CHOYA BAY TIDEPOOLING

Early morning wake up call today, we had to race to low tide at Choya Bay! Once we got there, I quickly realized I didn't wear quite enough layers. Today's excursion was to check out the muddy areas of the bay during low tide. We were mainly searching for marine epifauna, like clams, mussels, and crabs. My favorite part was seeing all of the octopus that were hidden underneath large rocks. We also got a nice little surprise from octopi living inside a clam and taking care of her egg! I also was lucky to find a Jawfish that was hiding in the sand, and she actually had all of her eggs held inside her mouth! It was amazing to see, we didn’t see any others of her kind so we brought her towards the ocean where she could have a lot more water to breath. A few people in our group were able o find sand dollars too! Later in the day we went kayaking and had lots of fun floating around in the Morau estuary. It was pretty neat to see the women-owned oyster farm that resides there as well! A few people fell out of their kayaks, and thankfully we had a pretty cool guide Aaron, who was able to help everyone out and get them back in the water. Later I came to find out that it was stingray season! So we definitely felt a little more aware of our surroundings! Overall it was a great day, and I really appreciate all of the organisms we got to touch and learn from.  It was amazing to see how different systems all work together.