Today we started the day off with a morning swim/scavenger hunt where we took pictures of processes and organisms we could recognize on the reef. I was surprised by how much I remembered from Adrienne’s coral reef biology class.
During this swim I saw a flamingo tongue mollusc, a few queen conch, and one clam shell.
Later in the afternoon we learned how to use quadrats and transects together and surveyed green algae in the sea grass bed using these tools. It turns out free diving is very difficult while holding a clipboard and trying to find specific species in super thick seagrass cover. Who knew?
My favorite part of the day by far was he coral graveyard. This island is incredible in that it has thousands of dead coral skeletons lying all over the beaches and interior that are really well preserved. You can still see the coralytes in all of them and even the honey-comb building pattern of some.
Adrienne went absolutely insane with happiness while we were identifying corals on the beach. I was amazed at how much I remembered and could still identify which made me excited too. We got to see acropora palmata skeletons and I even identified an acropora hybrid species (acropora prolifera).
It was amazing getting to see that much diversity in one place.
