5/22

 Today, we took a boat to the University of Puerto Rico and took all of our gear and headed out on another boat to Laurel to do benthic surveys with my group. We started in an area full of seagrass, so it took a long time for me to dive down five times for each quadrant to measure the Thalassia. After Caitlin and I finished doing the quadrats together, we got back on the boat and drove to a new location with deeper water, a slightly stronger current, and some waves. I attached the transect tape to my bag and inflated my PDF and swam out 30 meters over soft and hard corals and waited for Amelia and Caitlin to collect the data. I really enjoyed seeing all the Ctenophores and Gorgonians drifting in the water. After they finished, we switched roles again and it was my turn to lay the quadrant down. It was difficult to dive down about 9 feet to move the transect 2 meters, but I was proud of myself for being able to finish the whole transect length. There were a lot of coral and large Diadema, and I was able to wave my hand over them when I dove to see them move their spines. We headed back to the university to rinse off gear and eat lunch, then attended a presentation given by Dr. Stacey Williams, the founder of ISER Caribe has a project that aimed to demonstrate the importance of Diadema presence for reef recovery. The Diadema eat turf algae and crustose algae that covers coral, which allows scientists to cement coral fragments to merge into larger colonies that are present. We read Dr. Williams’ paper about her work on this before we arrived, and we all made sure to get her autograph and a photo after her presentation. Esteban, a masters student, also gave a small tour of his work that focused more on oceanography and ROV recording. Dr. Rotterova also showed us her lab and some ciliates through a microscope. She said that she named the organism she found Solarium. We headed back to the lab and did more Thalassia and Syringodium seagrass biomass analysis from the collected cores. I also did a cell count for dinoflagellates, diatoms, and nauplii using a hemocytometer. When Matt, JJ, and I  headed back to the house with Dr. Steichen, we stopped to buy mangos from a man who had a massive mango tree with hundreds of mangos growing on them. We bought two large bags for $10, and headed back to finish data input. This is good for my future career because I learned from a very inspiring professor.