One more week



The little rock on horizon was our destination

 Sunday afternoon, I hiked to the far end of East Bay, with a few friends. We used the beach there as a jumping off point to swim out to a little island, a chunk of limestone with a small beach and grassy area. It was a good twenty minute swim against the current, over seagrass beds. It is really cool to be able to pull yourself up onto an island, and be the only person there, to have it be for that moment, yours. I totally see what drove all the great explorers of the past to navigate and map and discover new places. The water around the island was really shallow, there was a reef that a lot of waves were breaking on. I swam out over it by myself and it was a little intense, it was only maybe two feet deep at places and the rocks were covered in fire coral and some of the biggest sea urchins I have ever seen, with waves breaking over me the whole time. So that was slightly stressful. It was totally worth it when I made it over safely and the bottom dropped out. Instantly everything became more peaceful and I started noticing that there were all sorts of rare reef fish hiding in caves on the other side. I saw this one porcupinefish as big as a small dog, hiding under a little ledge. I was keeping my back to the ocean most of the time, since the reef was just a patch reef, and behind it was a sandy plain stretching out into the blue. A barracuda snuck up on me, I turned around to see it hovering behind me a couple feet away from my face. Not going to lie, it was startling, I decided to navigate the shallow reef and waves again and make my way back to everyone else.

I've been trying to get in as many adventures as possible in my last few days here, even though we are in the middle of our final project. This whole week we are working on analyzing all of the data we collected in the past two weeks, and writing a paper about it. I've tried to only really sit on my computer and work on it during the hours after the sun sets, but it has been hard, this project is a lot of work. It has been really interesting to see all of the results and correlations we are finding though. We are also going diving a lot this week. On monday, our dive group went to the Spanish Chain, and about twenty minutes into the dive we found a fish trap. Upon approaching it, we discovered that it held a panicked nurse shark. It was small, but I still found it hard to believe it had managed to get itself trapped in there. I swam down and was looking to find a way to free it, but it was 10 feet deeper than our allowed limit and we needed to head back if we were going to have enough air to reach the mooring line and get back to the boat safely. So I had to leave when our dive leader signaled me to get up, to keep moving. Oh and apparently tampering with fish traps is illegal. It was troubling though, to see the shark thrashing around inside the trap and knowing that I could have gotten it out if I just had a little more time. One of the interns returned to the dive site latter in the day to check it out, and brought back news that he had freed it, which was awesome.

My dive buddy Kat got a short video of me (yellow snorkel) with trap before I got pulled away.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn_NRiEJAJk

We have been working hard on our final papers lately, (just finished mine an hour ago) but we've had time to go diving every day. Yesterday we went to The Plane, and saw a bottlenose dolphin on our dive! Today we dove The Fishbowl, a new dive site that I hadn't been to before. There is a huge clearing of sand ringed by a wall of corals about 4 feet high, when you sit inside it you feel like YOU are inside a fishbowl and all the fish around it are watching you. I'm just gonna throw up some diving pictures (taken by dive buddy Kat and intern Lizzie) from recent research and rec dives because after finishing my paper I'm tired of writing. One week left! Lots of adventures to have still...

Research diving

There was a really strong current that day, not as easy as it looks

I'm measuring corals, that stingray is hiding in the sand, front and center



Bottlenose Dolphin!



