Materials and Methods

            During the course of the research I collected data on the interactions between marine species and the anemones, as well as the dimensions of the anemone's oral disc, tentacle length, and tentacle diameter. Also I took random surveys of the ocean floor in order to determine the density of anemones in the bay.

    Initially I scanned the whole bay, by snorkeling, to get a sense of how many anemones there were. Then I chose five anemones and marked them by tying one end of a long piece of string to the rock where they were located, and the other end of the string to a piece of Styrofoam that had been marked with fluorescent yellow and pink plastic ribbon. I had to make the string long enough By marking the anemones it made it easier to find the locations, especially at night,.

            I observed the anemones, at each of the five sites, by mentally drawing a circle of radius 1 meter around the anemone and recording the type and number of species that entered the area on an underwater slate. The observations were conducted for roughly two minutes to minimize the species that just happened to be swimming by. Two sets of observations were made, one during the day on October 16, 2008 between 2 and 4pm, and another at night the following evening between 9 and 10:30pm. During the night observation the types of the species were identified with the help of a flashlight, and again their numbers were also recorded. The species that were recorded around the anenomes were: White Grunts(Haemulon plumieri), Long Spinned squirrelfish(Holocentrus marianus), Short-spinned squirrelfish(Holocentrus adscensionis), Blue tangs(Acanthurus coeruleus), Anemone shrimps(Hippolytidae sp.), and crabs(Mithrax forceps). After all the observations had been made some pictures of the anemones were taken with an underwater camera.

            To determine the dimensions of the anemones I used a ruler to measure the diameter of the oral disc, the length of the tentacles, and the diameter of the base of the tentacle. Because the tentacles were very fragile, as well as flexible, the tentacle that looked to be of average length was chosen for the measurement. However, because of the tentacles flexibility the measurements weren't very accurate and only represented an average dimension. To get a more precise set of data, the dimensions were measured not only on the five marked anemones, but also on an additional 14.