June 2: Temptation Rock & Texas Rock

Agaricia fragilis

Colpophyllia natans

June 2, 2013: Day 3 of work- We visited 2 regular sites today. First was temptation rock. This site was pretty shallow & there wasn’t a whole lot of corals there. I doubled up with Kevin & did a pretty good job. I didn’t miss any corals that he recorded & our sizes were pretty close. We only had about 25 colonies or so in the area. After that we had to switch out a few people. Many researchers come on these types of trips because they are already paid for. All they have to do is get themselves to the boat & they basically get a free ride to do their research. Three researchers who were studying genetics went home today. In exchange, we acquired a diver who works for the parks service.

Montastraea cavernosa

She is one of the people who helps to fund this project, so it’s good to get her out on the water to motivate her to help get funding. There was some doubt about whether this work would be funded next year due to federal budget cuts, etc. However, Tracy said that there will be funding for the project next year. (Hopefully I’ll learn enough that I can go next year…fingers crossed.)

Soft Coral-Pseudoterogorgia sp.

The second site of the day was Texas Rock. I chose to work a transect that was VERY full with an experienced guy who is VERY thorough. It took us about 2 hours to work up all of the corals in 10 meters of reef. It was very labor-intensive. I also didn’t do nearly as well on this dive at identifying everything that the experienced researcher had identified. He had over 15 colonies that I didn’t measure. It turned out that most of those were a species that likes to live underneath overhangs, Madracis decatctis (MDEC). I saw 1. He saw 9… There were a few new species that I hadn’t seen before, though. That was pretty cool. On this transect I saw SSID, MCAV, MFAV, PPOR, PAST, ODIF (this was a strange looking one that we had to debate, but I knew the genus. I was proud), SMIC, MFRN (I didn’t distinguish between this and MFAV), DSTR, DLAB, MMEA, CNAT, SCUB (Scolymia cubensis-new to me), MANG (Mussa angulosa-new to me), and EFAS. So, it was a pretty diverse site, but I missed a number of small colonies.  I can only keep getting better.

Meandrina meandrites

Encrusting sponge

Mussa angulosa

Sponges

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Mycetophilia alicia

After we finished working, the captain drove us outside the park to a site where people could spearfish & go for fun dives. I almost didn’t go since we’d already spent over 4 hours in the water today. That’s about my limit, turns out. However, I did end up going in as soon as we got to the site. It was dusk & lots of fish were either getting ready for bed for just getting up. There were tons of squirrelfish just getting up. There were also a bunch of big parrots going to bed. The most interesting thing I saw was 2 graysby (both pretty big-2 ft or so) were rubbing up against each other & mouth-fighting. This is when a pair of fish face-off & open their mouths as wide as they can in front of each other. Basically showing off. I’m not sure what was going on, but it looked like some sort of mating behavior. Many species of groupers are protogynous hermaphrodites & they determine who will turn into a male by some sort of similar behavior. Could have been happening with these guys.  I doubt anyone knows whether this is the case with this species since it’s not commercially important & it’s not really a species people study on a regular basis. There were also 3 lionfish on this reef. First ones I’ve seen so far, but I haven’t been looking.