Pollution, more Pollution, and Parades

 Yesterday, Robyn and I began working on a pollution assessment on the beach were we've been monitoring turtles. (Pollution, take one.) Eventually, we'd like to be able to test whether the amount of pollution on a given beach affects the speed with which hatchlings can reach the water. We're definitely looking forward to racing baby turtles. And transecting the beach for pollution coverage is definitely faster than transecting for profiling. 

In the evening, the dive festival had a parade of lights in the bay. Nearly every dive shop sent out a boat, decked in lights. Some even had spinning disco balls and were decorated with palm fronds. Or entire potted palms. One boat had an air horn and, on board another, someone was setting off fireworks. 

This morning was another dive festival activity--an underwater cleanup. (Pollution, take two.) Instead of just head out to one of the cays and do a short cleanup, Utila Dive Center's boat went out for a dive and then moved to our cleanup spot. Unfortunately, I seem to have contracted a cold in the last few days and, while I could descend to about 30 feet with no problems, below that, one sinus threw a fit. Fortunately, the top of the reef was at about 25 feet and I was thus able to complete a Coral Watch survey for my divemaster course. UDC is participating in the Coral Watch survey by Project AWARE to help monitor coral bleaching. These surveys are being done all over the world and the data is sent to a single database so researchers have access to worldwide information about reefs. DMTs at UDC are required to survey 60 pieces of coral during their training and submit their data to Coral Watch. Anyway, hoping things clear up soon so I can do some diving in my last couple weeks here. 

Time to head off to the closing ceremonies of the dive festival!

Collecting data for Coral Watch. Somehow
I do research even in my free time from research...

Robyn helping with the underwater cleanup.