Tag Archives: 2018

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Crab Derby/Dermit Crab Races

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After breakfast today, we left on the boat to explore the floor reefs past the island. The first site we stopped at was beautiful and there were so many large corals, however I started to get sea sick and by the time we got to the second site I felt like I was going to throw-up in my snorkel mask. I still got out to swim around and the reef was really pretty, I just felt like I couldn’t be completely present since I wasn’t feeling great. It was still cool that Scott was able to spear a lionfish and we might get to dissect and eat them later.

 

We came back to the island because people were feeling sick and had time to rest before lunch. After lunch, Scott gave us more time so everyone took a nap and when I woke up I didn’t feel sick anymore. We went back out on the boat to collect sea urchins to compare the percentage of sea urchins in the MPA and out of the MPA. We stayed in the atoll so the ride was a lot smoother and the 2 patch reefs we saw were a lot shallower. We got a ton of sea urchin and I got to hold some in my hand and see them move, also Claire found a sea egg which was one of the cutest marine organisms ever.

While in the reef I saw a bunch of the common sea fans that were mostly purple, and one was a really intense purple and huge. I saw less Corky Sea fingers today in the reefs today, there might have been some in the floor reefs, but since it was so deep and I wasn’t feeling well I could dive down. I also saw some pretty large sea plumes that were also a light purplish color.

 

After dinner and lecture, we finished our day with a crab race. We all picked our crabs, which were supposed to be hermit crabs, but Elena and Sam somehow got large blue crabs, but they didn’t win anyway. My crab ended up not moving and then turned and went the opposite direction if the finish line:(

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Day 12: Mysterious [Two Feet] Below

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Blog Post #12

Day 12: Mysterious [Two Feet] Below

Written 6:17 am on May 27th

We started May 26thwith pancakes!! I was very excited because I seemed to have willed it as I had asked Scott if we’d have them. They are feeding us so well.

In the morning, we worked on our poster for reef health. We found that our data weren’t super accurate as we had a small sample size. The live hard coral coverage was around 22.12% inside the MPA vs. 15.1% outside the MPA. Sea urchin health seemed to be comparable in both reefs. Given this, we concluded the MPA is more helpful for coral, but further studies would be needed to determine distinct differences between the two patch reefs.

In the afternoon, we headed to the backreef off of our island. Basically, it’s about 2-4 feet of wading water with your face in the water. We had no idea what we were going to find! In the seagrass bed, I found some fire sponges as well as some thin rope sponge polyps. Then we reached the true backreef of rocks and coral polyps—a true nursery considering the large number of baby fish and coral! I didn’t see any sponges oddly enough once we got closer to the backreef. This is likely due to the high wave action, the sponge polyps get pushed away and farther back into the lagoon.

Thin rope sponges in seagrass bed

We picked up shells, conchs, and other interesting creatures/plants along the way to observe back in the wet lab. Since the sponges were all rooted into the ground, I adopted the mollusks taxon. We found lots of Queen Conchs and snails, but the ultimate find was a baby octopus!!

Herbert the octopus!

I believe that Herbert is a Caribbean Reef Octopus, and he was found in one of the old conch shells. We think there was a second one, but that one didn’t come out. Herbie inked on my when I tried to pick him up and move him. That was an experience I have never had before.

Eventually, we let all our creatures return to the sea, including Herbert, who gave us an inking farewell. We had a really great time exploring the mysterious two feet below us! It was an important reminder of that there are so many creatures great and small that live in all parts of our world, and we should do our best to protect them.

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Day 12: Sea Cucumbers Make Great Water Guns

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This morning, we started the day off right with plates of fat banana and pineapple pancakes. I’m beginning to think that my life is actually a dream, at least for the time being.

We spent the morning analyzing data we collected in the previous two days about live hard corals and sea urchins. We used coral cover and sea urchin diversity and size as measures of overall reef health, and we wanted to see whether the Marine Protected Areas implemented by the Belizean government are actually improving reef health. After analyzing our data, we decided that we couldn’t solidly conclude anything about the effectiveness of MPAs. We’d have to conduct further studies before we can make a real statement about MPAs.

After lunch came the exciting part. We waded out to the shallow reefs behind the island to look for critters in the sea grass and coral rubble! When we first waded out to sea, the ground was nothing but a sludge of mud and rotting seaweed. It was, like, reaaaal nasty. The water was so hot, too! Like a bathtub, except crusted with algae and stinking of fish.

