Recon Day 2

Today I woke up feeling some jetlag but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.  Our day was oriented toward collecting some preliminary observations about the sites that will be used for Tye’s basslet lionfish experiments.  In essence, she is interested in looking at how lionfish affect reef fish competitive interactions.  She focuses in particular on blackcap and fairy basslets (pictured here) to see if competition for resources between these species is potentially altered by the presence of the voracious lionfish predators.  To set up for this experiment, Tye and I needed to scope out some patch reefs

and find potential ledges where these basslets might reside.

Our day consisted of mostly short dives that ranged anywhere from 19 to 40 minutes long.  My primary job was to flag ledges that Tye identified as good locations for her experiments.  Additionally, I spent some time looking around attempting to find lionfish.  We came upon a really funny group of 4 lionfish just hanging out under a ledge on our first dive.  I should have taken video because they were just sitting there staring at us in a way I have never seen before.  They are usually far too busy hunting to ever really pay attention to you as a diver so seeing them peer out at us as if to be thinking, “how’s it going?” was really funny.  Silly little lionfish.  We also saw a reef shark off of one of the reefs for a quick second before it swam off into the blue.  I got a short video of it swimming away but hopefully better shark footage is to come.  We also saw a turtle cruising along the sandy bottom while on our safety stop which was neat.  

We did 5 dives in total and despite our late start from our boathouse orientation and SCUBA equipment setup, we finished up by around 5:30.  Dinner was some comfort food pizza today which was nice after a day of diving.  Nothing like a carbo load after a long day out on the water J.  Afterward, Tye and I finished up with entering our dive log data for the day and then I was off to watch the Kings game.  I just got done watching it and unfortunately it was a double overtime loss for the Kings.  The next game in LA will be really fun to watch though.  I am going to try to get some sleep now with the long day ahead tomorrow.  More pictures and videos, particularly of CEI, will be posted soon.  Until later.