This morning started with sleepy eyes and tired bodies from circumnavigating the whole of San Salvador. Yesterday we looked under rocks at Blackwood Bay and found an Atlantic Pygmy Octopus and copious amounts of crabs from mud crabs to calico crabs. Thankfully, breakfast had cinnamon raisin bagels, eggs, blueberry muffins, coffee, oatmeal, and orange juice. Time was spent talking about today’s excursions with group projects and a trip to the light house.
All sun-screened and ready to go the students with group projects set out to Bonefish Bay and Sand Dollar Bay. Those at Sand Dollar Bay looked at the distribution of hard and soft coal in shallow and deep water as well as looked at the abundance of flamingo tongue snails on soft corals. The soft and hard coral distribution group spent their time figuring out their equipment as well as admiring the many different species of coral. The flamingo tongue group found three snails all together, two on sea fans and one on a candelabra coral. Bonefish Bay’s group had students collecting red rock sea urchins to test their algal preference between algae found in their natural habitat and algae found further from the rocks they hide in. They collected twenty sea urchins to keep overnight and some green algae found nearby their hiding places. The rest of the students stayed on site at the Gerace Research Center to catch crabs for their projects.
After a long day’s work out in the field we came back for lunch and we happy to find it was grilled cheese day. In addition to the classic delicious grilled cheese, we have a somewhat spicy vegetable soup, salad, grape Kool-Aid, and a variety of desserts. Shortly after we loaded up into the truck (WE GOT THE BIG TRUCK) and headed to the east side of the island in order to hike up a hill to the lighthouse. The lighthouse is a working lighthouse, one of the last human run lighthouses in the world, perched on a hill overworking the island. The two families that work the lighthouse live on the hill next to the lighthouse. All of us ventured up the very narrow, short stairs into the lighthouse, to some absolutely amazing views of the entire island. While on top of the lighthouse, we were able see all the previous sites we have visited and it gave us a perspective on all of our adventures.
After venturing up into the lighthouse, we did the opposite and went down into a cave. The several caves on the island are made of limestone that has been carved out by sea water. After a short hike through a woody area (jungle), we climbed down a ladder into the cave. We traveled along a “trail” while wading in water that for some of us was up to our chests to reach a room that receives no natural light. We turned off our flashlights and experienced complete darkness, which was really cool and peaceful, and honestly incomparable. After a little bit of exploring we travelled back to the entrance to the cave, but there were two paths we could have taken, one was the way we came and the other involved being submerged in the water. So because we are adventurous people, six of us decided we wanted to get completely submerged in the cave water, which was at little fear-evoking and exhilarating. Once we returned to the entrance we noticed that there was a nest in the cave, the nest belonged to a Pearly-Eyed Thrasher that had four blue eggs in it.
Once we returned to the GRC, we all took showers to get some of the components of the cave off of us, and we went to dinner where we had our “thanksgiving” dinner, including our favorite jellied cranberry sauce. In class today we had a site presentation on East Beach, we reviewed for our exam that we have tomorrow night, and looked at some of the cool pictures we have taken within the past several days. We also learned the dangers of pocket sand.
Amber Luke ’17 and McKayla Blake ‘17