Today we woke up at 7:00 again and we ate the same breakfast at the marine 2 guys house. Our first dive was at the coral nursery we had to clean the corals that were hanging from the pvc nursery tree. We used gloves and sponges so that we wouldn’t damage the corals with the oil on our hands. Brock and I were working on a tree and it is important to clean them because the fish that eat the algae off of them are all swimming around the main reef so there arnt a lot of natural cleaners around to clean the nursery reef. When we went down there it was difficult because you had to balance in the water by putting the right amount of air in your BC so that you could clean the tree without bumping into it or kicking up sand. After we cleaned the trees we went on our first project dive, my group is examining correlations between percentage of coral cover and densities of herbivores. The way we tested this was by using lion fish markers, which are washers with string connected to a cork at the top, and we used those to section off a ten foot by ten foot square and we surveyed the fish inside then used the data combined with the percent of coral in the square to test our hypothesis. After our project dive we went to eat lunch near savanna bay we tied all the boats together and all ate out on the ocean. After a lunch of sandwiches and chips we swam to shore and walked to a salt pond. A salt pond acts as a buffer to block harmful sediments from washing into the ocean. Then we went back to guavaberry to work with our groups on organizing the data from our project dives. The last thing we did today was go to the beach and night snorkel. We all got spot lights and headed out into the surf. While we were out there we saw tarpon, lobster, octopus, and eels. The octopus was cool because it would camouflage with the different colors that it went over. The night snorkel was awesome and maybe one of the coolest thing so far. We then ate dinner in on the beach and then headed back to the houses for bed.