Hanging out over the wall

Sea Turtle

Diving at The Fishbowl

Mohawk picture

On the ground: Huge Stingray and Intern Lizzie. Upside down: Me

Bros of fishing

Caribbean Thanksgiving

My Thanksgiving started off with tropical sunshine, beautiful boat rides, swimming in coral reefs, field work, and that was all before 10 in the morning. It was a great day, I hung out with some fishermen at the docks, where me and some friends bought a 6 pound cleaned grouper from them for 18 bucks. After that was stashed in the kitchen, I enjoyed a sunset on the cliff at the edge of the center while I called my family. At dinnertime, all the students and staff gathered in our dining area and took part in a very delicious thanksgiving feast. The menu is the second picture on the right, and I ate large portions of everything on it. Really, I ate so much that it physically hurt to move, I ended up crashing with a bunch of people watching the blue planet. Thanksgiving is an interesting holiday, where we celebrate by eating not just for sustenance, but feasting in excess. Our feast here felt more meaningful than all my thanksgivings spent in America, since here, especially at times when food shipments have failed to come in, I have found myself eating simply and just for sustenance. Also, there are haitian households on this island that live like that all the time, that never have the means to eat in excess in a way that we take for granted in America. Puts things in perspective, makes me thankful for being privileged with the lifestyle that I enjoy.

Next day, pumpkin pie for breakfast and leftovers for lunch. Most of the center went to a beach cookout, and some stayed to camp, but me and some other guys stayed behind and grilled our grouper that we bought the other day, while we watched the sunset. It ended up being very delicious, one of the locals gave us some seasoning when we were out buying charcoal, which went very well with our citrus marinade that we made. We topped it all with some pico de gallo and ended up with a very peaceful and tasty fish dinner. I wish we had done that more, its a great feeling to prepare your meal completely and know where everything originates. There was still dessert left over from the day before, so we raided the fridge and polished it off.

I've also dove both yesterday and today. Yesterday was our last research dive, shallow water and strong currents. Its a great test of scuba skills, and the site was enjoyable, I had four squid sitting in a line watching me for half of my transect. Today we dove The Grotto, which is my absolute favorite dive site. The architecture of a huge cluster of coral heads next to the drop off creates a convoluted series of valleys and overhangs that house a wide variety of large fishes. I was swimming over them this morning when two huge reef sharks came out at seperate points and both started swimming towards our dive group in a pincer movement. The larger one looked like he was coming straight towards me, and being out in open water, all you can really do in that situation is hover and wait for the shark to turn away. He did, cruising out over the wall and out of sight. We saw the same sharks on the way back to the mooring line, as well as a sea turtle. There was a field of garden eels, poking their heads out of a sandy patch on the sea floor. Right above them was a small mating aggregation of yellowtail snappers. They rapidly shoot up to the surface in pairs to do this, and dash back down to a comfortable depth. Right by the mooring line, there was a fish trap, with a huge lobster head inside as bait. It had caught four large queen triggerfish, as well as an assortment of groupers and snappers. It was a good start to my saturday. Less than two weeks left on this island.

This ain't seaworld, it's as real as it gets!

This week has been very laid back. Every morning my research group has gone out and done field work, and we have usually been back by 10 AM. Then the rest of the day has been free to do whatever. I've done a lot of exploring, reading, and the only responsibility I've had is to write my research proposal, which was due last night. I'm really happy about how my proposal turned out. Our group of 12 is all using the same methods to collect all of our data, which we share, but we all individually use some of the data in our own projects. Personally, I am going to look at three benthic attributes at the sites we survey: rugosity (a measure of topographical complexity), vertical relief, and live coral cover. I want to see what correlations there are between these factors and the abundance of larger size classes of resident reef fish, as well as the overall estimated biomass of the area. Basically, I want to see what structural elements of the reef influence greater fish assemblages. This is important for management purposes, in doing reef recovery and similar things. So sorry if my writing is a bit dry, I just finished nine pages of scientific writing.

Our dive group, one of the interns took this picture.

