Today is Tuesday, the 27th of May. As always, we started our day by waking up for a hardy breakfast at 07:30am. After breakfast we had a short hour break before loading our snorkeling gear onto the truck. We then headed to our first site of the day, which was North Pointe. Due to high tide, we had to walk through water that was about waist high. Upon arriving to North Point, we took field measurements, including: location, cloud coverage, temperature, wind speed, tide, and GPS location. Our objective for the day was to identify sea grass and algae, which will appear on our first exam tomorrow. Some of the algae we found were Acetabularia, also known as Mermaid’s wine glass and Penicillus, another common alga found in this area. This trip to North Point was unlike our first trip to this destination because we found organisms previously not seen. Some of the organisms we saw were: eels, box jellyfish and Giant Anemone. In the duration of this trip we saw a total of three eels, which was kind of exciting. We also saw a Giant Anemone, which was neat because when we touched it, the anemone stuck to our hands.
After completing our objective for the first site, we headed back to GRC for a quick lunch and brief nap. We then reconvened at the truck at 13:15pm to head to our second site of the day, Snapshot. At this site we continued to explore a reef ecosystem and began our identification of coral. There were numerous amounts of coral, including but not limiting: Fire coral, Staghorn coral, Rock coral, Brain coral, and Sea fans. After identifying coral we focused on organisms within the reef. Some of the common organisms found in this area are: the Blue Tang, Blue head, Fairy Basslet, the School master, Blue chromis and both the male and female Spotlight parrotfish. However, we encountered some other organisms that have previously not been spotted. One of these organisms was the Sea Walnut Comb Jelly. This animal is unique because it does not have the capability of stinging you. Another unique organism we found was the Trumpetfish. This fish has a long body and a defined nose. Lastly we saw a very cool echinoderm called a Crinoid.
Upon arriving back at the GRC we had dinner and then headed to class. In class today, we reviewed previous material covered in class for our test tomorrow. We anxiously wait for our upcoming test and can’t wait for the next two and a half weeks of our trip.
Alexander Chugh ’17 and Hannah Cleary ‘17