Yesterday was a pretty cool day. We spent the day on a small island off the north side of Moorea called a motu. We basically snorkeled for the entire day! We started off with a two hour snorkel out to the reef crest, and saw a lot of fish, coral, and even a stingray! My friend Trishelle and I had a cute wrasse (a type of fish) follow us for like 20 minutes! After lunch, a group of us snorkeled around the entire motu, which took about 45 minutes! Then we had like 2 hours to just chill, so we all hung out in the water and just chatted. On our way home, we stopped at a shallow snorkel area with a bunch of stingrays for like 15 minutes! No where near as cool as Stingray City in Grand Cayman, but still really fun since rays are so cute and soft!
Today was the first day we actually did really science-y stuff! My group and I were responsible for conducting benthic (ocean floor) surveys on the reef off of the research station. We used transect lines, which are basically just giant measuring tapes, to lay out a 30 meter line, and then used quadrats, which are just 1m PVC squares, to see what was in the randomly selected areas. We used scuba, and our first dive off of the Gump Reef was 70 minutes! Then we headed over to the next bay over, Opunahu Bay, and did a 94 minute dive to survey the reef! This survey was a bit harder, since the reef was basically a vertical wall, but it was cool to use real science techniques in the field. I also learned how to fill a scuba tank! I have been studying (kind of- as much as one can study in paradise with friends) for the invertebrates test we were supposed to have tomorrow, but now it got moved to Monday, so I probably won't be putting too much effort towards it tonight afterall.
Tomorrow we are working on more class projects, and I think I will be collecting and sorting sediment. Not as exciting as surveying and scuba, but oh well, we've all got to take part in the various class projects. A bunch of us are planning to go to a local "dance club" at the golf course about 20 minutes away tomorrow night, so we shall see how that goes! :)
No comments:
Post a Comment