Bahamas Field Study Blog

We started the morning out with usual breakfast at 7:30am. Today’s meal was French toast, oatmeal, cereal, and sausage. Once breakfast was over, we all had to get ready to head into town. Cockburn Town has a fossil reef near the downtown area that we visited. A fossil reef is a geological formation that was once a living coral reef but has since been preserved in the rock. This was a cool site to visit but also a little challenging. It was cool to see all of the old coral that used to be present, but it was challenging because most visible remains were cross sections which made it harder to identify certain coral. After seeing the fossil reef, everyone went into town and shopped at the main store which holds things like snacks, drinks, bug spray, detergent, etc. Then we headed back to the GCR for lunch. One of our favorite lunches was today which was chicken sandwiches!

Following lunch, we rested up during our brief break to prepare for our afternoon exploration. Around 1:00, we headed out on the truck to Snapshot reef for the third day in a row. However, today we finally got to swim out to the long-awaited Drop Off! Suited up and anxious to get out there, our group began our long trek. The swim going out took us about 45 minutes. Along the way, we swam over some Spurs and Grooves (a zonation of the bank-barrier reef), a few southern stingrays, and giant barrel sponges. When we arrived at the drop off, it was stunning! We all were super excited to swim over the wall and spent lots of our time trying to get photos to capture the blue abyss that was surrounding us. After spending some time out at the Drop Off, we decided we were ready to swim back. Ashore, we all immediately began reflecting on the amazing sight we had just seen, sharing our reactions and thoughts as we made our way back to the truck.

Back at the GRC after our eventful afternoon snorkel, we showered and got ready for dinner, which was spaghetti, chicken, salad, and chocolate and/or vanilla cake. Dinner was followed by some free time before class. Some of us chose to play some basketball or volleyball outside on the courts, while others took advantage of the time to take naps or work on projects. Tonight’s class consisted of two site presentations over previous snorkel sites: Sand Dollar reef and Snapshot reef. The two groups recapped what we did at each site and discussed the organisms we saw, along with the challenges and benefits of living there. Once the presentations were complete (and after we saw another beautiful daily sunset), we heard about our plans for the rest of the trip and had a couple of laughs as we viewed a slideshow of the photos from the day. Finally, our busy day ended by watching Monsters University all together.

Haley Pitman ’26 & Kelsey Ragan ‘25