The weather today wasn’t great, but we are still having a good time and getting work done. The morning started off really rainy and windy with a lot of big waves on our side of the island, so we had to go to the other side for our two dives in the morning. The conditions out of the water were pretty rough, but the water was warm and calm. Most of the group got some useful data during our dives. The ride back to the bus from our dives was also pretty rough because of the weather, but we huddled together to keep ourselves warm and protect each other from the rain.

My project is going well, and we have been getting some useful data from our sites. Caleb, Lexi, and I are focusing on comparing coral coverage and parrotfish abundance. We calculate coral coverage by laying out a tape measure and marking down what falls under it at each meter marking, for example, boulder brain coral, lettuce coral, or algae. We calculate parrotfish abundance by using the same tape measure and looking a meter out and counting the different kinds of parrotfish that pass through. We predict that the sites that have more parrotfish will have more coral coverage because parrotfish eat algae which competes with the coral. We don’t have enough data yet to make a definitive statement one way or another, but the data we have collected so far looks promising.