A Rainbow a Day Keeps the Doctor Away!

Carolina Auerbach, Stoked SEA student, Claremont McKenna College

Super stoked to be taking over blog duties today! We started off our morning with breakfast; greeted by some light showers and a beautiful rainbow. After a bit of morning yoga and journaling and this rainbow, I was able to start the day feeling incredibly grounded and grateful to be here.

We started today with class with Dr. Page learning about native coral and algae species in the Hawaiian islands as well as invasive species that are threatening the fragile reef ecosystems. Afterwards, we had Rebecca teach us during our first Nautical Science class! We learned about communication and boat terminology and got to play a great blindfolded teamwork game to help us prepare for life on the vessel!

Our first (but definitely not last) poke in Oahu!

After a quick break for lunch we drove over to Lanikai Beach to meet up with Ellie Jones who works for The Hawaiʻi Monitoring and Reporting Collaborative (HIMARC). Using our knowledge acquired during our morning classes, Ellie helped to teach us more about the Lanikai Beach reef ecosystem which unfortunately is heavily impacted by coral bleaching and intense competition from algae. We got to snorkel around the reef for a while and practice using some of our research technology like the underwater cameras which was super exciting! We got to spot the 5 dominant coral species of the Hawaiian Islands as well as turtles, sea cucumbers, eels, moorish idols, and more.

We ended our day with takeout dinner by the beach after getting to watch the windsurfer, kitesurfers, and foilers on the water (but of course saved room for a frozen yogurt stop on the way home).

Sending love to all the folks back in California (love you Mom and Dad and the dogs of course). Owen, I hope I’m not missing too much of the summer swell!

Carolina Auerbach, Stoked SEA student, Claremont McKenna College

The only pot of gold at the bottom of this rainbow was the delicious eggs we got for breakfast 🙂