Night seining and day off

Last night, Tuesday, we walked out to the beach to try night seining. This is when two people take a long net with weights on the bottom and floats on the top and drag it across the shore. One person is called the anchor and one is called the sweeper.

 Last night we ended up finding the following after seining for 3 times: small yellow spotted stingrays, a baby grunt, baby Redfin Parrot fish, a Needlefish, several small Silversides, some small checkered Puffers, a small schoolmaster, and an unusual find, a Pipefish (which is related to a seahorse). The interesting part of the evening was when some of the local kids saw what we were doing and came to watch.

Night Seine Catch

Dr. Mark McGinley

Puffer

Looking over the catch

They were so excited to see what we were finding. They ended up helping us. One funny thing that I noticed was when they pulled in the baby stingray, the little boy, who looked about 7 years old, said, " ooo stingray...don't touch" and backed away. You could tell that he was taught not to mess with them early! The older boy took a cup and scooped the stingray into the cup stinger end first to move it to the bucket. The local kids that we saw knew a lot about the local wildlife. They knew what to touch and what to be careful with just as Texas country kids know what to be careful with also! I think the highlight of the night seining was watching those kids with their heads leaned over the bucket.

 I could tell they love the creatures where they live and wanted to see everything that we caught! They seemed to be very knowledgeable about these creatures! (as Dr. McGinley said, "marine biologists in the making")

Shopping Day

Today, we had a day off to do what we chose. We had thought about going to the mainland to see the Mayan ruins, but decided that we be a long day. It would involve a long boat ride and much money. Instead, we walked downtown San Pedro and looked at all the shops.

Street Vendor

Reggae Singer

 There are many street vendors and very good salespeople who are ready for tourists. We had a nice lunch in town and also sampled the Belizian Fudge ice cream. If you didn't want to walk, you could rent a golf cart for the day, but I chose to walk. While returning back along the beach side, we saw some kids playing. They would roll in the sand and cover themselves in sand and then they would go jump off the dock to wash themselves off. They were having a great time! It was really funny to watch!

 Also, we stopped by an open house for a new condo being built to see what the sample rooms would look like. They were very, nice with the bedrooms facing the sea. The man, Philip, who showed us around, said that these places would probably rent for $500 a night. (US money). US money converts to Belizian money at a rate of two BZ for every US dollar. Wow! This place was very nice with a roof top view that was breathtaking! Someone's dream house!

Chaac (dog) and Bobby(cat)

Trash pile

On the walk back, we ran into the dog that lives at TREC where we are staying. It was almost like she was looking for us to lead us back home. There are many dogs roaming around the island, as well as chickens. Haven't yet seen any, but we have heard there are crocodiles also. Watch out dogs and chickens! One last thought for the day...I think it is sad to see such a beautiful place such as this island covered with so much trash. Along the beach, along the streets, and even floating in the ocean. We need to do a better job of taking care of this place and make it so that the presence of people is not such a negative one.



More "day off" photos:

local scorpion

Belize lady and baby son

alley to beach

local doctor's office

Private island school grounds

playground for private school

more of playground

super market

resort sign

San Pedro Statue

Local church

resting from shopping

local church

street scence

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.

Mangrove snorkeling and Coral Garden

The sun was shining today so we got off on time. Breakfast today was a Belizian breakfast of papaya, sopapilla, and beans. We have beans a lot, but I like them so that is fine. We walked down to Goliath for our trip today and Fred, the iguana, was in his normal lookout spot on the corner by the main road.

"Fred" the Iguana

 Today, we went out about 45 minutes to the mangrove islands. Mangrove trees grow well in shallow water and are sometimes called island builders because they do help to build islands.

The Mangrove Islands

The mangroves are a great area for a fish nursery and that is what we noticed in this spot! Lots of tiny fish! We had to belly flop into the water so that we wouldn't disturb the very fine silt. It is difficult to see in the water around the mangroves if you disturb the floor because of all the silt. The first fish we saw were very small silvery fish.

 There must have been thousands of them! They were all around me at one time. This is a protected place for them to grow before they make their way out to the reef. We worked our way around the mangroves and looked up into the roots. Our guide told us about how mangrove trees can help you survive a hurricane. If you are caught in a hurricane, you should climb up into a mangrove tree and tie yourself down. He said that during the last hurricane in 2000, Keith, every mangrove tree lost all their leaves but survived. Also, while in this area we saw an arrow crab and a batfish. I got to hold the arrow crab. It looked like a large spider.

Arrow Crab

The Batfish is one of the weirdest fish I have ever seen! When you see my photo, you will know what I mean!

Batfish

 After this stop, we ate lunch and headed to our next stop, Coral Garden. This place was amazing! It was deep enough so we didn't have to worry about bumping coral, but you could see everything so clearly. We decided to start a plan for our research project so each buddy pair picked a particular species to count for a fifteen minute time period. My buddy Cari and I counted the grunts. Cari counted 82 and I saw 69 on our first count. The grunts that we saw were mainly blue striped. We also saw some French and a couple Spanish grunts. There were three schools that we observed which were hard to count. Next time, we will start marking down our counts. While we were counting, we came across a yellow stingray! It was in a little channel between some coral and had the sun shining down on it. Very beautiful! Some other members of our group saw a nurse shark and a sea turtle. My buddy also saw a group of Barracuda, but I missed them. The coral garden is a beautiful place to snorkel! It feels like you are swimming around in an aquarium of all kinds of fish and coral. There is no feeling like this! I am still amazed each time we go out and can't wait for our next trip tomorrow!