Day #7 January 9th, 2019 - Now that's some snorkeling!

Greetings from Belize! Today was a day that none of us will ever forget, a day filled with amazing snorkeling adventures. This day was brimming with activities that many students had been dreaming about since they first registered for Tropical Marine Biology - and no one left disappointed!

Our day began as usual: up early to work on lab reports, 8AM breakfast, 9AM walk to the dock and boarding of our speedboat. (We've been on the speedboat these past 3 days because there are a total of 3 schools at TREC, including Central CT State U and Hofstra, and there is only room for 2 of them on Goliath.)

We headed to Hol Chan, Belize's oldest marine reserve park. There were lots of other boats at this popular site, both for snorkeling and SCUBA. We all moored together under threatening skies:

To enter the park, each boat is met by a park ranger who collects fees and issues wristbands:

This allows for limits on the number of visits at a time and during a day, and also provides revenue to promote Belize's thriving ecotourism industry.

We split into two groups and followed our guides across a reef and to a deep water channel (after which Hol Chan is named). We crossed the channel and followed the wall along the other side. All together we snorkeled for about an hour. We saw a wide variety of marine life as we toured, including many specimens that, due to the deep water, are much larger than what we normally see. Some students dove down and through an underwater cave. All of us saw many beautiful sea creatures:

These are some happy snorkelers!

Even though it was only 11:15, the students were hungry from their trip and so enjoyed sandwiches on the boat. We drove a short way to Turtle Rock Island. Here, students were able to interact with four different species of stingray and our first turtle of the trip, a friendly loggerhead:

Seeing and interacting with the turtles and rays was thrilling for many students. We had all wanted to see a turtle during the entire trip, so you can imagine that this one was well documented! Again, everyone returned to the boat thrilled and excited.

We headed to our final site of the day: Shark Ray Alley. Go ahead, read that name again. How great is that? How much do you want to snorkel there? This location did not disappoint. This spot within the marine park has a special designation that allows us to feed and touch the sharks and rays. And we did plenty of both!

Imagine a dozen sharks, all jockeying to get at chum, rolling across each other and around you, as dozens of smaller fish dart between to try to snag a small meal. It's quite a sight! The students loved the sharks and rays and couldn't help but swim near them and stroke their slick-but-leathery skin.

We also ran into our old friend, the loggerhead turtle, and watched as he ate a lobster:

After about an hour, we returned to the boat. None of us could stop chattering excitedly about all that we had seen. We posed for one final photo on the reef:

Our day could not have ended on a finer note!

We arrived back at the dock by 2:30PM, walked back to TREC, rinsed off in the pool, dried off, and then met for a lab meeting to finalize and organize the data for lab reports:

My co-instructor, Prof. Elizabeth Harper, has been leading the research project during this trip. Elizabeth has been provided guidance and feedback to students at each step. This is our final lab meeting, and students are now responsible for completing their lab reports and handing them in for grading:

To celebrate our last night on the island, we all enjoyed a dinner out together in town. Afterwards, the students were free to wander about to buy souvenirs, eat ice cream, etc.

Breakfast is at 5:45AM tomorrow so that we can leave by 6:15AM to meet our tour company at the ferry at 7AM for our 7:30AM ferry. Whoa! More on that at the end of the day, assuming that we have Internet where we are staying on the mainland.

Everyone is great. I could not be more proud of this group and the effort they are putting in. No one is slacking off, everyone is working hard and getting the most out of this experience.

Thanks for reading!

- Prof. Eric J. Simon, Ph.D, Department of Biology & Health Science, New England College