Good to be back!

Taking a tour of KML. Checking out the GIANT sea cucumber.

The Keys Marine Lab has been an amazing new experience! I used to come to the Keys every summer of my childhood and hit all the major high points like Looe Key, Big Pine Key deer refuge, and the many coral reefs. This trip has given me a whole new perspective on the things i used to enjoy as a child. I gained an appreciation and respect for corals and other ecosystems I took for granted. 

1st day snorkeling out on 11ft mound

Today we went out to Looe Key and did a fish survey, which is usually done with scuba gear but we modified the methods to suit our capabilities. We made a short list of the species we knew we would see and snorkeled at the surface for five minutes tallying the one we could identify, which by the way is wayyy easier said than done. After the first five minutes we would free dive down as far as we could to see species hiding under the reef and again tally up the species. We got to do another hour of free snorkeling after this procedure. 

My favorite fish. Two (scrawled) file fish!

Snorkeling around an in a mangrove island.

We also got a tour around MOTE marine laboratory on Summerland Key. This facility focuses on propagation of coral frags. They have much success in their new  method of using a microfrag and fixating 4 microfrags of the same genome to one surface and as they continue to grow they fuse together to form a colony the size of about a tangerine in about 3-4 months that would naturally occur in 3-4years. This research development is exciting and a positive movement toward hopefully restoring some endangered species. 

Multiple species of corals in the genome bank.