A snorkel day that turned into a dive

I spent much of the morning entering the terrestrial data into a spreadsheet. After lunch Doug and I set out for Penguin Spit to snorkel looking for newly settled corals in parrotfish divots. Once we got out there and in the water, Doug realized it was too deep to work with snorkel gear, so we headed back to the dock for our SCUBA gear. We ended up doing a 77 minute dive with a maximum depth of just 15 feet.  Since it was easier for Doug to collect the data on his own, my job was to keep an eye out for sharks. Otherwise, I was free to explore and take pictures. I had great conditions for taking photos with good visibility, minimal surge, and good lighting because of the shallow water. I will show some of my pretty pictures in my next blog entry, but I thought I should start with the science.

Here is a photo of Doug under the Lagoon boat working.

Here is the steephead parrotfish that likes to take bites out of the coral leaving a rough surface that may improve survivorship of newly settled coral.

Steephead Parrotfish

Chlorurus microrhinos

Here is a close up of the divots created by parrotfish.  All those white areas are bite marks.  The calipers are there for perspective.

In order to locate newly settled corals, Doug shines a blue light and looks through amber colored glasses that go on the outside of his mask. He will see baby coral fluoresce using this technique. Here is what Doug looks like wearing the amber glasses over his mask.

I did spot one blacktip reef shark during the dive, but he just cruised through and was not interested in us.