Anyways, I just got out of the water from my first rec dive since last saturday. I've been diving throughout the week for research, but this is the first time we've all gone out on a "fun" dive. The surface conditions were really choppy, and we were in the small zodiac, so we just put our gear on in the water and descended as soon as we were ready. The noise and partial chaos of the waves vanished instantly as we went down into the silent, still  underwater world. We went to this site that I hadn't been to before, called The Warhead. It's the nose of the crashed drug plane, further down the wall. It is wedged in the rocks about 80-90 feet down, which is deeper than we can go, but we hovered out over the wall and looked down at it. The drop off really just takes my breath away every time I dive, especially when I hover out over the wall. Its a ridiculous sensation, to be floating there and looking out into an increasingly deep blue. Back over the shelf, I've really been enjoying looking at the corals and sponges at the depths we dive at. In a garden on land, flowers catch our attention because they add color and organized form to a confused green background. Underwater on a reef, the corals and sponges do the same, except the background is just the substrate, perhaps with some encrusting algae. The corals and sponges, instead of being organs of plants, are entire organisms, and colonies of organisms. Some colors are muted at 60 feet, but the deep greens and maroons of giant sponges are very impressive, and the rich purples of sea fans stand out well. These sessile animals have a ridiculous variety of forms as well, there are hard stony corals, fat cylindrical sponges, branching corals that look like antlers, sea rods that look like a soft cluster of tubes blowing with the current, and really deep on the wall I see crazy thin spiraling sponges. So cool. The setting of every dive I make here is this amazing garden, and that is just the backdrop for the fishes, sharks, sea turtles, and other cool things we encounter while diving. I hit my 10 hours of bottom time mark on the dive today.



Me, upper left. Sea turtle, lower right.


While I was eating after hopping off the boat, people brought in an injured flamingo to the center, hoping we would know what to do with it. I got to see it, it is in pretty bad condition, a small wound on its neck and a larger one on its chest. We think a dog attacked it, hopefully it wasn't a person that did it since that is a $50000 fine. Kind of like killing a bald eagle in America. Anyways, I'm going to go get lunch and then get back in the water to do more filming for our coral reef movie.

Just hanging.

Dolphins! And thats my hand on the left.

Shark Bay in the foreground, then East Bay, then Long Cay in the distance. View west from Pete's Point.

Research

Since directed research started, I have pretty much just been in the water as long as the sun is up. I've dove every day for the last four days, racked up three and half hours of bottom time, and spent the rest of the day snorkeling. I really just come back to the center for lunch and then its back out in the water again. Our directed research project has 12 students working on it, broken into three groups, 4 people per transect line, so we can do three at each site. I'll keep the description of what we are doing simple. We take the boats out to a site, and an intern (using scuba) begins to lay a 50 meter length of transect tape along the bottom. As the tape is being laid, two snorkelers follow the intern on the surface, and record what species of fish are within a 5 meter wide belt along the line, and their size classes. After that, two more students, scuba diving, record observations of various cover and topographical features, as well as measuring coral dimensions. This process takes around an hour, and we trade off between diving and snorkeling in our four person group. 

I love the research dives. They are awesome even though we are doing a lot of work, and it is hard to control your buoyancy at the ~25 foot depth that we work at, especially when you are using a slate to record data and a measuring tape. I like being able to see these shallow reef areas from a divers perspective. Normally I only get to see them close up when I am free diving during a snorkel trip, and I can only stay down there a short period of time, and the fish are startled and do not display normal behavior. It is really cool to watch them return to their normal business, and watch the cleaning stations, territorial fish, paired fish, feeding behavior, all sorts of cool things.

Yesterday we didn't do any research, but we had a fun dive at East Bay Spur, where we saw a couple sea turtles. Then more filming for our coral reef movie project in the afternoon, and then cleaning boats. As far as life outside of the water goes, it is also pretty awesome. An ice cream shop opened in town, and they have delicious homemade ice cream. The mosquitoes are getting a little better and the nights are getting cooler, I am actually using a sheet when I sleep now. An alum donated a foosball table to the center, so that is really cool, something new to do. If I get back early enough before dinner I can watch the lionfish group dissect their catch from the day. I haven't been fishing myself as much lately, but me and some friends were having good luck fishing off a jetty just west of the center, using conch scraps from the fishermen as bait. I actually caught two yellowtail snappers on the same line at one time before the hurricane. Here is a picture of me diving from about a week ago, checking out the remains of a crashed drug plane.

