Day 4 - Sat Jan 14th 2012 - Mexico Rocks and Playa Blanca

Click here to jump to a web album with 23 photos from today.

Greetings from the only restaurant on San Pedro, Belize to be showing the Patriots game on a projection screen...

Today was a productive day of field work. The students put considerable effort into formulating their research methods, conducting research in the field, collecting and collating data, and organizing their results with the class. As I write this, most students are hard at work on their laboratory reports. We are proud of the efforts shown by all the students. It is clear that they take the work part of this experience seriously and are giving it their best effort.

An unprecedented phenomenon awaited us when we gathered on the beach today...rain! There was a hard, but brief downpour:

Luckily, the clouds lifted and the day returned to usual: glorious and sunny. We rode in Goliath for an hour northward to the northernmost section of Ambergris Caye (mere miles from Mexico) to a site called Mexico Rocks. Here, the students conducted their research, comparing species diversity and richness in coral patches and comparing it to sandy patches and other sites:

After the data collection, we spent about an hour exploring the reef. Highlights included a nurse shark, a southern sting ray, and a wide variety of sponges and fish:

From there, we motored a short distance away so that we could explore the mouth of a large underwater cave. After a brief stop there, we went to our second research site for the day, a reef called Playa Blanca. This spot proved a bit rough, with stronger current and higher waves than we had encountered previously. But we were rewarded with a rich diversity of fish. The highlight was watching the students play with a pufferfish:

After Playa Blanca, we motored back to shore. Back at TREC, we spent an hour in the classroom compiling, collating, and organizing our data. The students then started on their lab report writing, with a break for a pasta dinner. Never have I seen so many carbs consumed so quickly.

Thanks for reading!

Click here to jump to a web album with 23 photos from today.