins, Eucidaris tribuloides. We found so many urchins that I could hardly count the ones in the wild, but we brought back 20 to classify.  My three favorite finds of this trip were a Flamingo tongue snail, a lobster trio(featured picture), and the donkey dung sea cucumber (Holothuria mexicana). I found the sea cucumber under a coral, and I got to hold him, he was very squishy and started molding to the shape of my hands. I couldn’t identify any particular behavior that he was doing, but maybe he just needed a nap.

Our other daily activity was making a taxa showcase! We gathered lots of creatures from the seagrass beds behind the kitchen. We found one Spiny Sea Urchin, Diadema antillarum, and Kaiu graciously scooped it up for me to talk about. He hardly stole the show though because we found so many types of green algae, a lobster, and two mantis shrimp!

Oh, and did I mention that Prof. Solomon speared a lionfish? Looks like we might have ceviche tomorrow!

Till then!

QOTD: “You made the *dumb* graph, this is on you”

The first mantis shrimp I’ve ever seen. Everytime I go to an aquarium they don’t have them, and they are supposed to be really hard to find. I finally accomplished my life goal (twice in one day!!!)
Me and the Donkey Dung Sea Cucumber, Holothuria mexicana
Black long-spined sea urchin, Diadema antillarum, somehow being carried in a tiny net
Some of the guides we used to identify the sea urchins. I made the one on the left!!!
My teacher speared a lionfish in front of me … I LOVE BIOLOGY

* please do not intentionally touch corals its a) illegal and b) bad for corals

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Collecting Specimens: Lionfish Spearing

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Today we spent our morning collecting specimens in the shallows near the island and identifying them in our wet lab before releasing them! We were able to collect a surprising amount of organisms, including lots of green algae, a few crabs, a spiny lobster, and some mantis shrimp!

We were also able to generate a new research question and go farther out from shore to see some more patch reefs within the atoll and collect data to answer our question. We are interested in how sea urchin abundance correlates with the percentage of coral cover that is dead, and how this relationship might be different in areas of the reef that are protected and other unregulated areas. Data collection today was very challenging due to strong current and some equipment malfunctions, but we made it work! We should be working on this project for a few days so hopefully we will have better luck tomorrow!

We also visited patch reef that is a marine protected area (MPA) which was much deeper and more complex than we have seen so far! Although I didn’t spot any more jellyfish today, I saw so many magnificent coral structures and colorful fish. I saw an entire school of what might be blue tangs pass by, and some truly massive Orbicella corals. We even spotted a lionfish, which is a very venomous, very invasive species which Dr. Solomon was able to spear and catch for us to eat tomorrow! It was so exciting to watch!

2022

Day 4: Patch Reef Health + Sea Urchins

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Our class traveled on boat to perform some examinations of the patch reefs on Glover’s Atoll today! Using our transect tapes and quadrates again, our class decided toe analyze the relationship between the density of sea urchins and percentage of live and dead coral on both marine protected reefs as well as unprotected reefs. We discovered that although our methodology seemed sound that with the shallow waters, strong ocean currents, and the presence of millepora alcicornis or Branching Fire Coral that was present on both reefs. Jasmine got stung by this hydrozoan unfortunately :(, but the stings will go away with hydrocortisone! We did discover that the marine protected reefs were deeper and had healthier and more abundant corals and fish!

In the marine protected area I saw many solitary Christmas Tree worms of all colors!Right next to it is some Magnificent Feather Duster worms!

I also got to see my first split crown feather duster! You can tell by the how the radiole splits perfectly in half mirroring itself.

I believe I also got to see my first Christmas Tree Hydroid which was very exciting!

I even saw three lobsters with Faith all lined up in a row! Incredible!Right after I saw my biology professor, Dr. Solomon, spear a lionfish which is an invasive and harmful, yet delicious, species to the Caribbean. Lillian was very excited! 😀

Earlier in the day we collected all sorts of sea creatures for examination in the wet lab room. There was: green algae species, brown algae species, glass shrimp, conch species, anemones, mantis shrimp, several crab species, sea urchin (Caio picked it up with a net), and even a lobster!

I can’t wait to go to see more on the outer reefs tomorrow! Peace out!

~ Maegan

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So Many Fish!

