4 for 4 🐠🦀🦈🐌

Day 4 on San Sal brought about several new findings! In honor of already making it 4 days, I wanted to review 4 of my favorite things i have learned thus far.

1. Nerites: snails both with chompers and a snail being chomped. I was always aware of the small sea snails that acted like sea legos whenever I would step on them on accident. We learned more about these during field work today at North Point trail and Graham’s Harbour. These gastropods actually have teeth( 2-3) that snack on algae and stick to limestone via their muscular foot in intertidal/ tide pool areas. Fun fact! We talked about one called the bleeding tooth where their “blood” is really just iron in the shell. Another cool thing during this lab was when DeVore crushed the Nerites, a chemical signal was released that signaled the hermits to feast on the snail. I have a video of a huge conglomeration of hermits attacking on Nerites.

2. Barracuda: a ferocious staple in the Bahamas. Right before this trip, Kaylie warned me about this species curious nature relating to shiny objects; sadly, I am covered in shiny jewelry…. So when we saw a barracuda not only once, but several times, all I needed was a fast glance at its torpedo-shaped body and then my flippers went flipping away. However, unlike what I had expected, I have yet to be chased down. But I will keep you updated as to future encounters.

3. Echinoderms: of the sea and the sky;) One of the first things I really found peace in on the first sleepless night was the abundance of stars! There is often too much light pollution in Milledgeville to see any stars and I cannot remember a time where I was dipping my head in every direction to look at them. On the other hand, we saw some in the sea too. One of the first ones we saw and I was able to both dive for and hold was the cushion star. In lecture we had a much needed review over its five point radial symmetry and no spinal column or defined body. This differed from another star that Kaylie found, which was the brittle star. This long, skinny, and flexible armed star has a central body that its extremities attach to, which is not the same at the cushion. After showing DeVore, we helped find it a new home on some good ole’ coral/ rocks. Sea stars are by far one of my favorites to encounter.

4. Southern stingray: yet another organism I swam rapidly away from. I have encountered the southern stingray twice but only saw it once. This was because the first time I had my mask off and feeding water…Kaylie then told me very nonchalant that there was a sting ray under me and to that I swam away without a peep (don’t judge). The second time I saw the stingray was earlier today at Monument and it was very close to us, but this time I had my mask on and did not swim away. Later on during lecture, we accidentally placed this lil’ guy with the rest of the fish instead of placing it with the cartilaginous fish (oops. We fixed it thought). What i liked about this finding was that we were able to watch it for a longer period of time since it was not pulling parkour moves in and out of the coral reefs.

Overall, I know it is just the beginning of this trip but I have already seen so many amazing species ranging from cnidarians to Chordates, Gastropods, even several bird species such as tropic birds, killdeer, osprey, little grey herons, and kestrels. With each day, we add on to our master list. I know I’ll continue to be able to match the number of days spent here with that of interesting finds from the day.