Once we’d waded out a little, the water became much cooler and clearer. It became deep enough to swim and search for critters in the sea grass. My first find of the day was a donkey dung sea cucmber (yes, that’s its real name!) that was about 35 cm long. It literally looks like a gigantic, brown donkey turd, except it has tube feet and a red belly. I dumped that guy into our sea collection bucket that we later took back to the island to examine.It was a fun afternoon filled with much turning over of rocks and investigating the benthos for crustaceans, brittle stars, and fish.

Today was another great day for Echinoderms. I found that many brittle stars, especially spiny ophiocomas, love to hide under algae-encrusted pieces of coral rock. Once I lifted up the rubble, I’d often see one or two spiny brown and white-banded arms disappearing around the bend.

Spiny ophiocoma brittle star.

I snatched 5 to put in our collection bucket before they disappeared. Two were quite large, maybe 10 cm from arm tip to tip, but one was teensy! It was 2 cm from tip to tip. Ceyda also found a smaller donkey dung sea cucumber lounging in the sea grass, and Elena found a slate pencil urchin to add to my collection.

Fun fact: sea cucumbers make great water guns! When submerged, they fill themselves up with water. You can pick them up and gently squeeze to make them shoot the water out at anyone who crosses your path! Scott used one of the donkey dung cucumbers to squirt me with water, so naturally, I had to get him back. Again, clearly, this was all in the name of science.

Here I am holding the larger of the donkey dung sea cucumbers that we found. 

Other cool spots and catches of the day included a large nurse shark, a gigantic spiny lobster (and 3 smaller ones), a cocoa damsel fish, and a baby Caribbean reef octopus!! We spotted the nurse shark swimming in the shallows near the reef crest, and I scooped up the bright yellow damsel fish in the old conch shell that it lived in. Bonus: that same conch shell also turned out to be home to the octopus, which was a super cool find!

Everyone’s favorite was the octopus, which Jessica christened Herbert. He was small enough to fit in the palm of a hand and changed colors very frequently. I think we stressed him out though, because he inked in the tray we held him in 🙁

Herbert the Caribbean reef octopus.

I was shocked by the sheer diversity and amount of animals we could find here just by wading out behind the island. It’s truly incredible – I didn’t even begin to detail all of the organisms we found today. If I did, I’d be writing for 20 pages.

I can’t believe that we only have two more full days in this idyllic place. I don’t want to think about leaving, but for now, I’m going to enjoy learning about this ecosystem to the fullest!

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Will Rice Will Lose Things

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Today I got to sleep in because breakfast didn’t start till 7! After breakfast, Scott had us practice using our research equipment on land before we got in the water. We looked at the proportion of dead leaves on the main trail of the island. Once we were confident with using the transect tape and quadrats, we got ready for using it in the reef.

Putting on the dive suit over an already sweating body was a struggle, but once I had all my gear on I headed to the dock. Once in the water, we used the same technique with the quadrats and transect tape in the sea grass to find what percentage of the benthos contained worm mounds. On the way out of the water, I realized I lost my clipboard and had everyone looking for it, but Elena ended up finding it right in front of the ladder in the sand (sorry everyone:/).

After a delicious lunch, we headed to what Scott told us was Adrienne’s favorite spot, the Coral Graveyard. It was really interesting to be able to identify the different hard corals and also me and Jessica found beautiful pink conch shells and pretended we were in Moana.

Then we headed back into the water, to repeat the same experiment but with measuring the proportion of hard corals. We went to one patch reef in the Marine Protective Area which was pretty hard to maneuver in since it was really close to the surface. The second reef we visited was outside the MPA and was a lot deeper than the first so it was easier to swim and use the equipment. I really felt like a real marine TFB being able to use the quadrat and tape, and swim so close to the coral.

While at the different patch reefs I saw a bunch of the corky sea fingers and purple sea fans. I also got to see some bipinnate sea plumes as well as some sea rods, however it was hard to tell which type of sea rods they were, but I definitely spotted black sea rod.

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Day 11: Ooo the Drop-off…

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Blog Post #11
Day 11: Ooo the Drop-off…

Written at 6:25 am on May 26th

 

We did a lot of exploring and learning, and even some of the drop-off (figured I throw in some Finding Nemo reference even though it’s the wrong area of the globe). We started the morning of May 25thwith a presentation from the Belize Fisheries and Coast Guard divisions and how they enforce their laws. It was awesome to get some context on just how important of an area Glover’s Reef is.

