Live From the Field

I woke up this morning and was pleased to see blue skies and very little wind. After breakfast, we returned to Lindsay’s Reef, the area of the island where we had done beach profiling yesterday. Fortunately, we were able to start conducting the research that is essential to this program. My partner Jessica and I were assigned to work on PI Frames. We had to throw the PI Frames in the water, and record what we found under each of the 25 orange flags. The categories included hard coral, soft coral, algae, rock, sand, and other. We knew we were off to a rough start when we brought the PI Frame into the water and it broke. We tried to fix it using old duct tape that was already on the frame where it had broken before, a headband, and a hair tie, but simply could not get it to work. We decided to try anyway, and brought the PI Frame into the water. We threw it gently onto the coral reef and collected data as best we could. We got about 5 throws in (the goal was to get about 25 by the end of the morning) but were having trouble with the broken PI Frame, so we decided to wrap up. We headed back to shore and prepared to return to the Gerace Research Centre for lunch.

This afternoon was exciting because we got to visit only one of three manually-operated lighthouses that still exists in the world today. I learned that people in boats use lighthouse signals (San Salvador’s signal is two flashing lights every nine seconds) to identify where they are. Each lighthouse has its own unique code. We learned a great deal of history about the lighthouse and then had the opportunity to go up to the top of it so we could see all around the island (see the pictures above). It was a beautiful sight and allowed us all to get an even better view of the island. Tomorrow we will head back out into the field to complete more beach profiling and possibly working in the water on transect lines depending on the weather conditions.