We carried out focal area and focal species techniques today in the water. We worked in groups and my partner was Olivia! For focal area we looked at a group of coral polyps for ten minutes. Basically, different species of fish swam in and out feeding and just swimming.
For point species we followed around a Blue Tang fish for ten minutes observing its actions. I thought we were going to lose the species we chose easily, but we picked a very cooperative fish we did not mind a few friends hanging out for a bit. I had a lot of fun chasing after it and what not. He hid in a cave for a minute or two but other than that he ate algae/coral and swam around. He even itched him self on the ground. All in all, he was a moderately boring fish but it was certainly fun to watch the same individuals for a period of time.
We spent the whole afternoon working on our outstanding assignments. We have an essay due where we are exempting why sponges are animals and Portuguese Man O' War is a colony of individuals. Basically, I found that Portuguese Man O' War does not have all the qualities of an animal, such as its inability to voluntarily move and react to outside influences, since each cell is an individual, not a part of an animal. Sponges possess all of the traits of an animal. We also have to finish our last transect, create a poster with our observations for the focal work as well as complete our species identification from last week. It was a busy night but everything is coming along well.
And the highlight of the day... we saw an Octopus! Puttering around for fun after our snorkel work we spotted her! We have all been talking about how we wanted to see an octopus he whole trip. At first, Olivia and I thought it was a snail, becasue the rock it was on looked like a shell and the tentacle was barely showing, looking like the body of a snail. After a bit of investigation we realized it was in fact an octopus!
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| He's the blueish guy sticking out from the rock |
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