[ed: blog post titles are written by the professors when student's forget to give us a title!]

I cannot think about a better way to have spent my birthday than getting up at 7am in the morning to go diving. Scarlet was even more excited that it was my birthday than I think I was. After a sharing the news, Scarlet picked me up and tried to throw me in the water! Today we dove at the Eco Reef. It was very beautiful and the corals were teaming with life and diversity. I was able to observe many things that we have been talking about in class.

I really enjoyed looking at the artificial reefs. These structures were put in place by a company that is mining and shipping Bauxite (material that is used for aluminum) that is located on the other side of the bay. They put them here because of dredging that they had to do in order for their boats to dock. This is an example of local human impacts on a small scale. The dredging destroyed many corals but the artificial reefs were put in place near the marine lab in order to compensate for the destruction. The destruction included things such as physical removal of the corals and increased sedimentation. The complexity (3D dimension) of these artificial structures allowed a diverse coral community to begin to develop here. It created a substrate for corals to sponges to anchor on to and it created place for fish to hide.

In class the other day we learned a lot about ecological relationships. As I was diving I was able to take note of these relationships and find many examples of them. I saw mutualism with the giant sea anemone and fish, predation with the lizardfish and fish pray and parasitism

Mutualism: Above is a picture of a giant sea anemone. These invertebrates have mutualistic relationship with some fish. The anemone has protruding tentacles that have nematocysts on them that sting any predator that tries to eat them. The nematocysts have fiberglass-like needles that will cling to the pray. Fish will often take refuge in these anemones and anything that tries to eat the fish will get stung by the giant sea anemone. This interaction between the fish and the anemone is a mutualistic relationship because both species are benefiting from it. The fish living in the anemone attracts other fish and the anemone will eat these fish. The fish living in the anemone will also defecate into the anemone providing it with a food source. One thing in class that we learned that I thought was interesting was that fishes of the same species as the fish living in the anemone may still get stung by that particular anemone. This is because the fish living in the anemone has developed a tolerance for the stinging and therefore allows it to develop territory.

Predation: Above is also a picture of a Lizardfish. This fish is most commonly found on sandy sea floors. They are very camouflage and will be very still. During dawn and dusk, many fish migrate either to or from the lagoon and mangrove areas. The Lizardfish will dart out to catch it’s pray as it is swims past.

Parasitism: Today Taylor and I saw a dusky damselfish with a Cymothoid isopod stuck to it. This Cymothoid isopod was causing harm to this damselfish as it clung to its side. I would like to do more research on it, but I think that this parasite sucks the damselfish’s blood.

To the far left is my Dive Buddy Taylor! She is the best! She is a dive master and gets me out of trouble if I go a little bit too deep (not that I would ever do that). We are starting to think of some ideas for our research project. So far we know that we want to do something that involves diving and looking at different sized coral patches and the species diversity. We hypothesize that as the patch size increases, the species diversity will increase. In the next few days, we will try to figure out how we can turn our ideas into a project!

– Ali