Dolphins

Done with finals. Directed research starts tomorrow, so I've been taking up time wandering the beaches, playing some whiffle ball, playing with Tomas (the cat thats been hanging out here), trying to build a raft, and lots of random fun things. Like scuba diving.

This morning bright and early I hopped on the bouncy rubber zodiac and headed off to dive the arch. Micah, the intern driving the boat was gunning the motor super fast and we actually got some clear feet of air off of some waves. It was a really fun ride. We were crusing next to the 23, a flat bottomed skiff, when all of a sudden there was a pod of dolphins swimming with us. Ricardo, our dive safety officer, was in our boat and told us to go faster, the dolphins wanted to play with us. They swam with of both of our boats, staying right in front of the bow. I was worried that we would run them over, but they could move so fast, every now and then, one would spiral away or dart ahead really quickly. They were jumping out of the water as well. I was lying leaning over the front of the boat, so I was literally inches away from them. Needless to say everyone was so excited. When we reached our dive sites and jumped in the water they lost interest, and we started our dives.

I don't have any pictures to post yet, but here is a video taken during the dolphin encounter. Sorry for all the loud screaming, but I mean, most of people here are girls so, you know how it goes. It was taken by someone on the other boat, but that means you get a discovery channel chase cam view of our boat. I am on the zodiac, the red boat, and I am lying on the front end, closest to the camera when you see the boat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxzi3w8nzFw


I dove at this site called The Arch, which is this huge arch about 50 feet down, that you can swim under. There were a few really big fish hanging out at the arch when we reached it, a nassau grouper, mutton snapper, and black jack to be exact. There were all sorts of crazy sponges and hydroids growing on the underside of the arch. The air bubbles I exhaled caught themselves in little pockets on the rock overhead, it looked like liquid mercury or something. Makes me want to try cave diving. I saw a lot of gramma loretos as well, they are a really cool fish that orient themselves based on the surface they are swimming next to, so when they are under an overhang they are swimming upside down. We had an excellent dive, the 40 minutes went by way too quickly, it seemed like our 3 minute safety stop came up way too quickly and then we were back on the boat again, heading back to the center.

On a sobering note, one of my roommates came up from a dive later in the day bleeding out of his ear, we aren't sure if he ruptured the ear drum or not, he went to the island clinic but they basically told him to come back tomorrow. He probably won't get to dive the rest of the trip though which is really unfortunate.

I'm about to go wander the town for the evening. Miss everyone back home, especially my awesome little siblings. Signing off.

Rock You Like a Hurricane!

It was a busy end to a busy week last week. Schedule went something like:

Wednesday: Diving
Thursday: Prepare for hurricane.
Friday: Two projects due. Hurricane.
Saturday: Clean up after the hurricane.
Sunday: Business as usual, study for finals.

