Forget research, we鈥檙e tourists today!
Now that our luggage finally arrived, we were able to start to fully enjoy all the critters and sights below the water鈥檚 surface. We started our day back at Graham鈥檚 Harbor honing our skills in snorkeling - how to breathe comfortably, clear masks, and how to put on and take care of our equipment after each expedition. Before getting our feet wet, we were able to use equipment to get all our site parameters: name of the location, north and west coordinates, temperature, wind, tides, and use our eyes to determine the weather. Once in the water, we glued our eyes to the seafloor and flocked out to the grass line, previously unreachable without fins. Our first spot of the expedition were several slippery dicks - a species of wrasse. The highlight of the morning was seeing a huge cushion sea star, which wasn鈥檛 as soft as we all thought.
After the first few hours and sunburns, our first expedition was over. Back on campus, we dry off, many of us nap, and anxiously wait for lunch. After some delicious hotdogs and grape Kool-Aid, we felt well replenished. We then headed out to the government dock, which used to be a dock in which materials were sent to the research center back when it used to be a military base. It is now a fish haven with some visits from two friendly sea turtles鈥� what felt like our first real dive, there were several species of fish (over 20 species!) from lionfish to the very ornate female stoplight parrotfish. The diverse sites had us occupied for most of the day. Our group decided that it would be interesting to see how our phone screentime fluctuated on the trip day by day. With this being the first 鈥渨ork鈥� day, our first average class screen time is just under 2.5 hours as of 2137 鈥� military time is more scientific.
Wrapping up the eventful first day of snorkeling, we start to review and identify the algae, plants, and animals that we will be researching once we further familiarize ourselves once the 鈥渢ourism phase鈥� is over. After class, we remained in the air-conditioned room to do a variety of activities: competitive games of euchre, creating coloring book masterpieces, watching live basketball games through the projector, or organizing the room! The long, activity-filled day wore us out and prepared us for a good night of rest and more excitement for what's to come! We all agree that it was such a busy day, we even forgot about our millions of bug bites and no ac鈥� thanks to the professors for bringing itch remedy!
Parker Roach 鈥�25, Jenna van der Biezen 鈥�27