Out to the Coral Reef!

The day started late for us (8:30am), and we piled into our Goshen College bus. After a quick stop at our station for some gear, we drove just around the corner to the Keys Marine Lab (KML). It is a very cool satellite field station. We boarded their boat, a much faster and more powerful one than our beloved pontoon. It was about a 40 minute boat ride and then we arrived at our first stop, Alligator Lighthouse Reef. After putting on our gear and jumping in, our eyes immediately saw fish – a ton of fish. A big school of Sergeant Majors and Bermuda Chub greeted us. As we swam further out, we saw lots of the common sea fan, Gorgonia ventalia. It had beautiful vibrant purple veins throughout. Lots of fish were swimming around, feeding off of the corals. We were lucky enough to see not just one but THREE barracudas peacefully swimming along beside us in a line. After about an hour, we all climbed back onto the boat and took off for a second location.

Our second location was another coral reef, but this one did not feature the beautiful fans we had seen before. Instead, it was full of larger hard corals, such as the brain coral. Additionally, while fish were not as immediately apparent, we watched a large school of gray angelfish travel from coral to coral, grazing as a unit. While watching the angelfish, out of the corner of our eyes we spotted a large shadow, but upon further inspection discovered it was a very large grouper (The angelfish were probably around a foot long or a little smaller, and the grouper seemed massive compared to them). After another hour of snorkeling around and discovering at least fifteen different fish species, we got on the boat and headed back to shore.

Once we had docked again at KML, we got a tour of their facilities. They currently have corals and some live rock in a seawater system. The water itself is taken from a well deep in the ocean, then filtered through sand and UV light to ensure it is safe and clean for the research process. After our tour we headed back to Fiesta Key RV resort, and everyone spent the rest of the afternoon on their own. Cottage 147 spent the time working on the various amounts of homework they had, in addition to attempting valiantly to learn the complete taxonomic information for 52 marine organisms for our quiz tomorrow morning.

Julia Hitt, ‘24