Day 8

Great day today! We are finally digging into some scientific diving!

We spent the day diving off snap shot reef and snorkeling off CCMI. Half the class dove in the morning and half in the afternoon, and the half that wasnt diving at the time snorkeled. (The boats we have do not fit the whole class at once so we do alternating shifts).

The boats we took out today

Snap shot reef is a spur and groove reef, meaning that it has rows of reef with sand in between each row or 'spur'. We had student pairs take transect tapes while they were diving and run them along a reef spur. At every meter they identified what they saw at each mark, whether it be soft coral, hard coral, algae, or substrate (etc.). We are starting to build data spreadsheets with what they collected!
It was an extra fun day for me because I got to drive the little boat "Shark Bait"! Woohoo! (Dont worry, I'm licensed).

Photo credit: Melanie Brennan
Transect tape on the reef, with a turtle photobomb!

Photo credit: Ashley Barnett
Swimming along a reef spur

Photo credit: Erin Papke
The view of CCMI on the boat ride back in

The snorkeling shift did a slightly different data collection. They took images of the coral orbicella annuals (a common coral in the area) and measured how bleached they were using color index cards. This data will show the amount of healthy orbicella vs. bleaching orbicella there is on the reef.
- Coral bleaching is when a coral loses their symbiotic algae, generally due to thermal stress.

Between diving and snorkeling this brought us up to dinner time which we enjoyed at the local restaurant "The Iguana". Lots of us had fresh sea food, I had the mahi mahi, and it was quite delicious. We will definitely need to go back!

We are planning on going on another dive tomorrow with the whole class so hopefully the weather will stay beautiful and calm for us!

- J

CCMI