Completing a Marine Dissertation in Honduras

This summer I had the privilege of joining Operation Wallacea on their 2025 marine season in Honduras, working as a dissertation student. I was lucky enough to spend 4weeks in Utila, learning a vast variety of skills, including how to dive, identify the vital species across the reefs, and collect the data needed for my project on the Diadema antillarum, otherwise known as the long-spined sea urchins. For the last 2 weeks, I also got to experience diving and collecting data across the key sites in Tela, which expanded on my diving skills and reef knowledge.

Photo by Kelly Perry

I met so many great people across my 6 weeks and have made so many unforgettable memories that it is hard to pick a particular favourite; a few include watching the Eagle rays most nights from the dock, diving down to look at a tucked away Nurse shark, spotting an absolutely tiny Spotted drum fish, and exploring around the island on the dry days. I’d say one of the challenges was overcoming a bit of fear when diving in the shallower sites, when we had quite a lot of jellyfish around us, especially after getting stung and marked on the face by one. However, those dives were still a really fun experience, teaching us to take note of our surroundings a bit more and pushing us to really improve our data collection time underwater, leaving us time to soak up the sun on the boat afterwards!

Similarly to picking a favourite moment, the list of what I learnt would be extremely long, as I went into this field trip with very limited marine knowledge, yet came out with completed data collection and benthic analysis for my dissertation! In particular I learnt how to identify where the D. antillarum were most likely to be, looking out for good refuge spots in certain types of hard coral, especially the Agaricia tenuifolia. Alongside this, my diving definitely improved as I navigated peering into small spots in the benthic composition without disturbing it, as well as while reeling the transects and placing the quadrat down for the benthic surveying.

Photo by Adam Laverty

I am so grateful for all of the support that I had for my dissertation, from the supervision of our dives/data collection itself to the planning that went into it, and the help with species identification and beginnings of my write-up. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing the results the data produces when I go back to Uni and really want to be able to emphasise how important it is that these coral reefs gain further study and protection, to protect not only the Keystone urchins, but all of the other crucial fish and corals.