Dissecting & Diving!

Today I had yet another long morning of lectures, one of them being "Fish Identification". We have about 60 new organisms and their scientific names to remember now, all of them are a type of fish. Our exam is next Monday, so we have about a week to study, but this one is going to be much harder. Not only do we have to learn more, but a vast majority of the fish look the same! tomorrow we will go out on our first fish ID snorkel session so we can get a better idea of what we are trying to identify. I think it will also be difficult because fish do not stay in the same place unlike the coral and plants, so we will see how this goes. Basically, I'm starting to study tonight LOL! So we continued the morning finishing with lectures, and after lunch I had a couple hours to kill because I was part of the second dive group going out today. I planned on doing my homework for the night and just getting it over with, but then one of our teachers decided to start collecting data for her research project she is working on. She is doing various studies on the invasive species, lionfish, but today she just wanted to find out their stomach content. She brought three lionfish to one of the tables and asked if anyone wanted to help, so of course i jumped in! She had two larger ones and a smaller one as well. To start dissecting them, we had to cut off their dorsal fins, pectoral fins, and anal fins (because they are sharp plastic-like needles that can poison you if you accidentally get stabbed or poked by them). After, I made a slit under their tail fin and cut up so we could see all of the organs! Surprisingly, this did not gross me out, but when I dissected a frog in biology last semester it did, weird? Anyway, after the underside was cut, we had to dig our way around inside them to find out if it was a male or female, and from there we had to cut out the stomach. We had to be careful not to tear anything important or rip the stomach too hard because then it would smash the food that was inside of them. It was pretty cool because after we took everything out you could identify what that fish had eaten. Two of them had what looked like small little fish in their stomach, and another one looked like a small shrimp. She saved the stomach content thought (gross), so she could get real DNA on the species later. Then, we were all done and were able to play around with the dead fish and dissect other parts of the body. As much as I like fish and animals, this didn't really bother me like I thought it would, maybe it was because they are invasive and would want to hurt me if it was in the water with me. By the way, I apologize if you have an easy stomach and had a hard time reading all of the details haha! Here are a few pictures from the dissection session:

Alli (my instructor) measuring size of each fish

Cutting of the poisonous sections.

Following the lionfish dissection was my second dive :) We went to a different location this time called "The Arch". It was even more beautiful than the first dive, it was full of blues, purples, yellows, oranges, etc. I got to see 2 baby puffer fish and 1 adult puffer, a spotted eel, 2 lionfish, a barracuda, a stingray, a trumpet fish, and of course a ton of other fish I cannot name that were absolutely stunning to look at. STILL NO SHARK! One of the best parts was at the end where we were able to go under this arch (hence the name), that was full of some of the biggest fish I have ever seen and the craziest patterns of coral as well. It was, again, absolutely stunning. I took pictures of this as well, except like I mentioned before my underwater camera is disposable, so we will all have to wait and see how they turned out! For some reason the dives go by way to fast, and before I knew it we had been underwater for almost 45 minutes already. We unfortunately ended our dive and headed back to the dock. I must say, I am getting pretty good at setting up my gear and carrying all of it where ever I need to (if you have ever scuba dived before, then you now how heavy everything is), so I'm pretty proud of myself :)

By the time we got back and I took a nice refreshing salt water shower (it is crazy how much I enjoy those), it was time for dinner! And now, here I am, writing my daily blog. Once I'm done I will do some homework, probably study some fish, and then I'm calling it an early night. I cannot believe how exhausted I am already, and it's only 8 p.m. here! Well, that's all for now, good night everyone! :)