Data Collection Day One

Today, we began collecting data for our research project, Last night we met in the classroom here at TREC to decide who would be responsible for what fish. My buddy, Cari, and I were given two of the grunts...the French Grunt and the Blue striped Grunt. I am responsible for counting the French Grunts. Grunts are carnivorous and feed on crustaceans during the night time. During the day, they just "hang out" near the coral and rest which makes them easy to count. The first place we surveyed today was called Eiley Rocks, after our boat captain of the same last name!

Captain Normal Eiley and son Jeff

 As a team we decided to set our survey time at 15 minutes. We would use a "haphazard" type pattern to snorkel the area. Here is our data from the first count. Eiley Rocks Description - this is a patch coral area with a depth of about 20 feet or so. It has some channels that allow for food to be carried into to support the fish. There were a variety of coral, but boulder coral was very noticeable. French Grunt count trial 1 - 22 Blue striped Grunt trial 1 - 49 French Grunt count trial 2 - 10 Blue Striped Grunt trial 2 - 78 When we finished our count, we had some time to just look around. I actually saw a barracuda today. Whoa, that is one big fish! I would say it was about 6feet long ...just hanging out on top of a coral.

Barracuda

Jeff fighting the invasive species - Lion fish

Lion fish

 Another interesting site was a lion fish. Lion fish are invasive so, Jeff, one of our guides carries a spear with him wherever he goes to kill them we he finds them. He found several today. Whenever I got back to the boat, I watched him dissect one.

During our free snorkel, we chased some more squid around for awhile also. As we moved on to the next site, we we lucky enough to see a group of dolphins!
We circled around them for a few minutes and then moved on. Someone aside that they were residents of the area.


 The next area we surveyed was called Tuffy. This area was named for a shrimp boat that was washed out to the area and crashed out there. This has got to be one of my most favorite snorkel sites! At first, I was a little scared about this site because it was to be a little harder than most. Our plan was to swim out to the coral edge and then up through the ship channel that cuts through the reef here. Then we were to stay along the coral edge and out to the back side of the reef. We had some interesting currents here. After we were to swim up the channel, then we would return and survey the back side of the coral which was also a patch coral area. This spot should be similar to the channel spot in the reserve that we will survey later. We are surveying places outside the reserve and then later, inside the reserve to compare the data. First, I will share our count results here and then tell about all the cool things we experienced at this site. Tuffy site Description - area along reef with a channel edge coral and areas do patch coral French Grunt count trial 1 (along channel) - over 200 Blue Striped Grunts trial 1 (along channel). - 19 French Grunt count trial 2 ( back side). 30 Blue Striped Grunt trial 2 (back side) - 9 French Grunt count trial 3 (back side) - 68 Blue Striped Grunt trial 3 (back side) - 15 As you can see by the data, there were numerous French Grunts in this area so I stayed busy counting! However, when we were through counting I had time to recall the magnificence of this site. Swimming along the channel was amazing! It got very deep here and the coral was beautiful to observe. As we came up along the edge, we saw an spotted eagle ray swim by the group.while I was looking at the ray, we also were visited by an 8 foot nurse shark. We all just stayed put and watched it swim up and around, then off. What a sight to see! On the trip back, we took a closer look at the ship that was wrecked and on the bottom. Some of our really good snorkelers who could dive down went down and touched the boat. We also. Watched while Jeff went down to the ship wreck and speared a lion fish while we all watched. He had to spear it a few times before it died. It is interesting to know that we are not the only ones who have to deal with invasive species. Lion fish are predators and can affect the native populations. On the back side of the reef, we saw two southern stingrays. One starting swimming right up to us, but went on its way. Overall today was an amazing day of data collecting! We are still planning to day a night seine tonight down by the beach to see what fish we find there just for the fun of it.