Patch Reefs

Day 5: Saturday, February 27
Post by: Sam Kramer

We woke up this morning to a warm but windy weather and a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs and hash browns. Our morning activity was a boat trip to one of the smaller patch reefs instead of the outer reef. Due to the high winds, the seas were choppy and the water was quite turbid. At the first dive site, there was some less colorful but still intricately designed coral and a few sea fans. However, there was a lack of fish: The only ones around were a few blue striped grunts. We soon left the first site and moved to a shallower sea grass bed to collect echinoderms (sea stars, urchins, sea biscuits). We hit the water and were unable to see the sea floor. I dove to find the bottom and within a second found the bottom three inches from my face! We attempted our echinoderm search for a few minutes, but we only came up with one sea urchin. We decided there might be better conditions closer to SeaCamp instead of in the open ocean. So we moved to an even shallower location near Island X. We were able to snorkel up in front of the mangrove roots and view their structure up close. We returned to the boat with a few specimens and came back to SeaCamp.