Day 3 - Transects

Waking up before 6:30am everyday during the summer is hard to do, but it's made a lot easier when you have howler monkeys as your personal alarm clock. We snorkeled all morning from 7:30 until 11:00am. The first spot we visited was Point Cocos Reef directly south of the STRI docks where the visibility was endless. Our mission here was to observe the diversity of coral, zoanthids, and sponge species within four 0.5m² quadrats placed along the reef. Biggest lesson of the day: it is very difficult to record data while swimming.

Example of a Quadrat

Photo by Tralee Chapman

While exploring the Point Cocos Reef, I watched a giant Caribbean Whiptail Stingray feeding on the sandy bottom for a good 20 minutes before it realized it had an audience and swam away.

Our second and final snorkeling location of the day was Mangrove Point which consisted of shallow eel grass beds and small clusters of reefs. There, we used the same PVC pipe apparatus to count the amount of eel grass shoots and measure the length of individual blades in comparison to their distance from the mangrove trees.

After lunch we had time to work on our research projects; teams either went out to scout locations or stayed in the lab testing out methods. We ended the bay by watching a slideshow of all of the pictures taken so far on the trip!

Also by Tralee Chapman

(P.S. Hi Mom and Dad, its Casey. I'm alive and well and not too sunburned yet. Just thought I'd let you know I'm not coming home because the food here is too good)