I have been a SCUBAnaut for around two years and am grateful to attend the Roatan, Honduras trip. The goal of this trip is to get Atlantic and Gulf Rapid Reef Assessment Benthos certified, which is an internationally used protocol to access reef health in the Caribbean.
A diver searches for invertebrates along a transect line in Roatan.
Today we practiced transects on two morning dives. I enjoyed these dives because we saw a nurse shark, a crab, and we got to practice identifying the species/groups we’ve been learning through our benthic survey training course. The training started with several zoom meetings going over basic identification and now we are practicing these skills in water. The main skills we are tested on is correct identification and properly laying out the transect.
When placing a transect you have to loop the end of the measured line around a dead coral or rock and unravel the line out over the reef. The next pass after laying out the line is swimming back and making sure the line is straight, not tangled, and it not on top of any octocorals. After this step, we identify the organisms under 100 individual points, each 10cm apart. During this we also have to measure height of any macro algae.
Buddies for Life
Nauts head out to survey the reef.
I also enjoyed working with different dive buddies because it’s a nice way to get to know your peers and build communication skills. For example, I found that some divers work better with hand signals and writing things out, while others are able to talk through their regulators.
We are in our fourth day of our eight day trip and we’ve already built so many strong science skills and friendships! I am going to try and make sure that the next four days don’t fly by.
— Shalalai E., 2nd Class Naut, Sarasota Chapter
