Today we rented a second boat.  This allowed us to take the entire class as a whole to several sites across the southern extent of Aitutaki Lagoon (across much of the lower third of the map below).  We were able to snorkel an explore a wide array of subtidal communities and get a good sense of the conditions, seascapes, and littoral landscapes that comprise this section of the lagoon.  In addition to exploring everything from just-forming Motus to rat eradication experiments, we ended our day with our first quantitative data collection at Akaimai Motu.  The icing on the cake was our beach clean-up wherein we harvested all the macroscopic trash on the motu’s seaward perimeter (we categorized and weighed all that flotsam and jetsam…more on that later).

We are again running into internet bandwidth issues, but here are some initial videos I was able to upload before burning out my internet allotment for the time being.  Check back later for additional pics and vids.