It’s been a while since LMRT has been to our research site. For this trip, we were there with some new plan and members. It’s sad to say that we would soon graduate high school and part for college to chase our dreams, but it is the truth that we have to face. We love the project and team and definitely want to keep it going; we start introducing the sea and the island to the second cohort (C2) of our academy to recruit for the future LMRT. We had three C2s joining us on the trip and had fun teaching them about the marine species and taking them around the island. With the bad visibility, we managed to do some surveys and determined that it was best to do it early in the morning where the visibility is (observed to be) at its peak. Aside from our research survey, we helped with the boat-based dolphin survey. We were lucky to see dolphins and to see how the C2 react to seeing their first dolphin.
A lot of positive things happen during this trip. We, for the first time, come to an agreement about our new research site since the old one is completely different now. We pushed through waking early and get ready for our survey knowing that we might not be able to it and supporting each other as much as we can. We saw some new species at our old survey site, and for the first time saw a grouper at our site. We did a beach clean and collect 60 kg of trash within an hour!
