We had a jam packed day today! We started off bright and early and headed out to Tarpon Lake to check out the three different kinds of mangroves that we learned about in our lecture this morning. There has not been much rain on Little Cayman so the lake was pretty dried up.

Then we headed over to Kingston Bight to do some snorkeling up close and personal with the mangroves and seagrass. We saw alot of Silver Sides, Nutibranch, and baby Barracudas . Most of us learned what it was like to encounter hydroids, we needed some vinegar on our hands and necks where we could feel the sting even though you can’t see them in the water.

Once we got back to CCMI we ate lunch and had a lecture on Plankton and learned how to do a plankton tow. We then took to the water again, but this time via kayaks. We did both an afternoon and evening tow after sunset. They were both very succssful and were able to see zooplankton specifically a baby conch, crab larvae, copepod and amphipod under the microscopes. We were very excited to discover that different zooplankton was caught both times we went out. The sunset did not disappoint either!