Jueves en Panama

Greetings from beautiful Isla Colon, Bocas del Toro, Panama.

The group had quite a busy day today starting at 8 a.m. with our group projects.
Nicole, Craig and Morgan make up team "Damsels in Distress" who are studying the effect of enriching Damselfish (three-spot damselfish, Stegastes planifrons) territories with a fertilizer (to increase valuable algae growth) on behavior. Today they made good progress on the study by identifying all of their study sites and setting out fertilizer sticks.

Spotted Cleaner Shrimp

Alyssa and Katalin (team S.O.S.) started their day by snorkeling off the STRI dock doing a preliminary survey of target study species, which include the cushion sea star (Oreaster reticulatus) the variegated sea urchin (Lytechinus varigatus) and possibly the sea biscuit (Clypeaster rosaceus).

Lion fish

"The Cucumber Crew" is the team I belong to with my compadres Natasha and Katie. Our study is trying to determine if there is a difference in day vs. night activity and sediment type preference (food preference) in the two most abundant sea cucumber species here, the three-lined sea cucumber (Isostichopus badionotus) and the donkey dung sea cucumber (Holothuria mexicana) (Can you guess what this one resembles?).  Today we collected 16 sea cucumbers of each species  from House Reef and from the neighboring sea grass beds and set up a 15 meter diameter area marked with flags and glow in the dark fishing bobbers.  In the coming days we will tag every sea cucumber we have, place them all in the center of the transect and measure their diurnal movements every 12 hours for several days.
After a lunch break the group got back together and headed out to Cocos Point. This place was amazing. Right after we jumped into the water we found a large lion fish (an invasive species to this area). During our time on this reef members of the group discovered native lobster, many species brain and maze coral and one of the largest stingrays I have ever seen.

Southern Stingray

Staghorn Coral

At the second site of the day we found a magnificent stand of critically endangered Staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis).  I spent a few minutes admiring this crop of coral and even found a basket star tightly wrapped around one of the branches.

Cushion Star.

The third and last site for the day was Mangrove Point, where the group found many Cushion stars and variegated urchins.

After five and a half hours of snorkeling and a short lecture on sea grasses, the gang (myself included) are calling this one very successful day in paradise and are very ready for some sleep.

This is MacKenna Hainey signing off from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
Thanks for reading.