My second day at Guava has been great. We started the day off with a filling breakfast served by our seniors, at 7:45. Our pal Glen picked us up at 8:30 to take us to the boats so that we could start our second journey out into the clear blue ocean that surrounds our island. I boarded the boat with my sights set out for parrotfish, damsel fish, and wrasse which are the three species of fish that I am surveying for my group project.My team and I set off into the water of Ginger Island’s steps and marked off a 10×10 area that contained Coral with algae and surveyed the number of parrotfish, damselfish, and wrasse which visited the area to answer the question of whether or not algae is structural to a lively ecosystem. Our studies found that many wrasse visited the reefs because they traveled in schools of up to 20 fish. Parrotfish though, were seen in fewer numbers yet, they stayed around the area for a longer amount of time eating the algae off of the corals. Damselfish were found in the smallest amount and acted much like the wrasse, moving quickly from place to place and not eating a lot of algae. At the end of the dive, we were able to go to another area of the steps and were circled by three reef sharks just as we were ending the dive.
After the first dive, our group met back up to discuss our findings and all agreed on the previously stated observations. As we waited our recovery time, we did not have the urge to jump off of the side of the boat because three of the people on our boat were sea sick. The swells on the way to the second dive site did not help and because of the continuous rocking of the boat one of our peers had to sit out on the second dive which was at the backside of Ginger Island. My group went down intact and set up another 10×10 site and began our second round of surveys. On the second site though, there were much less parrotfish and damselfish but, there were massive amounts of wrasse. The wrasse became impossible to count once the number got past 50 and I would have to guess that the number was around the hundreds. On the second dive, while there was less diversity of the fish being surveyed, there were many different fish found around the entirety of the site. Some examples would be the African Pomino, a dog snapper, and a reef shark. Also, we saw a hanging crab and lots of sea sponges as we took a swim around the site. By the end of our dive we were all in awe of the beauty of the habitat and ready to go back tomorrow.