So Tomas ended up deciding to take the most ideal path to hit us. It changed from its westernly path through the southern caribbean to head north. It built up strength down there, then the eye went through the straight in between cuba and hispaniola. From there it veered east again at the last minute, and the eye ended up passing right over our island. Haiti got hit, but the storm didn't really lose strength, it hit us at about its peak wind speeds. The day before we spent putting up metal plates on the windows, getting all our stuff off the floor, moving benches, tables, anything the wind could blow into things. We got our four boats out of the water as well. Everyone with boats too big to haul out anchored them in the straight between South Caicos and Long Cay, to serve as some protection from the wind and rain I guess. When we woke up on saturday we continued preparations and then after lunch made an orderly evacuation. We ended up taking shelter in this two story cylindrical buidling over at East Bay, an unfinished resort. As far as a dusty construction site went, it wasn't that bad. There were hurricane proof windows, which meant we got to see outside. We hung out outside most of the day as the winds picked up, and then at about 930 at night we sealed everything up. We watched movies on a projector and tried to sleep as the winds got louder and louder. The actual hurricane hit in the middle of the night. I woke up as the building shook and the winds howled for about an hour, then things calmed down as the eye went over us, only to return to furious weather after it passed. We couldn't see much, there was some lightning which confused me, I thought people were using flashlights inside (since we lost power), as I drifted in and out of sleep. The next day was clean up, which involved dealing with the flood inside our bedroom and picking up a lot of branches. The center didn't really sustain any significant damage, and everyone was alright.
That was the first hurricane I had been in, it was an experience for sure. The water is starting to clear up, I'm curious to see what the effects on the reefs were. I just took a final exam, and I have two more tomorrow, then classes are done, and I will literally just be in the water all day. The rest of the quarter will be directed research, and I got into my first choice project. It involves extra dives, which is awesome, I'll be diving and snorkeling and doing transects and quadrats measuring substrate topographical complexity and its correlation to fish populations. Data analysis will be interesting as well, there are some cool statistics to be done, and we'll cap it off with a legit 30 page scientific paper. I'm excited, this is what I've been looking forward to. I'll get to keep doing recreational dives too, so between that and research dives I'll be logging a lot in the near future.

Sharks, Hurricanes, and Other Normal Topics of Conversation Here

I haven't had time to write much lately. Probably the most notable thing that has happened was me being able to hang out with a reef shark for most of my last dive, to The Grotto, an awesome dive site. I got in the water and started to put my BC on, since we were in the Zodiac and there wasn't room to do it in the boat. I looked down and there it was, circling 50 feet down. We descended and it swam away. Then as we were making our way to the wall it came back, swam right by us and hung out with us for a while. We saw a couple reef sharks that dive, and a turtle, but that one decided to make several visits to us, it was the first thing I was when I got in the water and the last thing I saw before getting back on the boat. That was the closest I have been to one of those, closest I have been to any shark except for a nurse shark that I saw the very next day.

We had been doing filming for our coral reef movie project, and had been to a couple sites. There was a reef shark that we saw at Sharks Alley, and then at Admirals Aquarium I found a huge nurse shark hiding in what looked like a small opening in the rocks but what actually ended up opening into a sizable cave. At first I thought it was a ray in there covering the sand on the bottom, but it turned out to be just the caudal fin of the shark. There was some bladed fire coral around the entrance, but I could swim down and approach it from the right angle enough to grab some free rock and hold myself down enough to stick my head inside, and watch it sleeping.

Besides that I've been doing a lot of projects. There was a tourism assessment presentation and paper, a lobster management presentation, a marine ecology research proposal, all due in the time since I got back from break. I've still got a reef survey to complete, a cultural reflection to write, and a seagrass monitoring data analysis project to do before the week is over too. Then exams, then directed research starts. More on that later. I'm looking to either do research on the correlation between substrate topographical complexity and fish population size, or to do research on lionfish, catching them and recording locations and stomach contents.

Right now we are keeping an eye on Tomas, down in the southern caribbean. Its projected to hit haiti at a cat 2 force on friday, after that the current projected path is right over us. Haiti has had so much to deal with lately, there are still like a million people living in tents there, and they are in the middle of a cholera outbreak. Its a really bad situation, hopefully the hurricane gives them (and us) a miss.


Here are a couple pictures from my last dive.

Break

 Last Tuesday, Sunrise:

My bag was packed, and I was getting on board my Turks and Caicos Air flight to Providenciales, the most developed island in the chain. The whole group was going on a field trip for two days. We all were going to stay in the comfort inn, have our meals taken care of, and do field trip type things. Sounded good to me. I threw in a map so island names that I throw out actually mean something, cause I mean I would be too lazy to look this stuff up if I was reading someone elses blog.

