First day of field work

After a fairly brutal, rough transit from Key West to Dry Tortugas National Park, we rolled up on our permanent transect site off Bird Key by early afternoon and began our surveys shortly thereafter. Although the water was warm (~30C), visibility was only 10-20 ft, meaning most of the pictures below appear blurry. The reef overall has more hard coral, and less disease, than the primary Florida Keys reef tract, but this is still very clearly a reef system in steep decline.

DTNP-NCRMP dive 1: Bird Key permanent site (~14-15 m maximum depth)

DTNP-NCRMP dive 2: Bird Key permanent site