Hey, everyone, I’m exhausted from our outer reef trip today,
so I’m probably going to keep this pretty short. The weather here was fairly
cloudy and windy, so we didn’t do a whole lot- except brainstorm research
projects (I’m working with Nora on something involving sediment samples. I’ll
probably talk more about it on a different day). We went to our lecture on
fish, where we talked about the history and evolution of the fish that normally
live on the reefs. We also talked about what types of common fish we would see
out in the reef. It was a really cool lecture, and we got to watch a lot of
cool videos explaining interesting characteristics of the fish. There is this
one fish (a type of Labridae) that
has an unhinged jaw so the entire jaw folds out to suck their food in like a vacuum.
It’s really gross but fascinating to watch. There’s also rabbitfishes that change
color, so that was cool. At the end of lecture, we had a little bit more time
before lunch where we watched this guy talk about cuttlefish really sarcastically.
It was pretty dang funny. (I’ll put a link below for those of you who are
curious. The guy who narrates is freaking hilarious!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDwOi7HpHtQ
So after a quick lunch that I don’t quite know how to describe
(it was like a burrito and a chimichanga at the same time but different and really,
really good), we got booted and suited and headed out to the boat that would take
us to the outer reef. They guy who drives the boat is pretty great and really
chill. I think his name was Tom, but I can’t be too sure since my memory isn’t
great when it comes to names. He was nice enough to drop us off at this amazing
spot in the outer reef where there is a lot of wildlife. It was scary getting
in the water, since I didn’t know what to expect. However, with some encouragement
from the rest of the group, I took a leap of faith, almost literally! I had to
let myself fall backwards into the water and roll out of the boat. It was
really weird but kind of fun!
We all had GoPros on this adventure, so I took a fair amount
of footage while I swam. Some of it is a bit shaky, but overall I was impressed
by how well it turned out. I was expecting a lot worse! It was amazing down there.
We were swimming through basically clouds of fish. There were so many different
types of coral. I was able to see all types of fish too! There were damselfish,
unicorn fish (which look as weird as they sound), and I even saw an anemone fish
this time (I saw a cinnamon clownfish before, so I am counting myself as really
lucky)! There were also a lot of bright blue fish swimming around, and there
was a type of coral that seemed to be the a similar shade, which was really
awesome. The current got pretty strong though, so it was a struggle to get out
of the water and back onto the boat.
We headed to another location closer to the jetty after
that, and went to this bommie (named after a big lump of coral) and swam around
there as well. I was a little more reluctant this time to get out of the boat,
but eventually I was enticed to jump back into the water. It was even more busy
down there. I think there were twice as many schools of fish floating around us,
and there were jellies everywhere! We even saw a shark, and I think I may have
caught it on camera but I’m not sure. It was really close to us too, so that
was a bit terrifyingly cool as well. I eventually ducked out before the rest of
the class and headed back to the boat, where I was able to catch a sea turtle coming
up for a breath of air fairly close to us. Once again, it was amazing. I
thought I got that on camera too, but when I looked at the footage for it, I don’t
think I caught it with the camera in time, so that was kind of a bummer.
When we were back on land, all of us were more or less wiped
out. We all hung in the lab or were napping until dinner where we ate this good
pasta bake (sorta) made by Pat. It was mousse again tonight, so I opted for a
coconut banana muffin for dessert, and it was lovely as usual. The man is a
great chef, we were talking about how he needs to compete in a cooking show or
something. That’s more or less what we’ve done today. It’s been raining on and
off, even while we were out in the water, so that’s been going on while I’ve
been writing as well. I think I’ll sign off now, talk to you all later!
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