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Hey guys! It’s Michiel again; I’m sure you all missed me : )

This morning started the same as every other morning here. I woke up, got ready, and joined the others for breakfast in the dining hall by 7. After breakfast, everyone in the class put on their snorkeling gear and went out into a new area of the water that’s behind the dining hall. It was full of sea grass and very shallow, but our goal was to find as many interesting species as we could and put them in a bucket. Some notable finds were a lobster, Diadema antillarum (a sea urchin with an interesting history), a sea anemone, and several crabs. In regards to herbivorous fish, though, we caught a Cocoa Damselfish (Stegastes variabilis), and a Bicolor Damselfish (Stegastes partitus). These fish are actually very territorial, so we saw them chasing and trying to bite one another in the bag. Once we laid out all of the species we caught in the wet lab, every person presented on the species caught within their taxa. We passed around lots of algae and talked a lot about different corals; it was so much fun!

After this, we took a break for lunch before going out on a boat in our snorkeling gear to work on a new research question we had come up with earlier in the day. We are trying to identify the correlation between sea urchin prevalence in a reef and the percentage of dead coral in the reef, and we want to see how this changes between Marine Protected Areas and other areas. We went to a reef that wasn’t in an MPA and tried to measure the percentage of dead coral in the area we were looking at using transects and quadrats. However, the waves were really strong and the reef was shallow, so Ava and I kept getting pushed into coral. After collecting this set of data, everyone collected sea urchins for 10 minutes, and we actually found 18 of them!

With our urchins and data collected, we left this reef and went to a new reef that was in an MPA. However, since the wave conditions were so harsh, we just snorkeled instead of collecting data. This reef was really nice. It had a bunch of fish diversity. I had a lot of people coming up to me asking about fish they saw (they mostly saw Yellowtail Damselfish and Blue Tangs). Unfortunately, I saw neither of these, but I did see a Blue Chromis (Chromis cyanea), which is beautiful, and some Threespot Damselfish (Stegastes planifrons). These kept staying very close to the coral, hiding in the crevices as I approached. They tend to do this because they’re pretty small, so they’re great prey for larger fish and are therefore more likely to hide when approached by something larger than them. We also saw a huge lionfish that Scott speared and took with us back to the island! Hopefully we will be feasting on lionfish ceviche tomorrow.

That was most of my day! We had some presentations in the evening that were very interesting (as always), but now it’s time to rest in preparation for tomorrow. Have a great night, guys! (Also here are my very feeble attempts at taking pictures of some of these fish).

Sergeant Major
Cocoa Damselfish
Blue Chromis
2022

TFBs: 1 Lionfish: 0

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My life goal has finally been achieved, but we’ll get to that soon.

This was a great morning for crustaceans. It was too windy to go out to the fore reef so we stayed closer to shore and went looking through the seagrass for organisms to bring back to the wet lab to examine. We found lots of algae, snails, and other organisms, but I don’t care about those, I’m here for the crustaceans. Can you spot how many crabs are in this bucket? I don’t actually remember how many we caught, but we got plenty of aquatic hermit crabs, a green clinging crab or emerald crab (Mithralculus sculptus) who was very well behaved and let me pick him up without pinching me.

We also found several brown crabs that I haven’t been able to identify yet, who were not as nice and tried to take a chunk out of my thumb when I went to move them 🙁

We also saw a spiny lobster! One of our water safety officers picked it up in the seagrass and plopped it into a bucket for us to examine.

It was pretty small for a lobster, but still big enough to be intimidating to those unfamiliar with lobsters.

We also found several mantis shrimp, which I had no idea were even in this area!

After an afternoon boat ride we went to a large reef patch and spotted a lionfish! It was the biggest lionfish I’ve ever seen and luckily this time our professor brought the lionfish spears and was able to impale it and bring it back onto the boat for us. It was almost perfect timing after my presentation yesterday about the lionfish invasion of these reefs and how my life goal was to eat one. It’s been years of me searching for a lionfish, and soon I will finally be able to eat one.

I will sleep soundly tonight with the promise of lionfish tomorrow.

2022

D-4 Impaling my taxa :’(

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Today the day started pretty wonderful, we got to bring many organisms from the local coast to the wet lab and have the many experts in our class identify them and tell us a little about each species. From this activity I really liked looking at things under the microscope, specially I got to look at a cool coral fragment that someone found! I also got to see a mantis shrimp for the first time!

Later in the day, we came up with a new question and went out to test it on different corals than those we had explored earlier in the week. With our research we want to understand if there is some sort of correlation between the amount of sea urchins observed and the amount of live coral. Our question originates from how sea urchins burrow into the corals which may weaken the coral and leave them more susceptible to disease. During our time on the reef patch we collected enough data, yet collecting that data was sure an adventure. The waves were way stronger than we had anticipated and we were constantly pushed into corals or our partners before we got to get the information we needed. Yet thankfully we were able to get data and also collect some urchins which we later examined back in the lab. (Don’t worry, we are taking good care of the sea urchins and will return them home tomorrow!)