 

Then we hopped on the boat for a morning of exploring the forereef—we stopped at two different places: an area behind Southwest Cay and an area behind our island that is the drop off. These snorkels were really gorgeous; the diversity of coral, fish, and other wildlife such as rays, sponges, and soft corals. There seemed to be a lot of Ctenophores, which are commonly known as comb jellies even though they aren’t jellyfish. I had hoped to see a sea turtle since they love snacking on those, but alas, none were found.

 

The sponges in the spurs and grooves leaving to the drop-off weren’t very diverse in species but had incredible ranges of color. The branching tube sponges were gray to green to blue, and the rope sponges varied from brown to red to tan. There were a few vase sponges that had hints of pink and light blue and green in the same one!

 

Vase sponge with baby fish (hard to see)
branching tube sponge

In the afternoon, we collected sea urchins to measure their size and species richness to test the health of the reef at one reef patch inside the MPA and the other outside of it. I did manage to nab a black sea urchin with some tongs, after many tries. We haven’t yet analyzed our data, so stay tuned!

 

My lip is sunburned, but my soul is happy. I love being out on the water and exploring, and even better to be doing science at the same time!

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Day 11: Crab Derby

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We started the day by going out on the boat to look at the outer reef. We spent all morning swimming around looking at the fore reef (without collecting data) which is outside the lagoon. We saw an eel, a few stingrays, lots of fish and lots of coral. It was really cool to see all the life. Scott caught a lionfish which is invasive here. We’re going to get to dissect and eat it later which I’m super excited about.

This afternoon was spent collecting sea urchins to estimate reef health in and outside of the protected zone. We found a bunch of a few different types, mostly reef urchins, slate pencil urchins, and black sea urchins. We timed how long we were looking for urchins to keep constant how many we were collecting. At the very end of time for the patch reef inside the protected area, I found an east indies sea egg.

It was 9.2 cm in diameter, two to three times the size of the other urchins. It had white spines and a black body. Its spines moved so beautifully when I picked it up and it stuck to me with its tube feet. I named it Jerry and it is my patronus. We took so many pictures with the urchins and the brittle stars we picked up. They were beautiful and cute and surprisingly friendly despite their spines. It’s really sad to think we may be the last generation to see the reefs like this.

We finished the day by spending a lot of time with my taxon (crustaceans). In the afternoon I saw a blue land hermit crab on top of a bush which was really startling. I’m sure it just climbed up through the branches, but anywhere off the ground still isn’t where crabs belong in my head.

After lectures, everyone went and found hermit crabs to race. We’ve been talking about doing a crab derby for days and it finally happened. Elena and I grabbed blue land crabs while everyone else grabbed hermit crabs from the compost area. We drew two lines in the sand and then let all the crabs go. Lots of the hermit cabs never moved or started walking in the wrong direction, but quite a few actually mored along in the race. Elena’s blue land crab, Rihanna, was way faster than all the other crabs, but it walked off the course and then hid under a building.

My crab, Angus, disappeared into the night. But three of the hermit crabs had a pretty neck and neck race to the finish line. Sami’s crab Alejandro ended up winning; we rewarded him with coconut. Every night we’ve been here it’s been stormy, which has looked pretty cool, but I really want to see the stars out here. I’ve heard (from previous TFBs) that you can see the milky way out here which would be really cool. Regardless, today was a pretty great day.

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Day 10: A True Texan Rodeo Where We Coral Up Some Data

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I woke up at around 6 to finish up blogs before eating breakfast with the rest of the gang at 7, where we had the sweetest pineapple I’ve ever had. We got a chance to use our quadrat for the first time by doing a little mock experiment by counting the leaf litter on the Beck Interpretive Trail. We changed and jumped in the water to try the same methodology using worm mounds in the sea grass bed, where I may or may not have lost my clipboard which Elena promptly found.

We had a little break after this so we headed to the observation tower to see the island and walked around the trails before a delicious lunch. We took a stop to the dead coral graveyard and got to see some great examples of the corals we would be seeing in real life just a little later. We changed back into our gear before heading our on the boat for out first dive outside Middle Caye.

We sailed about 15 minutes into the MPA (marine protected area) zone where we decided to use our quadrats to measure the percentage of the benthos in MPA vs non-MPA areas that were covered in live coral. We used the transect and quadrat to measure our small plots of reef over 100ft. We finished pretty fast so we got to explore the reef and look at sea urchins that scattered the rocks everywhere. I might have then lost our quadrat but Sam and Rose found it so our team slogan of Will Rice Will Lose Stuff seems apt.

We went a little farther out into the non-MPA zone to repeat the procedure. This area was a little deeper so we had to dive to retrieve our equipment. Elena and I finished pretty quickly again so we spent some time looking around, where we got to see a spotted moray eel.

