Day 4 in San Salvador was an eventful one!! This morni
ng we journeyed off to the North Point Trail right next to Grahms Harbor, which we snorkeled on Day 1! On this trip, the main purpose was to observe the different zones that are present on Rockie shorelines which are a very unique part of the Bahamas. The zones in order from the ocean are the yellow zone, black zone, grey zone, and white zone. Most of the things that I observed most closely were the organisms that inhabited the black zone. In the black zone just before the ocean started I observed chitin burrowed deep into the rocks, hermit crabs, nerites, and periwinkles. The chiton is very intriguing to me, they consist of 8 interlocking plates, and they use their radula to scrape up the algae on the rock and the rocks in the process causing them to burrow themselves into the rocks on the shore. Dr. Devore showed us that by sacrificing a nerite and placing it in a tidal pool full of hermit crabs, the crabs smell the deceased nitrite, and all flock to it! That was very interesting to see. We hiked the trail and saw amazing sites as we walked along the path on the cliffs of the island.
After lunch, we went to the Columbus landing monument which was about a 30-minute drive from Gerace. This site included many patch reefs right off the beach! While I was at the patch reefs I was able to identify many of the species I observed there including a 3-foot-long stingray who was being followed by a fish. I learned that this was because as the stingray swims along the bottom of the ocean floor, they scare up many fish and invertebrates that are buried in the sand which the fish are able to eat. I saw a Bar Jack, many soft corals including sea fans, a stoplight parrot fish, and my personal favorite the Fairy basslets, which have a bright purple forebody and a yellow rear. The current was not very strong and this reef was my personal favorite so far!
In our evening class, we were shown a video about Bohemian Bush medicine. It includes a system of plant medicine that is especially unique to this area. After many people were brought over to San Salvador from Western Africa many were left to use the land in any way that they could to survive. This meant learning how to use the plant resources around them for medicinal purposes. Bertram Forbes, who was a resident of San Salvador, identified plants in the Bahamas in the field and their medicinal purposes. In the video, a lot of it took place on the Gerace campus and the trails we had been at this week which was super cool!
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