1, 2, 3 Dives Today

Dive 1: Buoyancy dive to get familiar with toting around a bunch of gear to collect data. We also, practiced laying transects. This dive was a good way to get us ready for our next two dives.

Dive 2: AGRRA fish survey and maximum relief. AGRRA fish surveys look at certain families and functional groups of fish species. These species are used as bioindicators of the health of the reef system. We laid a 30m transect and recorded fish that passed through our 2m belt. After observing the fish, we measured the maximum relief every 5m on the transect by looking at 1m radius and recording the tallest hard coral.

Dive 3: AGRRA Benthic Survey. We laid a 10m transect to do three different passes on. The first pass we were measuring benthic cover using a line point intercept method. Every 10cm we looked at the substratum and recorded what we saw. We identified coral, algae and other calcifiers. For the algae, we also measured the height. The second pass we laid down 25cm x 25cm quadrats every 2m and counted the number of coral recruits that were less than or equal to 2cm as well as the dominant substratum. The third and final pass we were looking at motile invertebrates, lionfish, and trash. We were looking for sea urchins, spiny lobsters, Queen conch, and lionfish recording the number we saw in a 1m belt. We did not complete all the passes because we ran low on air.

Overall, today was a blast. Why wouldn’t it be? I got to spend all day in the water minus during our surface intervals to change out tanks, refuel on water, and talk about the next dive. Again, tomorrow will be a full day of diving. SO EXCITING!