Today we got off to an
early start so that we could do some longer dives to set up some more of Tye’s
sites. We packed up the boat before an
awesome chocolate chip pancake breakfast and then headed out. We were relieved to get moving out to the
site because there was no breeze today and it was summer time hot. When we arrived at our site, we dropped anchor
and put on our gear to hop down to the reef.
Then we realized that the boat was not swinging in the way we thought
and so we decided to re-anchor. When I
was pulling it up, I could feel it was snagged on something. I tried to unhook the anchor but it became
clear that we needed to dive down to free it.
By this point, I was sweating so much that I decided to jump in the
water while Tye went down to take care of the anchor.
After re-anchoring, we dropped down and I
began my task of removing fairy basslets from Tye’s ledge (pictured here). Just as I was getting started, I saw a large
fish in my peripheral vision. I turned
to see that it was a reef shark swimming by to check out what I was doing. I was so excited to see a shark up close for
the first time here in the Bahamas and snapped some photos as it swam by. It circled a few times and then uninterested,
bored, or otherwise it swam over the reef and off into the blue. I continued my work of removing the basslets
and before I knew it, the site was prepped and ready with all fairy basslets
removed from the ledge.
Our next site was a really cool site called
Shack. This reef is relatively shallow
compared to the others and it sticks up from the bottom to where the top is at
about 15 ft. This provides a ton of
habitat for corals and other organisms to settle on and it was a beautiful
sight. My job on this reef was to count
all the lionfish. I was able to do this
relatively quickly and as a result, I spent the rest of the dive swimming
around taking photos. The coral photos I
was able to get were fantastic since the light from the surface was bright and
the depth was shallow. Despite the
abundance of live coral, you can see that many coral heads are struggling. It is possible that the invasive lionfish
(which eat the herbivores that graze down the algae so the corals do not get
overrun by it) in combination with climate change, ocean warming, and ocean
acidity are destabilizing normal coral reef community interactions and as a
result causing many species of coral to suffer.
Diving here in the Bahamas although beautiful has been at times quite
depressing considering how much of these reefs are covered with algae that
smothers and shades out the foundational corals. In this coral head photo to the left, a small part of
the coral most likely died and then algae took over that dead patch. Once algae gets a foothold on a coral head,
it can spread by shading out other portions of the coral and cause it to look
like the pictured brain coral. The hope is that a mechanistic approach of
understanding these community interactions through research like our project
could go a long way toward informing proper management of these reefs. During this dive, Tye was busy setting up her
ledges at this site which took a good deal of time and as a result I had ample
photo time. This was one of my favorite
dives so far.
Our last site today was a recreational dive
site called Cathedral. This was my
second trip here and I was tasked with clearing lionfish. Since many recreational divers come to this
reef, it is assumed that the density of lionfish would be lower due to divers
spearing them. Despite this, I found one
in the giant tunnel that goes through the formation and found another under a
ledge on the reefs edge. I speared them
both and took them off the reef to be food for the sharks. This brought my speared total up to 6
lionfish! I then spent the rest of the
dive searching some of the surrounding patch reefs to make sure there were no
lions that could move onto our experimental reef. It is very common for lionfish to move from
reef to reef so it is important for us to ensure that the reefs that are close
to ours (about 100 ft or less) are cleared.
All the swimming I did during the dive caused me to suck down my air and
I had to shorten my dive accordingly.
Since Tye and I dove nitrox for all three dives, our surface intervals
were short and we finished early today.
Dinner was great but odd since all the Island School students were out
to dinner for their last meal on Eleuthera.
I guess this class is ending and a new one will be coming in
shortly. Now I am back in my room
finishing up some data entry and the blog.
I plan on getting to bed early tonight in lieu of the late night last
night. Off to do data entry and to go to
bed. Until later.
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