July 8, 2014

Winds and current still ripping pretty good making the NW point a little too rough again today.  Went back to the southeast shore and southwest shore and point area. 

                     Yesterday I met one of the tourists, Norma from the capital city of Honduras, who is going back to school at FIU in Miami for a BA in Marine Bio.  She was interested in tagging along with me on my research and I was more than glad to have her along.  She read the GPS unit for me, giving the latitude and longitude coordinates for the locations we found the Flamingo Tongues.

                     We marked the beginning and end of the shelf with the 100s of sea fans, but still found few FTs in that area.  I did spot a small octopus that disappeared real fast upon seeing me.  Together we mapped the location of all FTs found, whether on the fans, the feathers, branches or rod corals, or even in the sediment.

                     I found a FT approximately 10-12 cm from a purple ribbon coral.  As I proceeded to grab my camera and take a pic of it off the coral it moved to the base of the coral, within 30 seconds.  I was amazed at how fast it moved considering I watched one move last year for a period of 10 minutes at a “snail’s pace” moving only about 40 cm in that time.

                                                   Diseased coral with purple spots and black streak from Flamingo Tongue eating the coral polyps.

                                         Odd pattern in Brain Coral

                                          Chain eel in sea grass bed with mouth open

                                                    Black ball sponge