Day Eight: Mangroves and back reef
The day started with a snorkeling adventure in the mangrove habitat. This area serves as the nursery area for most of the juvenile fishes of the reef. In addition to lots of tiny fish, we were able to see some up-side down jellyfish. From the mangroves, we headed to a back reef area which was outside the marine park, so the students could collect organisms for a show & tell period back on the boat. We released all the organisms after the lessons were complete. Today’s dive was a wall dive and we found a nice size sea turtle and a stingray. This afternoon we decided to check out the small community of West End which was an interesting place. After dinner we did a night snorkel back at Baileys Key to see if we could find an octopus. We only found one octopus, but we did see a bunch of sea cucumbers, sea wasps, and puffer fish. All in all, another great day.