Day 4 Snorkeling

Today started off much better with no rain!!  We set out to see the Mangroves and Coral Gardens today.  We took Goliath again, Norman was our captain, for an hour ride to get to the Mangroves.  Mangroves are very important for the ecosystem.  They are fish nurseries for the reef.  They are also called island builders because they trap the sediment in the water and it builds up and eventually makes an island.  Red Mangroves like the salt water and they grow first in an area.  Once the island is built up, the Black Mangroves start to grow in the center while the Red Mangroves expand the island more.  While we were in the Mangroves, we snorkeled around the roots of the Mangrove trees.  I didn't see much because the water was murky and there wasn't very much visibility.  I did see an arrow crab and a bat fish.  Dr. McGinley pointed out the arrow crab, and he also found the bat fish.  The bat fish is neat because its fins are adapted to sort of "walk" along the bottom.  We saw lots of baby fish, but I could not tell what many of them were because they looked so different from the adult fish.  When I got on the boat, I had some isopods on me which are kind of like white rollie pollies.  They suck your blood like mosquitoes, and they feel kind of like a mosquito bite when they are on you.  According to Jeff, our captains son, if they get in your ears they lay eggs.  When you talk on your phone, it activates the eggs and they travel to your brain and eat it.  (Believe him if you want.) 
Coral Gardens was better for snorkeling.  It was deeper and clearer, totally opposite of the Mangroves.  At Coral Gardens we were to start practicing counting our fish.  My buddy, Lynn, and I got to count the grunts.  We thought this would be hard because there are so many grunts and they travel in large schools sometimes.  It really wasn't as hard as we were thinking.  We had to count for 15 minutes at a time.  I counted 82, and Lynn counted 69.  We are going to start our official counts later in the week.  After we counted grunts, we could free snorkel.  At this site we saw:

• yellow sting ray
• lots of different parrot fish
• 6 barracuda (finally, i always miss them!)
• many of the fish I have already mentioned