We headed back to the main island where I quickly took a shower before dinner. We got to drink from some fresh coconuts here, which came at the exact right time. We had dinner and had some down time where we worked on our notebooks and blogs and enjoyed the wind and lightning from the coming storm. We headed inside for lectures from Chloe (soft coral), Andressa (green algae) and Ceyda( the future of coral reefs). Everyone was falling asleep hard during this so we all stood up a little and Elena, uninvited, slapped me with a Clif Bar. After lectures ended, we stayed in the classroom and finished up our blogs and notebooks for the day.

CZA found: giant Caribbean anemone in the MPA zone in a very shallow region (about 2 ft), surrounded by soft coral and growing on rock.

Sun anemone in non MPA zone- it was a little hard to be sure that I saw this one because it was far away but it was in a rock cropping surrounded by hard coral in a shady edge of a reef.

Both of these were expected, though I did expect to see more of both types in the reefs

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Day 9: Glover’s? I Barely Know Her!!

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We all work up around 5:40ish before packing up our things to say bye to land for a while. We ate breakfast in the dining room of the TEC and loaded up our things into the van where Eduardo helped up. We drove into Belize City, which looked completely different from the first time we’d seen it. We passed through the neighborhoods and shopping centers of the city before arriving at the marina where we met our captain and water safety officers, Javier and Rose. We loaded up the boat and started the sail to Glover’s.

One of the coolest part of this sail was watching the water change into every shade of blue as we went farther away from the mainland. We sailed for about 3 hours through the water and enjoyed watching the islands and mangroves pass by. The view was tranquil and a huge change from our previous views in the rainforest. We got the chance to talk to Rose, which was really cool because she has one of the coolest jobs.

Goodbye civilization!
The Patch Coral right off the dock

The water turned a beautiful vibrant turquoise as we entered the lagoon. We drove slowly over the water and could see the sand at the bottom clearly. We docked on the island and unloaded our stuff before getting to see the island. We had a great lunch and got to see our rooms before snorkeling out for the first time. We put on all our dive gear and paired up for our dive teams (I somehow got stuck with Elena I’m about to die in the ocean). We immediately almost stepped on a stingray, so we did great. We went out around the sea grass and a shallow reef to try on our gear, which was a lot of fun.

We got out of the water, showered, and ate a really great dinner with upside down pineapple cake. We went for our first rounds of lectures here with Veronica doing echinoderms and the microbial processes of coral reefs and Kristen doing hard corals. Afterwards, we made our quadrant Bichael using the pvc pipes and string so that we could use it for data collection tomorrow. Afterwards, we all spent time working on our notebooks before turning in.

Corallimorphs, Zoanthids, and Anemones seen today:

It was hard to tell them apart in the reef but I definitely saw a giant Caribbean Corallimorph about 200 ft from the dock in the reefs around the island, surrounded by hard coral. This was pretty expected as this depth is in its range.

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Day 11: Sea Hedgehogs

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I’m pretty sure that anyone reading my posts is kind of tired of me starting all of them with something like “OMG TODAY WAS SO AWESOME,” but seriously, today was so awesome, and I don’t even like the word awesome. It’s such a boring, generic word, but I can’t think of anything else that accurately sums up my feelings.

This morning, we headed out to the fore reefs (area outside of the lagoon) beside one of the cayes nearby, as well as a fore reef beside the island that we’re staying on. The fore reef was much deeper than the places we previously visited, maybe ~30 ft deep. The current was much stronger here than in areas we’d visited before, but I actually really enjoyed bobbing up and down on the waves (shout out to my dad for teaching me to swim)!

The benthos was covered with coral rubble, live hard and soft corals, and all forms of fish. If I listened carefully, I could hear colorful parrotfish crunching at the coral below. I spotted a southern stingray rippling along the floor and a Nassau Grouper, which is a highly protected endangered species of fish.   AhhhhHHH watching a healthy coral reef teeming with life makes the heart happy 🙂

Coral reefs make a great photo op!

After stuffing ourselves with homemade pizza for lunch, we headed out for my favorite part of the day: sea urchin collection! As the resident Echinodermata expert on this trip, I was kind of obliged to geek out about them. But really, sea urchins are so fascinating that I didn’t even have to pretend.

We headed out to the same shallow patch reef that we visited two days ago. This patch reef is inside what’s known as a Marine Protected Area, which is an area in which harvesting is prohibited but recreational activity is allowed. We got 25 minutes to search for and catch as many sea urchins as we could with the goal of comparing the urchins we found in the MPA to the ones we found later when we visited the non-MPA.