So, we got to the international airport on Providenciales. Keep in mind this is after being on a tiny island for many weeks. When I had first gotten into Provo, straight from Cali, my first thoughts were something along the lines of: wow this place is really ghetto. Upon arriving there again, it just seemed like Las Vegas. In terms of infrastructure really, all the islands are beautiful, but using a shower, and sitting on a couch, for the first time since September 5th, was amazing. Comfort inn felt so nice. After we checked in there, we went to do some interviews for a tourism assessment project we are working on. We went to a local shopping center, where I had some real ice cream, and enjoyed actual organized shops (with air conditioning!). In the afternoon, we took a tour of Veranda, an all inclusive resort situated on Grace Bay, the popular white sand beach that stretched across most of the north side of the island. The resort was very, very nice. It was also neighboring Beaches resort, where me and seven other guys were planning on staying for break, which looked like it would be even nicer. In the evening, after the "field trip" portion of the day ended, some of us went over to the Seven Stars resort, and chilled at their beach bar. We met some great people there,  Sleeping in a real bed, with air conditioning, and no mosquito net, felt SO good that night.

Grace Bay

The next day we were up at sunrise again, eating a quick breakfast and then jumping on a ferry. We rode the ferry from Providenciales, past the group of small cays, to North Caicos. We stopped at a couple sites of interest there, the most notable was the community farm outside the town of Kew. North is really the only island that anything can be grown on, so they had greenhouses and fields of all sorts of crops.

Banana Trees on North Caicos

We drove across this causeway over to Middle Caicos next, where we stopped to go spelunking. There is a fairly extensive cave systems on this island, it was hard to take pictures, but in the one below you can see a group of people by the entrance, to give some scale. The passages go in far enough that it is dead black if you turn your lights off, and there are some submerged parts and some really big caverns.

Conch Bar Caves, Middle Caicos

After the caves, we went to the north shore for lunch, which we had at my new favorite beach in the world. The beach is at the base of a cliff, which forms a huge overhang/cave that provided plenty of shade to eat and sit in. The beach was great white sand, with a reef break further out in the water which made for great bodysurfing. I missed that about California beaches, we rarely get waves on South, unless there is a significant storm. Here at this beach on Middle, the waves were great. There was also this small spit of sand that lead out to this cluster of rocks, where there were pools of water big enough to sit in. It was very relaxing, like a hot tub except you are sharing the space with some chitons and snails and little fish. It was a great afternoon. We had the bus and ferry ride back, and that was the day.

The cliff overlooking the beach on Middle Caicos

The next morning, everyone checked out of comfort inn and headed to wherever they were spending break. A couple people went back to the states, a couple people went to the Dominican Republic, a couple people went to Grand Turk, but the majority of us stayed on Providenciales. Me and seven other guys were picked up by a van and driven to Beaches Resort, where we were greeted with cold towels before we checked in. This proved to be one of the best life decisions I have ever made. Because it was the offseason, and we had four guys to a room, we got a decent rate. They definitely lost money on us. Beaches is an all inclusive resort, so all the food and drinks you can consume are just served to you. Eight college males, fresh from a tiny island, could not be better suited to exploit this deal. Not only that, but diving with them was also included, which we also took advantage of. The resort was huge, I actually didn't get to see all of it in the time I was there. By the numbers, Beaches has: 16 restaurants, 12 bars, 3 of them swim up, 5 large pools, a waterpark and a club. They let you take out sailboats and kayaks and do all sorts of water activites. Forget disneyland, Beaches on Provo is the happiest place on earth. The four days I spent there were amazing, we lived like kings, and we appreciated it so much coming from South. I met four resort staff and a taxi driver who were from South actually. It is kind of a good life move I guess, if you grow up on South, to go and work on Provo. Long story short, Beaches was ridiculous. Oh and in a chance meeting on my last full day there, I ran into the parents of this girl who lived right across the hall from me in santa clara last year, and I had already met the mother before. We were on the same dive boat together. Cliche, but its a small world.

One of pools at Beaches. Over on the italian village side.

