Friday, May 17, 2013

"I need the sea because it teaches me" –Pablo Neruda


Day 9: "I need the sea because it teaches me" –Pablo Neruda

      It’s a beautiful morning here in Caye Caulker, Belize.  We got an early start after breakfast and headed out on the boat to do some more transects!! Transects are something that we didn’t leave behind in the Chiquibul. However doing them underwater proved to be a little different. We did a bit of snorkeling to get acquainted with the different fish and corals.  A lot of them were recognizable from Florida but there were definitely some new ones as well. We saw rays, eels, fish, coral…etc. There was so much to look at that it was hard to listen!
    After lunch we went to shark and ray alley. That was super cool. There were tons of rays and nurse sharks there that were feeding. We were able to pet the rays and gets loads of cool pictures.
     And then from there we went to another part of the ocean to do transects and collect conch shells. We were able to free dive for the conchs and brought them back to the boat. After all the live conchs were collected from two transects we began to measure them. We measured their length and then used a caliper to measure lip thickness to determine if they were mature or not. After the data was collected, they were thrown back over into the water. 
    It was a long, fun day on the water for sure. 



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