We then went to a second patch this time not to work but to do some relaxing snorkeling. It was during this second snorkeling that I was shocked to see a lionfish flopping mid air on a stick. I was sad to see a member of my taxa of interest (piscivorous fish) that way, yet I also know that these can be really damaging to biodiversity, so I am glad that our team could contribute to improving the probability of many other species to survive via this kill of an invasive species. Also I am glad that some member of our group who really really want to try them will have a great dinner tomorrow(?)!

Also regarding tomorrow, I’m nervous but I also can’t wait to continue researching our question about corals and sea urchins to see what we discover!

2022

Day 4 in the (mixed) bag

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(EDIT:REVISED AGAIN, it’s back up and running)(EDIT as I’m in the process of writing this, the power tripped again and so we don’t have lights or fans right now either 😢)

As my title punn-ily states, today was a mixed bag. No pictures on this blog post because my camera took on water and killed the screen, and I’ve yet to see if any of my pictures from the past 4 days can be recovered from the SD card. And I had some really good pictures on there too 🙁

 

We were supposed to go to the fore reef this morning, but it was too windy to go out there safely, so that got postponed to another day (tbd, hopefully tomorrow morning). Our night snorkel has also been delayed because of it. The wind, despite its faults though, has made sleeping in the AC-less bunks so much more tolerable, because, you know, airflow! (I’m much too spoiled to air conditioning, I’m realizing). But today really was a beautiful day, perfect weather, and the water was stunning teal!

 

Our first activity was a brainstorming session to come up with our next experimental design proposal. After that we ventured out for an hour of specimen collection in the shallows behind the kitchen. We found some really cool little creatures, including a mantis shrimp (which, did you know, has 16 cones in its eyes, meaning it can probably see things and colors that we can’t even imagine), some crabs, some urchins, and in my taxon, a few queen conchs and a milk conch (which was a first for me so far!). Here’s the mixed bag part: awesome creatures, but the water smelled like poop. Straight fish manure.🤢 I was so happy to get rinsed off once we got back.

The second part of the day is where the interesting snorkeling takes place! We took a boat off of the Marine Protected Area to the West reef to execute the first part of our experimental design, data collection with transects on the reef, which was certainly interesting. We were trying to answer the question of what is the correlation of sea urchin presence and percentage of live and dead coral, and how does that change between the MPA and non-protected areas.

We don’t have a conclusion yet, but we did do the first part of data collection there. That non-MPA section was honestly really sad, with rampant disease, lots of coral rubble, and shallow waters, and my partner and I had to omit 2 of our planned measurement sites due to 1. Being unable to take the measures without brushing against fire coral, which I accidentally touched with my thigh, and 2. Our quadrat is completely broken . We also collected some sea urchins to measure and speciate them once we got back.

 

We then went onwards to a MPA reef, which was so much deeper and nice and much more alive. Scott speared one of the invasive lion fish. This part of the trip was amazing! I got to dive some in the beautiful water!

 

See what I mean by mixed bag? That describes today well.  Of course, we still had our daily lectures to expect, which I made it through tho!

 

 

2022, Uncategorized

Day 4 – Death to invasive lionfish!!!

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Today we took a small boat out to a reef outside the Marine Protected Area to start surveying our first large research question! We wanted to find out how live coral cover correlates with sea urchin prevalence. We went out to a shallow patch reef, and the strong waves today made it very difficult to do any surveying! I kept being accidentally washed into corals! We did get to see many sea urchins, including the Diadema antillarum, which has seen drastic population declines since the 1970s. The specimen we picked up in the field is shown in the picture below:

After our data collection, we visited another patch reef within the Marine Protected Area. Here I found lots of common sea fans, a soft coral, that were partially dead and diseased. I learned in a lecture today that many of them likely had the disease aspergillosis. I also saw many other soft corals that were harder to identify. Many of them have a candelabrum or bushy shape with branches coming up, and brown or tan polyps.

Here are a few I saw on the reefs today:

I think this one might be a Black Sea rod (Plexaura homomalla), as it has dark stalks with contrasting light polyps:

The most exciting part of today was when one of our guides, Claudius, found a giant adult Lionfish! It was around 10 inches long and very showy. Since Lion Fish are invasive to this area, and very damaging, our professors worked together to spear and capture it. Later at the station they humanely killed it, and have talked about turning it into ceviche for us to eat! Even though I am vegetarian, I think I will make an exception to help clear up the invasive Lionfish population here in Belize!

(Here is a poorly transferred picture of Scott with the lionfish speared and ready to put into the bag Adrienne is holding!)

– Ava

Rice University