There is no air-condition on the entire island, but honestly, it’s not necessary. The swift breeze cools everything down and makes the island pleasant and mosquito free. To let the breeze in, our room has almost a dozen windows and we always keep the door open. In the middle of the night last night, I found myself standing on the porch with no idea how I got there. For the 3rd time in my life, I sleep walked (slept-walked?) — luckily I didn’t go very far!
After a delicious breakfast, we heard that we were cleared to dive, so Danielle and I took a shallow dive off the beach to collect small fish needed for an experiment back at Georgia Tech. Using clove oil (a natural anesthetic) we rounded the fish into a net and then put them in a collection bag. This process lasted for over an hour and we came back to the lab with a significant amount of fish, although we need just a few more of a couple species.
After lunch, we helped clean the dozens of lionfish that some of the researchers had speared earlier in the day. Making an assembly line, one person cut off the spines, another filleted the fish, and then Danielle removed the stomachs and placed them in ethanol to be transported back to Tech for analysis.
After dinner, we geared up for the coral spawn. Wearing a full wetsuit with a hood, we snorkeled to the boat, donned our tanks and then sunk beneath the waves. I was told to look at the coral polyps for signs of setting - a swollen polyp with a pink ball of gametes at the tip is the indicator that the corals will spawn tonight.
Nothing.
No corals even pretended to look like they were going to spawn. It was actually a rather boring dive because there were no octopuses or other cool creatures to photograph while we waited for the corals to do anything. After over and hour, we gave up, knowing that if they were going to spawn, they would have done so before 9 pm.
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