Hey Everyone,

My name is Caleb Kruckenberg, and I’m a senior biology major on the Luther College Marine Biology trip to Roatan. For this post, I’ll recap our adventures for the day of January 17th.

The first item on our schedule for the day was a RIMS lecture on coral restoration. We learned all about the different threats facing coral reefs and what the Roatan Marine Park is doing to prevent further destruction. One of the techniques being used is Coral Gardening. Fragments of healthy coral are harvested from the reef and grown on “trees” made of PVC pipe. Using these trees makes it easier to observe and regulate the growth of corals. Once these coral fragments grow large enough, they are replanted on the reef to hopefully grow into a new colony.
 
The original plan for our first dive of the day was to head out to the coral gardens and clean the trees, ridding them of algae and parasites. Unfortunately, due to rainfall, the visibility of the water was poor due to sediment runoff, making it almost impossible to see 10 ft in the water. So, as a backup plan, we ended up using the day as a free day to dive and hone our research projects. Fortunately, we ended up seeing some pretty amazing creatures on our dives. We set a record for the most sea turtle sightings so far, ending the day with a total of 5 sea turtles between our two dives. We also managed to see some pretty rare fish such as rock beauty, whitespotted filefish, and hogfish.

 

To finish out the day, we attended another RIMS lecture, this one focusing on the resident pod of dolphins. We learned all about the anatomy and intelligence of dolphins in preparation for our dolphin swim tomorrow morning. We are all extremely excited for this experience, so tune in tomorrow to hear all about it.