I was still sick this morning so I stayed back and slept while everyone else went out to survey the local sea urchin populations. At noon everyone returned for lunch and then we made a poster using that data and had our lectures.

By dinner time I was feeling back to normal, so I ended up going out with the group for a night dive. It was pretty chaotic because we couldn’t find the reef in the dark and it felt like we were swimming forever. While we were out, we saw a huge spotted eagle ray and a pufferfish in the sea grass. When we finally got to the patch reef there were tons of spiny lobsters out hunting and we could see lots of shrimp darting through the water.

I’m pretty sure I also saw some sort of large true crab in the sea grass but it was pretty far away so I didn’t really get a good look at it for identification purposes. Tomorrow is our last full day in Belize and there is no more snorkeling left, I have to admit I’m ready to go home though I’m sure in retrospect this will all seem fun.

This morning we finally got our procedures streamlined (well as streamlined as you can get taking data under water) for the last 2 locations we were studying, plus Bella and I finished early and so had time to look at the reefs more. From my taxon grouping we found another spiny lobster, and this time I actually could see his full body. We also found a moray eel swimming around the corals.
After lunch we went back out to take advantage of flat water and went to the fore reef (the side closest to the ocean drop off). At first it was cool because we were looking into the abyss but quickly the large waves and the pressure from diving down without properly decompressing got to me and I started feeling sick. I managed to hold it together while we were out there, which was good because we saw a large nurse shark, 2 squids, and a flounder, but by the time we got back on the boat and into shore I felt terrible.

I threw up 4 times since getting off the boat and I still feel dizzy and nauseous so I’m going to bed early in the hopes that I won’t feel so dead tomorrow when we go out again. I’m starting to realize how much I do not want to be a marine biologist on this trip, but hey, that narrows it down slightly.

This morning we woke up, ate breakfast at 5am, and got onto the boat taking us back to civilization. To get back to Rice it was a 3 hour boat ride, then an hour wait, a 30 minute van ride, a 2.5 hour wait, a 3 hour flight, and a 45 minute bus ride. On the plane ride, the movie Aquaman was playing, and I kept finding myself judging the producers for their inaccurate display of the wildlife. That was the moment I realized tropical field biology had finally pushed me over the edge into academic lunacy.

By the time I finally got home, I didn’t even take my long awaited shower, but instead ate some chips and salsa and then crashed in bed. It was a great experience, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to need to hibernate to make up for all the lost sleep from the past couple weeks.

Our last day at Glover’s was spent entirely on land (thankfully). This morning we collected trash to determine the composition of trash on the island and where the majority of it collects. My group were the designated human sacrifices to the mosquitoes in the “mangroves of death” so our 30 minute collection time was spent doing some complex gymnastics around tree roots and while drenched in deet based products. It was kind of sad how much trash we took and still barely made a dent in the stuff accumulated there. The 12 of us collected over 3500 pieces of trash in 30 minutes and of those the vast majority were plastics such as bottles, plastic cutlery, toothbrushes, and flip flops that had washed ashore from the ocean currents in the Caribbean. Another sad finding was a hermit crab that was using some kind of plastic cap as a shell and crabs that had built plastic into the walls of their burrows.
After our collections and sorting, we opened up a few coconuts and ate their meat as a reward for our sweaty efforts.
After lunch we dissected the 5 lion fish that Scott, Javier, and Herbie had speared as they are invasive in the Atlantic. We then took that meat and turned it into a seviche while we were in lectures.  I one again determined that seafood in any form is not my jam, although I do concede it was well prepared.

This evening we had a powwow on the dock and we were watching the shrimp darting around the dock light and looking for rrays and at one point I turned around and there was a huge nurse shark right next to the dock checking out the light. What a way to wrap up the day! Tomorrow we have an early start to a full day of travel back to the US, so off to bed I go.

I celebrated my 21st birthday today on Glover’s Reef! Today, we went to two separate sites on the boat to do more work with the quadrats this morning and got to look around the patch reefs some more. The only crustacean I saw while out on the reef was a yellow line arrow crab, but I couldn’t get up close enough to take his picture because he was hiding under an overhang deep down. I did find a long -spined sea urchin while out though, and Bella and I swam right by a school of blue tang.

After lunch we did a wading activity in the seagrass nearby our laboratory where we all filled buckets with as much as we could find in an hour. I ended up finding 2 Donkey Dung Sea Cucumbers, a few different kinds of sponge, an anemone, 3 types of urchin, a conch, and unfortunately for my hands, a fireworm which I didn’t realize releases sharp barbs into your hand until it was too late. I also found what I thought was a sea anemone in a shell but when we took it back to the lab we determined it was a Pygmy Atlantic octopus instead! Our class also found a bunch of crustaceans for me to examine including what I ID’d as green gall climbing crabs, spider furcate crabs, an orange clawed hermit crab, and a mantis shrimp. There were also all of these tiny hermit crabs with blue tipped legs that I couldn’t determine since they weren’t anything I’d seen in my research and weren’t in the reef book, possibly because I focused my research on coral crab species not necessarily those we’d find in dense sea grass thickets.

At dinner I was surprised with a huge card the whole class had signed and a chocolate cake with white frosting… it was so nice and the cake was delicious (also as a side note the ladies in the kitchen made some delicious soul food tonight which I also really appreciated). Now off to bed because I’m so freaking tired.

Day two on the reef was a lot less anxiety inducing than day one. In the morning we learned about how the different tools for taking coral coverage measurements work and practiced on land on one of the coral graveyards nearby. While we were taking measurements I found a Black Sea urchin which I returned to sea, except don’t tell Keegan because I forgot to show him before releasing him and that’s his taxon group. After lunch, we suited up and took the same tools out into the water and took measurements for the sea grass beds nearby. I kept getting water in my snorkel from trying to stay underwater for as long as possible to count all the grass, but luckily Bella and I were an efficient duo and thus finished early and got to check out the patch reef. While out there we spotted a spotted eagle ray and a nurse shark, and in my own taxon group we found a spiny lobster, though we could only see it’s long antennae peeking out so couldn’t tell if it was spotted or not. We also found a number more blue hermit crabs on land throughout the day and I spent a good 20 minutes trying to catch the speedy blue land crabs which live in holes beneath the bushes and come out at night. In the morning it looks like we were invaded by a bunch of rogue mountain bikers because of all the crab tracks on the sand.