Basslets Catching and Measurements Day 22

Today I was tasked to help out Tye and Alex out on the deep side of the island.  As a group, we needed to work on both Tye and Alex’s experiments and surveys.  Before we headed out, we had a delicious breakfast of omelets and potatoes.  It is nice having a hardy breakfast before a day of work here.  When we got out to our first reef, we dropped down and started clearing basslets from Tye’s experimental ledges.  It took us one and a half dives to finish up at Tye’s site and then we moved on to work on site assessments for Alex’s field study.  At each site, we would give Alex time to survey the reef from above and take photos and videos of the site.  Then we would go around the entire reef and count the total number of lionfish present.  Lastly, we would measure the length, width, and height of each reef to allow Alex to approximate the volume of the reef structure.  During measurement, Alex and I would stretch out a meter tape to take the measurement and Alex would sign the number to Tye so she could record it.  The funny thing is that we could have done this with two divers but we involved a third since there were three of us today. 

At our last site of the day, I had an interesting encounter with a sting ray.  As I swam around the reef looking for lionfish, I noticed it buried in the sand next to the reef.  It was not quite as big as the other sting ray I saw earlier this summer, but it was still quite large.  I took a video of it when I came upon it and it swam off shortly after I started filming it (video of it here).  After we finished up all of Alex’s reefs we headed back into CEI for the day.  We ended earlier than in previous days with Lillian so that gave me some time to make arrangements for the trip down island with Erica.  After dinner, I Skyped with Erica to make sure she has everything she needed to bring and then started to clean up and work on my blog.  I am very excited about Erica’s arrival tomorrow!  She will be here at around 5 pm which should be perfect timing for me finishing up work and Erica getting some dinner here.  Now I’m going to sleep to make sure I have energy for tomorrow.  Until later.