May 22, 2019

Today was a doozy. We had a three hour boat ride to Glover’s Reef this morning. It was a small motor boat speeding across three hours worth of ocean, so it was more like a three hour rollercoaster.

Once we made it to Glover’s, we immediately had a tour of the island, then lunch, and then our first snorkel. We couldn’t stay out for long because the current was strong, but Liz and I made it out to the patch reef, which was beautiful. I’m so excited to go out there again.

Closer to shore, we spotted many upside-down jellyfish (Cassiopeia xamachana) – a scyphozoan from my taxon ID card!!! These jellyfish are particularly interesting because they often rest on the ocean floor upside down with their tentacles in the air such that they look like harmless plants.

We went out again later to a different area of the reef. This area was much more shallow, which made it harder to navigate. This wasn’t ideal because there were many fire coral. I noticed both branching fire coral (Millipore alcicornis) and blade fire coral (Millipore complanate). These hydrozoans are actually not coral at all and can cause a nasty sting with their nematocysts.