time is flying

Time is flying by here, it must be all the hours we spend underwater that is confusing my internal clock but everyday this week has flown by! I am trying my best to soak up every moment here. It is so precious!
Monday we got our first exposure to actual scientific diving, laying transects and quadrat reading. But that was just the beginning. Actually most of us failed at it.. But its all a process right! 
Yesterday we spent all day in class (not as fun as the water, but still very interesting!) learning about different techniques for studying benthic organisms. We also did dry runs for today's dives,

which is what I'm doing here. Practicing the different passes we would be doing for each transect (the tape at my feet). I am obviously a pro.
Today we had four dives at 2 new dive spots. Exciting! Studying AGRRA benthic and fish diversity. Hard to believe how much new information I've learned in the last few days.. a week ago if you asked me the difference between Montestrea faveolata and Montestrea annularis (these are both massive corals by the way) I would be clueless. But not anymore! This deserves another fist pump.

Transect lines and quadrats

Today I logged 2.5 hours underwater. Big excitments for the day were finding a nudibranch, lionfish, touching fire coral, swimming vertically upside-down while reading my transect and being surrounded by a school of brown chromis they were accompanied by a beautiful trumpet fish (of course I had to stop my data collecting for a brief moment and experience it), writing upside-down underwater (its really not as hard as is sounds, I promise), finding myself face to face with a golden moray, and dissecting lionfish (I was able to identify a fish about the length of your thumb nail that had been in a lionfish's stomach for 3 days, my fish ID is on point)!
Besides the other students here with me, there are independent researchers staying and working with CIEE on projects. Tonight we had a presentation from Fadilah Ali who has been working with lionfish control in the ABC islands for 4 years. She had a wonderful presentation about the success of lionfish control in Bonaire due to the volunteer efforts of many local organizations. Great day! Mangrove kayaking tomorrow! Ciao