Midterms

Tuesday, in the afternoon I was out laying more transects, in the sandy beds by Moxybush. We had to anchor the boat and walk it was so shallow. There I was, staring at the stunning light blue water barely covering the sand flats that surrounded me in all directions, when I saw some straight national geographic happenings. Me and my group got to watch as this huge school of bonefish cruised towards us, followed by shark fins breaking the surface of the water. The whole time we were doing our transects, we watched these lemon sharks preying on the fish, and at one point I had to lay a transect right into the party they had going on.

Wednesday we went diving in the morning, for the first time in a while because of the weather. It was amazing, I'm getting better at managing my air intake every time. We went to a dive site called east bay spur, where there was amazing coral heads and huge sponges. Kat took a bunch of pictures while we were down there, so I'll have scuba pictures to share soon. We saw lionfish, barracuda, and a spotted moray eel. In the afternoon I went hiking on my own. There is a lot to explore here despite the small size of the island. I hiked out to the middle of the salinas, these salt ponds that cover the center of the island. They are remnants of when salt production used to be the major industry here, but they have fallen into disuse. It was slow going because I had to travel along these rock walls that border the pools, it was basically a large scale maze with fun surprises like the walls being broken in places. I found some wild cows, and a flock of flamingos.

Yesterday was mostly a study day, although our conch assessment was interesting. We ended up way far south of the center, far outside the marine protected area and out of radio range to the base. Our boat motor was also having problems. Not only that, but at the site we stopped at the waves were pretty large, the boat was rocking and the current and winds were strong. There was also a storm on the horizon, no lightning though so we could stay out. We dove into the waves and took the depth. 4.7 meters, and the visibility was really bad, the worst I had seen so far. We still got the transect out and ran the assessment. It was a good experience with less than ideal conditions. The rest of the day I spent preparing for our Environmental Policy midterm we had this morning.

Today I've beening hanging out and preparing for our Resource Management midterm tomorrow morning. Oh and we have Marine Ecology midterm on monday morning.