Today was our first day of real snorkeling out on the reef. In the morning, we snorkeled right off the dock to make sure we could all comfortably swim and make sure we were comfortable with our gear. After about 15 minutes of practice, we swam out to a patch reef nearby and looked around for a bit. In total, in the morning, we were in the water for around an hour. I was surprised by how exhausting that hour was and how sore I was after. Being in the water for that long took a lot out of me. We also came out salty from the seawater and had to rinse all our gear to ensure that it wouldn’t corrode. It didn’t occur to me that that might happen but I suppose it makes sense. After rinsing our gear and doing a quick debrief, we were released for the morning.

I’m the afternoon, we took a boat maybe 10 minutes away from where we were staying and snorkeled there. It was super shallow and we had to be careful where we were swimming to avoid bumping the reef. The reef itself was super beautiful. We stopped at two locations, and they both were a host to an incredible array of fish and corals. We even saw a nurse shark and some rays! The coral itself was amazing to look at as well—after hearing all about it, I was super glad to be able to recognize some of the hard and soft corals.

I was looking for cryptobenthic fish. Because it was so shallow, I didn’t have to dive far to see them because the reef was so shallow, but I had a really hard time photographing them. Our phones were in these dry bags which protected them from the water, but underwater the touchscreen wouldn’t respond. After talking to some classmates, I eventually learned that you can open the camera app before and then just use the volume button to take pictures. I still had a bit of trouble—at one point, I accidentally took a time lapse, and then I accidentally took a slow-motion video (which caught some fish, but still). I also just had a hard time holding the camera steady and taking clear photos, and even in the clear ones it’s hard to make out the fish. Part of the problem is that they’re so small, well-camouflaged, and near the bottom.

Technical difficulties aside, I did see some of my taxon. The most common cryptobenthic fish I could see are gobies and blennies. They’re both elongate, but gobies tend to be more streamlined while blennies are a little more round and often have . Insterestingly, I was only seeing gobies, and really only one particular genus—Elacatinus. I wonder if that’s because of the habitats or if it has to do with what I was primed or able to see. I’ll find out soon. I’m excited to see what types of experiments and tests we’ll do out here on the reef.