Today the weather allowed us to complete two field excursions in both the morning and afternoon. After a lecture on seagrass ecology, we eagerly loaded up the boats and headed to the seagrass beds for a morning of snorkeling. Much of the morning revolved around becoming comfortable in our new aquatic environment, which included how to swim among the jellyfish. We saw plenty of Cassiopea xamancha, the upside down jellyfish, as we collected samples of seagrass, sponges, and algae.
We returned for a quick lunch so we could visit another site in the afternoon, a mudflat we call Triton flat. This habitat is full of small coral (Porites porites) and contains a diverse suite of macroalgae species. Students learned how to use quadrats to quantify the cover and density of various species – while attempting to not be blown away by the wind – it was very blustery!
We returned to the lab grateful to have been able to go to the field. Having worked that hard, our dinner tasted all the more sweet. In the evening we had a taxonomic lecture on the Arthropods, followed by several hours of sorting through the samples we retrieved from the field. It is truly an amazing habitat to explore. In addition to all the mind-boggling diversity at the micro- scale (diatoms, copepods, nudibranchs etc.), our day got off to a great start as we were welcomed to the boats this morning by a mother manatee with her young calf!
– Ryan for the entire team
