The 5am wakeup ended up being an easy one, since I went to sleep at 10pm for the first time in a while, not to mention the morning songbirds’ assistance. After a quick breakfast of PB&J sandwiches, we set out for Glover’s Reef Atoll. One hour and the bus and two and a half more on the boat, which featured a massive Green Turtle surfacing close to our boat. We finally arrived at Middle Caye, settled in, toured the island quickly, and then ate a much-desired lunch.

After lunch, it was time for the main event: our first snorkel of the trip. After pulling on my brand new dive skin and putting on my much older mask, the water invited us in to take a break from the blisteringly hot sun. We stayed in the shallow waters by the dock for today, snorkeling around some patch reefs a short swim away. I managed to find a fair amount of my assigned taxon group of anemones, corallimorphs, and zoanthids. With Adrienne’s help, I found a small colony of mat zoanthids (Zoanthus pulchellus) growing on a small stony patch, and I then found some small Sponge Zoanthids (Parazoanthus parasiticus) growing on a pale blue, vase-shaped sponge. I even managed to spot a small Caribbean Giant Anemone (Condylactis gigantea) among the sea-grass on the way out of the water. Although I don’t have to keep track of reptiles for another week, I noted the appearance of three spiny-tailed iguanas (Ctenosaura similis) on Middle Caye, as well as a house gecko (Hemidactylus frenatus).

After our snorkel, we went to a coral graveyard on the island full of dead coral skeletons. We identified them using guidebooks, and used them to learn to recognize the potential corals we will see tomorrow. After dinner, we rounded off our day with lectures on echinoderms and stony corals, and finished by making quadrats that we will use tomorrow for our activities.