January 12, 2007

Jamaica could not be a more ideal place to live, work and breathe coral reefs… except of course when you can’t see the coral.  Today was another windy day once again stirring up the sediment and causing limited visibility and highly turbulent wave action.  On the bright side though, it only rained about two times each being a quick shower with limited cloud cover.  Some of my fellow classmates and I even got to see the end of a rainbow while I helped to prep them for a dive at a site called Columbus Park.  We searched with all our might for that pot of gold, but alas, it must have been at the bottom of the bay… 🙂

For our research project, Kerri and I are studying the relative effectiveness of varying densities of seagrass nurseries by quantifying the diversity and abundance of juvenile finfish within the beds. In other words, we need to count the number of species and individual juveniles along an 8 meter transect at several sites here in Discovery Bay, and to do so, we need clear visibility and minimal turbulence.  Therefore, we are stymied for now by this weather but are quite hopeful everything calms down by the end of tomorrow or at least by Sunday.  We did however lay down one of our transects near the boat landing at the Marine Lab facility and attempted to calculate the density of seagrass along the line.  Despite being tossed by the water and headbutting each other several times we were successful!  We also attempted to lay another transect in our second location with the help of Amber, but had to abort the mission after realizing the waves were tossing us around too much.  Tomorrow is a new day and we are excited to see what lies ahead!

Time has flown by here, and it’s hard to believe that only two weeks ago, I was home in Pennsylvania enjoying the holidays.  I hope everyone is doing well back home, and I can’t wait to see your smiling faces again!  Send us some good weather wishes!  Good night!

~Anna 🙂