1, 2, 3, Seagrass Yippee.

 Our morning started off with delicious pancakes and bacon to fuel us for a morning of counting seagrass. After breakfast we made our way to Graham's Harbor before stingray shuffling our way into the water just to find out that the tide was too high for counting seagrass in the shallow waters. We made our way to the deeper waters where Mike setup a transect line separated in 7 meter segments and at each segment we laid our quadrant. We then proceeded to take estimates of Manatee and Turtle seagrass coverage where visually, point intersect, and individual blade counts of the 2 different grasses were performed.  

To help Liz count the seagrass Breana stood on her back to hold her down while she counted... very scientific. 

Altogether we counted roughly 4000 blades of seagrass this morning... thanks Michael. When we plotted and viewed our data trends during lecture we noticed significant standard error. This trend exposed how amateur we were at counting sea grass.

After escaping the never ending counting we had some fun and swam around the collapsed pier where we saw turtles, lion fish, parrot fish, reef squid, sea stars, and anemones. The infamous sea turtle, stumpy, who we had heard much about during our pre-departure meetings was even spotted by the guys. However, they failed to capture the moment on camera. 

After returning to the research center we ate chicken sandwiches and potato salad for lunch before finishing our second figure analysis, on how algae can outcompete coral, and turning it in.

Amy spent her afternoon hanging out with her new Iguana friend and getting a little too close for our professor's comfort due to them having mouths chocked full of salmonella. 

During dinner we ate roast beef, potato wedges, and salad while having the opportunity to sing the child of another staff member's happy birthday. After dinner we met up in the lab and worked on figure analyses until lecture. Lecture today consisted of 40 minutes of looking at young pictures of Mike on the hunt for one of him with hair, which we found. We then took a small break, courtesy of Jordan's headlamp lighting the way, and walked to the beach to look at the stars while grabbing a quick snack on the way back. Once we were back in lecture we presented our figure analyses. 

We then made our way back to the dorms and got ready to wake up at 6 AM tomorrow for a day of dive boat and snorkeling adventures in the morning. See you tomorrow!

-Julian + Breana