Hey everyone, I am Landon Albro a junior and I am a bio major. I decided to take Bio 247: Marine Biology J-term to Roatan, Honduras. Here we get to scuba dive 2-3 times a day reaching up to 80 feet. We have been able to see numerous organisms like sea turtles, spotted eagle rays and hundreds of fish. Today was extra special because we got to go on a night dive on top of two dives and a lecture from Mickey Charteris! The first two dives we saw green sea turtles, moray eels, a rare midnight parrotfish, a flamingo tongue snail, and many other amazing organisms. We also had the chance to practice some marine field work techniques like doing a point intercept transect (PIT). With a PIT we identify corals to species, sponges or algae at each meter on the transect. By doing this, we were able to identify the most abundant corals on a portion of the reef and get percent coverage of each of the corals. We wrote down each of the species on an underwater slate which allows us to take notes while we are scuba diving.

Doing a night dive, allowed us to see a whole other world under the water. At night there are many organisms that come out to feed that you do not see during the day. We saw nocturnal fish like the toad fish and squirrel fish that were active and looking for food, mollusca organisms such as conch, lobster, crab and octopus, and lastly bioluminescence. To see the bioluminescence we had to turn off our lights and start moving our hands. Green lights would fly through the water lighting up the area around us. Once the lights were turned back on, we sat still holding our lights allowing polychaeta worms to aggregate towards our flashlights along with transparent larvae. The night is more alive than anyone would ever expect.

Tomorrow we will get to work with a marine biologist here at RIMS and help her in coral restoration and out-planting to help kick start growth of much needed corals!