First site of the day: Media Luna.. our furthest site we’ll be at over all. We executed the same protocols as yesterday yet everything started to feel familiar and went more smoothly. It was easier to get into the groove of things. The depth of the water was definitely a struggle but I was lucky to have such patient teammates. After running benthic surveys and sediment cores per usual, we swam out to look at the reefs. The area was astonishing with a collection of butterfly fish, nurse sharks, a manatee and even some CUTTLEFISH 😍!!! Today was the day I finally found a souvenir shell. Many others collected some things from the sea floor as well. After we had lunch and met Johana Rotterova. Who works in the lab of marine microbiology and symbiosis. A lot of her research reveals that symbiotic interactions are key to success for most microbes. Our tour with ISER Caribe introduced us to the water system, aquaculture set up, and animal husbandry set up the campus has outdoors. Some of it connected to Carolina’s research with Ulva algae while the rest was there to aid in coral restoration using sea urchins, crabs or just nursing coral fragments. We had a once in a lifetime chance to see the endangered pillar coral they had! I was perfectly exhausted by the evening.
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