Today started a little later, around 6:30 am. After a serene half-hour, we went for breakfast before starting our day. Today was all about quadrats; we got some practice using them on land before jumping back into the patch reef. We used our quadrats and transect tape to measure how many organisms of different phyla we could find, and Deepu and I finally got to take our trusty quadrat, nicknamed “Larval”, into the water. On this snorkel I saw three Caribbean Anemones (Condylactis gigantea) in the sea grass, was brought what I believe to be a Sun Anemone (Stichodactyla helianthus) that was attached to a piece of sea grass, and almost laid the transect tape on top of a baby nurse shark.

After lunch, all of our quadrat practice from the morning became useful as we took a boat out to a patch reef near another caye. We used our quadrats and transect tape to measure live coral, dead coral, sponges, and other features of the reefs. Deepu and I accidentally set our transect tape into deep water, which would have made measuring twenty-odd feet down more difficult were the quadrat not covering a completely sandy area. After finishing our measurements, we got to explore the reef a bit. I found a beautiful Flamingo Tongue, and some more Sponge Zoanthids (Parazoanthus parasiticus) growing on the same type of sponge I found it on yesterday (Niphates digitalis). I also got to practice blowing bubble rings, since we finally got into water that we couldn’t stand in.

After our first data collection, we then spent 25 minutes picking up as many sea urchins as possible in order to measure them tomorrow. We will compare our findings for the urchins and the coral cover from today, which were taken in a Marine Protected Area, to findings from an area that is not protected tomorrow. I am excited to see more reefs and potentially snorkel after dark tomorrow! Glover’s Reef is truly paradise.