Today (Saturday) is the 10^th day we have been at Discovery Bay! Pretty hard to believe, time has gone by so quick. Today was relaxed, the goal was mostly to do as many transects as possible for Dr. Warren’s assignment. The assignment essentially involves creating a 15m by 2m rectangle and counting up all the sea urchins and fish, along with the ground cover in the middle of that rectangle. Once we have a variety of these 15x2m transects done in various sites around Discovery Bay, we will perform a statistical analysis to look at what our results mean. These transects can end up being tiring, since as snorkelers, my partner, Kiwi Kiyanni, and I have to swim up and down recording what ground cover is present under our ruler. Today, Kiyanni and I managed to get three transects done in the nearshore grass beds! Each one takes us around 45 min, so this was a big accomplishment by our standards. We also saw a bunch of cool creatures, including a spotted eagle ray (one of my bucket list items!).

Kiwi Kiyanni and I’s data sheet for transects written on waterproof paper!

-Lime Liana