Hi everyone! After a beautiful lunch sitting on the shores of Grotto Beach, we headed north to snorkel on Monument beach! This beach is super unique because it has a monument dedicated to where Christopher Columbus landed when he came to this island. After getting off the truck, we were greeted with a clear and calm blue ocean, with visible patch coral reefs and soft sand. As we were all excited to snorkel, we eagerly put on our gear and got right to it! After swimming for a bit, we were only able to see small fish like blue tang (Dory from Finding Nemo!) and juvenile stoplight parrotfish. These fish were swimming around and picking at the soft coral surrounding the reef patches. We were also able to see some healthy star coral which was super cool!
After we headed out a little deeper into the ocean, we were able to find a bunch of big fish. In particular, we saw a Nassau grouper! This fish was swimming along the bottom of the ocean, camouflaged to the rock. Nassau groupers are large fish with big eyes and tan and brown stripes, and was super hard to see at first! We even got to see some adult parrotfish, which is great because they are important for maintaining healthy reefs! After all this excitement, a couple of us girls inflated our life vests and just floated in the water which was super relaxing.
Once we were done, we headed back to the research center to eat dinner and prepare for our evening activity, night snorkeling! Hopefully we see lots of fun fish and crustaceans!
-Contributed by Samantha
Photo credit: Samantha
