Bermuda Day 4 - July 9th

By Lucy, Caitlin, and Reilly

Today we had our first full boat day! We left straight after breakfast and motored along for an hour and a half. There was a mix of sleeping, talking, reading, working on journals, and snacking. It started raining as soon as we got to Blue Hole, but you couldn’t tell once you were under the water. We had our first snack after the snorkel, and some started our lunches. We did a second snorkel nearby and ate our lunch afterwards. After that, we headed to Bailey’s Crescent, about half an hour away. After our last snorkel, we boated back to BIOS to upload our fish data. 

Snorkel 1 and 2 - Blue Hole 

We arrived at the first snorkel site at 11 am. After some safety lectures and copious amounts of sunblock, we jumped in the water. The reefs were massive, sprawling on for seemingly forever. The coral stretched so high that in some areas it was impossible to swim past. There were large populations of sergeant majors throughout the reefs. They would come investigate what we were doing. There were groups of spotlight and queen parrotfish grazing on the abundant coral. After an hour, we returned to the ship unwillingly to head to the second site of the Blue Hole. The water was so deep that when swimming by the ship, we could just barely see the bottom. The reef in this location was very steep with almost ninety degree cliffs. Bermuda chubs and parrotfish frequented the cliffs. Trumpetfish hid within the branching corals. When we were gathering around the boat to leave, sergeant majors and Bermuda chubs were circling closely to us, almost within arm's reach. 

Snorkel 3 - Bailey’s Crescent 

After snorkeling at Blue Hole, we moved to Bailey’s Crescent for our 3rd snorkel of the day. The reefs at this location were more sparse than at the prior location. There were lots of small patches of reefs instead of one large reef. A lot of the fish seen were the same as the 1st and 2nd snorkel, like Foureye Butterflyfish, Sergeant Major, Stoplight parrotfish, and more. Some of us during this snorkel spotted an Octopus, a Black Grouper, and a Queen Angelfish for the first time this trip. Some other cool finds were baby Sergeant Majors, baby Queen Angelfish, and Jellies. There were more Angelfish at this location than we have seen at any previous location. After about an hour in the water, we boarded the boat to head back to BIOS for dinner.