Lionfish at Turtle Rocks, Sea Turtles at Bimini Road...

The HSMB crew started off their day by waking up at seven in the morning. We were served a delectable breakfast of oatmeal, cereal and eggs provided by Chef Matt.  Then off to turtle rocks.  We arrived at Turtle Rock at nine o'clock by skiff, a small inflatable motorboat. Captain Lou prepared us for a wet landing which in boat terms means being dropped off in water.  Captain Lou showed us around the intertidal zone.

We found moon jellies, anemones, conchs, snails, urchins, and plenty of fish all which are native to this habitat. We also encountered an invasive species, the lionfish. Matt and Laura both said that of all the times they have been at Turtle Rocks that this was the fist time they had seen a Lionfish. After studying the intertidal zone, the crew took water samples of the tide pools in turtle rock.  In the tide pools, we compared salinity, pH and temperature.  One of the challenges we faced were just walking on the jagged rock.

When the crew got to the boat, we were fed cheeseburgers and French fries.  After lunch we played a simple yet confusing game with Captain John that involved a piece of string and two people tied together. We had to work together to disconnect ourselves from a knot. After the game, we anchored on the other side of turtle rock for our snorkel at a natural reef. We saw squirrel fish, southern stingrays, Sgt. Majors and many other types of fish. We also did our first fish survey, counting all the fish we saw, for our research project.

We came back to the boat and discussed all the fish we saw and totaled the diversity of them up. We then anchored at Bimini Road.  Matt and Laura split the crew up as either Scientist or anthropologist. On the snorkel we had to come up with a hypothesis about what we thought Bimini Road used to be. While snorkeling we were lucky to see some sea turtles. We came back to the boat to discuss our thought about Bimini Road. We were told that some have thought that Bimini Road was one of the roads that lead to Atlantis.  On the other hand, many of those who have a scientific point of view believe that Bimini Road was actually a natural geological formation. The crew was more for Atlantis than the idea that Bimini Road was created naturally because HSMB week two has big imaginations.

At seven thirty we sat down to a hearty dinner of pork chops, mushrooms, green beans and mash potatoes.  We enjoyed listening to stories that the captains told us about their experiences and careers. After dinner, we were assigned wilderness classroom duties which we are working on right now. As of right now the HSMB crew is having a terrific night and is excited to further write about our future experiences in Bimini, aboard the R/V Coral Reef Vessel II.

By: Daniella and Whitney