Those little guys were so hard to catch. They’re super spiny and like to hide in inaccessible reef crevices as well as under rocks. There’s a technique to catch them easily, but it requires extreme precision and lack of fear of stabbing oneself with a spine, neither of which I possess. You just have to reach in, grab a spine, and jerk sharply – but if you don’t dislodge the urchin on the first try, it’ll become almost impossible to grab. Its tube feet will reach out and suction to the rock when it senses danger.

I learned how to catch the urchins pretty quickly! I caught so many reef urchins and slate pencil urchins by turning over pieces of coral debris and picking them off the benthos below. They were adorable, especially the baby ones that were smaller than a centimeter in diameter!!

A bonus of turning over coral debris was that we found so many brittle stars, which are another type of Echinoderm. I know for sure that I saw at least 2 spiny ophiocomas and many Suenson’s brittle stars, but there were many others that I could not identify. They wriggled away and dropped their arms too quickly.

A tiny green brittle star that I couldn’t identify. 

I think the catch of the day was a West Indian Sea Egg that Claire found at the MPA patch reef. It was 9 cm in diameter and had a dark purple body covered with short white spines.

Here I am holding the West Indian sea egg that Claire found! Isn’t it cute?  What an egg. 

When we got back to the island and after we finished dinner and lectures, we raced crabs that we caught on the island! We dubbed it “Crab Derby,” or “Dermit Crab Race.” Each of us caught either a Caribbean Blue Crab or a hermit crab, lined them up, and let them race towards a finish line.

Once the starting time was called, there was a sudden cacophony of screams of encouragement as each of us egged on our crabs. I’m proud to announce that my hermit crab, Georgiano, won second place! He made me so proud :’)

I’ll be awake again bright and early for another packed day tomorrow, so good night!

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Day 10: Snorkeling is Probably My Favorite Thing Ever

I like a lot of things. Actually, I’m a little too obsessed with many things – I’ve always been the type of person who enjoys many hobbies and who uses said hobbies to procrastinate doing my actual work. But I think my actual favorite thing in the whole wide world is snorkeling.

We snorkeled for 3 or 4 hours today, and although I was soooo physically worn out, I could have gone for more. (Also, do you understand how amazing that is for me? I did rigorous physical activity for MULTIPLE HOURS and I WASN’T EVEN MAD AT IT?!?! I swear, if I lived on an island I’d have the beach bod of all beach bods.

The day started off with an excellent breakfast of cheese, fresh avocado, johnnycakes (biscuits but better), and fresh fruit. I think we’re all getting a little spoiled on the food here because it has been consistently delicious. AhhhHH

After filling up our fuel tanks, we met to practice a data collection technique that is commonly used by field ecologists to obtain random samples along a straight line section of an area. We used devices called quadrats, which are basically square grids that we made of plastic tubing a string, to sample small chunks of the ocean floor. Before getting into the water, we practiced laying out the transect tape (a huge tape measure that tells us the line along which we will measure) on land.

When we’d become sufficient at conducting transects on land, we moved to the water to practice. And when we became used to snorkeling while carrying 1058593 pieces of equipment, Scott deemed us ready to go conduct some real life transects on some patch reefs at a nearby island.

Today’s project aimed to compare the live hard coral coverage between Marine Protected Areas and non- Marine Protected Areas. We first stopped at a reef inside the MPA. We hopped off the boat into water that was the absolute perfect temperature for swimming. It was maybe 30 ft deep, but rapidly transitioned to being 2 or 3 ft deep once we hit the actual reef.

A beautiful coral formation I found at the patch reef!

After conducting our transects there, we had a little bit of free time to look around. I spent the time looking under rocks and in crevices for sea urchins. I actually found so many! There were all tucked away in dark areas so I didn’t dare to stick my finger in to try to pull them out. They were sooo cute, like little sea hedgehogs clinging to the rock faces. I LOVE MY TAXONOMIC GROUP WOW.

Scott picked up a baby one for me to see at the second reef we stopped at today. I think it’s Echinometra lucunter, a rock boring urchin. It crawled across my hand and waved its little tube feet at me. I think I cried a little because it was so frickin adorable.

If you look closely at my hands, you can see a tiny sea urchin! 🙂

Anyway, if you couldn’t tell already, I thoroughly enjoyed myself today. I just loved watching the bustling ecosystem beneath me, with soft corals waving in the current and tiny colorful fish darting between them. This is insane. I can’t wait to get back out tomorrow.