For the past few days we have been working on presentations containing the identified organisms that we have found and brought back to the labs or have taken pictures of. Some of the organism were hard to identify in the beginning like some of the algae, but now we understand what each of the common species look like and their scientific names. Students were separated into groups and each of the groups have identified about 100 species individually, and as a class about 140 as a class. The class used sets of ID books and field guides to identify the pictures that were taken on the snorkeling and diving excursions.

These were a few of the books that we used to identify the fish and invertebrates.

When it was possible, we brought specimens back to the lab and kept them in the flowing sea water lab tables to identify them in person. It is amazing that we were able to collect and identify more than 100 species in just a few days. This just goes to show how amazing and diverse coral reef habitats are.

These were the sea tables that we placed the organisms into while we identified them.

Jeffrey