Taipei Day 5

Today I had the chance of visiting some really nice pristine reefs at Kenting, South Taiwan.The water was slightly choppy with about 1 - 2 foot waves. The dive guide was worried that we might get seasick, but I assured him that 1 - 2 foot waves is normal for NZ waters. The dive guide mentioned that on normal days, the water by the bay would be as calm as a mirror!

Healthy reefs.. without fishes?

Very tightly packed hard corals on the reef

Look at the variety!

The visibility was about 6m, with certain locations reaching about 10m. Again, the dive guide said that these were not great conditions because on normal days, visibility can reach 15m. The corals look healthy, with at least 4 - 6 different species tightly packed together. There are lots of scleractinian corals (hard corals). One interesting thing I noted was the shortage of big fishes, and I was told these big fishes were capture to almost extinct in Taiwan waters by the fishermen.

Bight blue color Acropora

Bright red coral

Clown fish by the anemone

My potential coral of study - Stylophora

Besides visiting potential locations for my research, we also collected coral specimens for Xueping and Jiaho. I would be learning from Xueping in the next two days on extracting microbes DNA from the coral specimens we collected today.

Dive guide and Jiaho collecting coral samples

Jiaho preparing her coral sample for DNA sampling
tomorrow in the lab