Alas, a getaway from the snow that has been dumped on us. During my second day here in Discovery Bay Marine Laboratory, my day was quite interesting. To start off the day, a group of students and I went snorkeling and observed parts of the bay and everything that we have seen underwater. As we all familiarized ourselves and became comfortable with the different areas in the water, we divided into groups where the certified divers and snorkelers went their own separate way to collect different animals and plants. Most of my time spent was in this area …

Mangrove: Mangrove. A variety of different fishes were seen here.

While I was snorkeling around this area, I was fascinated by the diversity of fishes. The fishes that I’ve seen includes the Barracuda (Sphyraena barracuda), which was relatively large in size and was of a sparkling silver color (I cannot lie, I was pretty intimidated by it because it was motionless and stared at me, waiting for me to move). Below is a photo that my buddy Jell-O Jenna was able to capture of the second barracuda that we saw:

Barracuda: Photo captured by Jenna. I wasn’t able to capture the first, so this is a photo of the second one that I saw.

In addition to, I was able to see a few dusky damselfishes, a squirrelfish, and some blueheads that I wish I was able to catch

Bluehead: One of the very few blueheads my buddy was able to snap a photo of.

In addition to, there was an abundance of Donky Dung Sea Cucumber scattered all around the shallow area as well as the deeper end of the bay. The Donky Dung Sea Cucumber was actually one of the invertebrates that my buddy and I were able to capture for our collections. The West Indian Sea Egg (Tripneustes ventricosus) was also another invert that I saw a lot of, but was only found in the deeper area of the bay. One thing that interests me the most about this sea egg is that it looks like something you wouldn’t want to touch because of its spines that it is covered with, but it actually doesn’t hurt when you pick it up. The Rock Boring Urchin was another invert that I saw and collected that was sheltered in what looked like a Stocky Cerith. A peacock flounder was also in sight when I was snorkeling in the deeper area and what’s interesting about this fish is that it is camouflaged really well with the sand. The downside to that is I couldn’t really see the beautiful “peacock” design. At night, students went out to check out some fishes that were not seen much during the day, such as the pufferfish, balloonfish and the lizardfish. The diademas were also seen at night but was much larger in size as compared to when I saw them during the day. My hope throughout this trip is to see at least one seaturtle.

I guess that’s it for today. Time to learn more about coral reefs!

– Paulie