One of the things I loved about going to uni and focussing on marine biology was the places we got to go to ‘study’. In my final year of my undergraduate we got to go to the Bahamas for two weeks where we had lectures, worked in wet labs, had experience with different surveying and sampling techniques and, of course, we got to go diving.
Over the course of this field trip we got to do snorkelling surveys and go on dives in the early morning. These dives were a lot of fun as our lecturer had a communications device so that we could hear what she was saying as she pointed out cool corals, fish and other things of interest.
It was very interesting to see the differences between the reefs I’d seen in Australia and the ones here. These reefs seemed to have more soft corals and of course the fish were different!
I have written some blog posts detailing what happened on this field trip (See here) if you want any more details.
The reef
Nurse shark and remora
Flamingo Tongue
The corals were very cool
Christmas tree worms
The reef looking pretty – Lots of sea fans
Stingray