Tag Archives: gear

First Dives and Soft Coral Surprises

Today was all about getting our feet—or fins—wet. We kicked things off with a morning snorkel just off the shore near Glover’s Research Station. It wasn’t meant to be anything too serious—just a chance to try out our gear and adjust to being back in the water. Even though it was a test run, I couldn’t help scanning for signs of soft corals, my assigned group. Spoiler: I found some!

The real show came after lunch when we headed to Long Point, also known as “the aquarium” (for good reason). The water was crystal-clear and the reef felt alive with color and motion. I spent most of my time trailing over the coral beds, and I was thrilled to spot several soft coral species: waving purple sea fans, elegant black sea rods, and the distinct branching shapes of circle sea rods. These corals don’t build the reef like their stony cousins, but they add a ton of texture, color, and motion to the underwater scene.

There’s something mesmerizing about the way soft corals move with the current—almost like underwater plants, except they’re very much animals. I’m excited to keep learning more about them and to see how their presence changes depending on where we snorkel.

Not a bad start for day one. Gear tested, fins working, and soft corals officially spotted.

Screenshot
Screenshot

Day 2: Mosquito Magnet

Today started off early with a yummy banana pancake breakfast and then our first snorkel excursion at 8am. We finally got to break out all of our fancy TFB gear (snorkels, masks, fins, diving skins) and use them! To get off of the dock and into the water, I just sat down and shimmied off, directly into a school of small fish. We then swam over some sea grass to a path reef and I was able to see sooo many organisms. There was Brain Coral, Common Sea Fans, Corky Sea Fingers, also lobsters, French Angel Fish, Lion Fish (!!), and an anemone! Apparently we might go out and hunt for Lion Fish since they are invasive and have them for a meal. I also was able to spot a piece of Laurencia spp. floating in the water and a lot of Spryidia filaments on the rocks. I’ll spare you from my extremely blurry photos but I’ll get the hang of this camera soon.

After we got back on land we made one of our field tools called a Quadrate which we will use as a measuring device to collect data. Then after lunch, we headed back into the water but this time through the Mangroves of Death (cue dramatic music). Where does this name come from you ask? The mosquitos. We literally had to run for a few minutes to try to dodge as many mosquitos as we can in order to go through the mangroves. It was totally worth it though. We made it to the shoreline and had to “stingray shuffle” through the seagrass because it’s their favorite habitat and you want to avoid surprising them. At these patch reefs I saw Yellow Snapper, baby Blue Tang (which look just like yellow surgeon fish), Royal Gramma (shout out to my dad’s fish tank), damselfish, a sea urchin (super cool), and similar coral as the patch reef from earlier in the day.

We chose to swim back in order to avoid the MOD once again, and saw even more cool things – sharks, sponges, and stingrays (oh my!). It was actually very nice to have more time in the water and watching the sea grass was quite meditative.

For the rest of the day we had taxon briefing and a topic lecture which will all help with more identification tomorrow!

-Sophia

Belize Babe’s (incomplete) selfie! I am determined to get a full one tomorrow.