Rutgers CCMI Coral Reef Internship in Little Cayman

Sorry for the delay. My flight was delayed and I didn’t get home until 5am.

What a great time it was at CCMI. In the few 3 weeks we spent there, we learned so much. We learned how to ID coral, algae, and reef fish.

We got to see the bioillumenessence during our night dive. We learned about the algae that is symbiotic to the coral and provides the nutrients for the coral. We also were able to assess coral health and identify certain diseases among hard and soft coral.

For the first time I learned how to write an annotated bibliography and an abstract.

I would definitely recommend this study abroad program to anyone interested in marine biology, diving medicine and environmental science.

 

This week on Little Cayman we finalized our presention for our research project at CCMI. Our research consisted of assessing the health of the coral species Acropora cervicornis.

We also got to watch the release of green sea turtle hatchlings under the stars last night.

https://international.sebs.rutgers.edu/2019/08/02/9618/

Yesterday we went to  Owens Island and surveyed the area for marine life and the benthic habitat. We found octopus, damselfish, crabs, shrimp, snails and lots of other sea critters.

We all went on a night dive last night and saw the bioluminescent photoplankton and the bioflourecence on the coral. It was really cool. We also got to see southern sting rays out and about hunting for food and many other reef fish change their behavior at night.

 

We got to see a Marine Biologist excavate a sea turtle nest this week a few days after it hatched.  We observed her digging the nest to see if there were anymore hatchlings that didn’t make it out.  To our surprise there were 8 more loggerhead hatchlings having trouble making it out of the nest so we watched the biologist collect the turtles and release them as close to the nest as possible to have a natural process to get into the ocean.  All 8 of them made their way into the ocean where they will remain in the shallow reef or around an algae called floating sargassum until they are mature enough to journey into the open ocean.

 

This week on Little Cayman we worked on our coral, algae and fish identification.  We also took benthic surveys to put into a database to obtain the statististics of the health of the coral.

We have surveyed many sites this past week in Bloody Bay marine park and other diving sites. We saw lots of sea turtles. Hawksbill sea turtles and green sea turtles are abundant here. We also saw white spotted eagle rays, southern sting rays of all sizes and lots of reef fish.

CCMI has taught me advanced bouyancy under water and now I can write on slates to make observations of the benthic habitat upside down.

The weather here has been great so far without any rain. Last night was the first night we had a big storm and now the ocean is quite choppy today.