VTVLC 2018 Marine Biology Trip to Honduras : Fourth and Fifth Day in Utilá

July 22, 2018

Students started their days off at 6:30 again ready for today’s planned activities.

Open Water students headed back to their classroom for their third lecture which was about the diversity of coral reefs. After this they then headed out on their fifth and final confined dive where they practiced taking on and off their gear and their weight belts underwater . They saw aquatic life like the atlantic triggerfish and a grouper that was around 2 1/2 feet long!

Reef Ecology students went out for the morning dive witch consisted of fish ID. Dive masters lead students around silver garden pointing to fish and then at the fish names on dive slates they carried. We saw an abundance of fish species including the blue chromis, blue tang, blue head wrasse & blue head juvenile, three spot damselfish, banded butterflyfish, barracuda etc. the list goes on.

Reef Ecology students then continued the day with a lecture about mangroves and seagrass and why they are important.

And then both groups headed to lunch

After lunch Open Water students then had a fourth lecture which was about the future of coral reefs. After the lecture students then went in their third open water dive where they practiced being neutrally buoyant by manually using their buoyancy control device. Students even got the chance to see a spotted eagle ray that was “flapping” its wings in the distance.

After lunch Reef Ecology students had their last dive of the day at Little Bight, in smaller groups, students performed a fish identification and underwater fish counting. Students were required to write down any fish and how many within an imaginary five foot square box around their bodies while swimming a horizontal line of 20 flipper kicks across the coral reef. Some groups were lucky and saw a ray, a peacock flounder, a yellow arrowhead crab, trumpetfish, flamingo tongue, etc.

After supper students had some time to themselves and at 7:30 they then headed out to the dock for trivia night. Although none of our teams won everyone had a great time.

Sam and Sarah Kate recording fish

Blue Chromis

Spotted Eagle Ray

July 23, 2018

This morning started off with a fish ID lecture for the Open Water students. It was a nice refresher for students, because we had already learned about most of the fish in the VTVLC marine biology course. After the lecture was everybody’s last open water dive of the course. We performer two skills involving compasses and then swam around for the rest of the dive. We saw a lot of incredible fish like banded butterflyfish and fairy basslets, and some invertebrates like a spotted spiny lobster, a giant channel clinging crab, and some reef squid.

Reef Ecology students went out for their morning dive at Light House where we took a “fun dive”, we went around the reefs searching for things we hadn’t seen yet. A lecture followed, reef fish identification continued, a pick up from the last identification lecture of fish we haven’t yet learned.

Open Water students went back for lunch then finished our ID lecture with some corals, invertebrates and algae. Around 3:00 we went for our first dive as certified divers, which was right off the dock in front of Coral View. We swam out past the reef and descended to about 18 meters. We had another really great dive during which we saw some angelfish, a scrawled cowfish, and a banded coral shrimp.

After lunch Reef Ecology students went back out on the boat to Ron’s Wreck where we would have our last dive on Utilá. This dive was described as their best dive by many who went. Students teamed up and did our first REEF data collection. We counted what fish species we saw and how many. There were many amazing encounters with marine species some had not yet seen. This included a white spotted eagle ray, a scorpion fish, trunkfish, etc. This was a great last dive for most.

After supper students headed out to the dock to do a night snorkel where they saw a balloonfish, a stingray, squirrelfish, a spiny lobster and even an octopus! After the snorkel students went back in the water to participate in a plankton tow. They went in and out of the channel trying to collect microscopic plankton. Students looked through their handheld microscopes and some were successful in spotting some plankton!

Students are excited to be able to sleep in tomorrow as it is a no dive day!