May 27, 2025
GRRS Day 3
Today was a bit more of a chill day… all 16 of us I think are a little tired. Excited and happy to be here, but definitely tired. Luckily, there is amazing tropical field biology to be seen from the comfort of Middle Caye (the island GRRS sits on.) In the morning, we made a poster for the parrotfish experiment, presented it, then explored the shallow seagrass beds and found little snails, crabs, fish, and all sorts of cool things. I got sunburnt :/
The afternoon saw some cool stuff too, as we walked along the trail to the “coral graveyard” where Pleistocene-era corals are all fossilized on the beach. It was interesting to see how the graveyard faded into the water and eventually into a living reef, a testament to the geology of how the island came about and could possibly grow as those corals die and trap sediment. I also loved to see the life under these corals, as their fossils made a perfect habitat for snails, little crabs, and sea urchins! I saw something I’ve never seen before, a Bryozoan! The one thing I didn’t like about the coral graveyard was the amount of litter and rubbish everywhere, that was obviously washed up by the ocean. Made me sad to see it all, and wonder if there could be some volunteer project hosted by the WCS to clean it up. We also happened upon a beach, where we found an entire (open, full of seawater) bottle of gold rum. Also, an important note about the beach: all that sand is Wrasse (parrotfish) poop! Even though I didn’t see wrasses today, I certainly saw their effects!
At night, we were supposed to go snorkeling, but that did not happen due to weather conditions. We didn’t let it get us down though, as we had a great night of “night lighting” off the dock. Basically, we tied a light to a dock post and had it bobbing around for about an hour. We saw all sorts of cool things attracted to the light, including little shrimps, larval crabs, glass eels (larval stage of tarpon, bonefish, and eels) and a reef squid we named Angie (after our amazing cook at LCRS.)
As we complete day 3, I realize we’re already more than halfway through the GRRS portion of our class. It is crazy to think that we will be landing in Houston in just a couple days!
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