 Monday morning we flew back into South Caicos to start up the second half of the semester. I've done a few exciting things since then. Got all artistic in the gym, we decided the white walls were too boring. I'll get some pictures of our work up later. Went on a great snorkel this morning, up at the mangroves by the old coast guard station at the tip of the island. Mangroves are really really cool by the way. The visibility was kinda bad but that made the snorkel really interesting, just peering through the tangle of prop roots into the somewhat murky water, at the baby barracuda and needlefish and all sorts of juvenile reef fish that use the mangroves as a nursery. At one point I ended up turning my head and there being a huge barracuda literally two feet away from my face. One of the interns got stabbed himself on a lionfish. My biggest question of the day is this: You have this abbandoned coast guard station, that no one ever goes to, but why is there is one wing without windows that is locked down and has the air conditioner always running? With the price of electricity here, that is odd by itself, but in such a remote location? I dunno... I'm really curious as to what is in there.

All-In-One GTL Spot

The lack of tumbleweeds are really the only thing that distinguishes this town that I live in from the wild west. The streets have random crabs, feral dogs, and wild horses walking around though. The buildings have seen better days, and by that I mean most of them got pretty damaged in the 2008 hurricane and a lot of them haven't been repaired. So there are a lot of boarded up windows and such. The shops and bars are just very reminiscent of an old west town. There really is no government present here on the island, there are about four police officers that don't really do anything. Violence isn't a huge problem here, but there have been a couple bar fights since I have been here, people pretty much just deal with their own problems. If we are trying to find someone in town, we basically just wander the streets and check the bars until we find them. I don't use a cell phone or carry anything but cash really. Shops are open at very irregular hours, but if we can generally just ask whoever runs the store to come open it up if we need something and it isn't open for some reason.

Our "gym" is a drained swimming pool. It is built on the side of the island and has an amazing view of the ocean. The pullup bar is a tree branch, and for everything else all we really have to use are cinder blocks and tires. This is probably the best place I have ever worked out at though, I will miss this for sure. Besides, as the post title says, it makes GTL super easy because I do all three at the same place. Gym pictures:

Friday night we went camping at long beach. We took vans as far as we could on the one road that runs up that part of the island and then walked down the hills to the beach. The spot where we parked the van was actually not very far away from the highest point on the island, so I went up there and took a 360 video, and threw it up on youtube, take a look:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzHz7FuwZZc


 I got some good pictures there too, and then went down to the beach to help with the campsite. Almost everyone from the program went camping, so there were a good amount of tents on the beach. Me and some friends pitched ours at the end of the line and made a secondary fire pit. We ate dinner on the beach, watched the sun set from high point, and then chilled at our fire pit. By this point, some members of the group were having a rougher time then others, the bugs were pretty bad, there were lots of sand flies and mosquitoes of course. The beautiful white sand got everywhere too, an inevitability of beach camping. I changed into jeans and a long sleeved, lightweight shirt once the sun went down and ended up being very comfortable. The temperature was wonderful the whole night actually. The fire helped a lot with the bugs, and we had a great time just chilling there, listening to good music, talking, and watching the stars, such a good view of the stars. On the horizon we could see a patch of light coming from Grand Turk, an island too far away to see during the day, it being a good 30 miles away. I feel asleep outside by the fire, but sought shelter in my tent once it died down, the bugs were rather vicious. I have around 10 sand fly bites on every square inch of my feet, but that's just an estimate. I woke up and watched the sun rise the next morning, and it was really peaceful. Then it got hot.

I was in the last van out of the beach, so I got back to the center just in time to participate in our weekly site cleanup that we have on saturdays. I was not looking forward to it at all, seeing as I really didn't sleep that much and was covered in sand and bug bites. Then I found out that my room was on waterfront duty, and my day got so much better. I helped one of the interns clean the zodiac, one of our boats with bouncy rubber sides. We keep it anchored away from the dock so people dont mess with it. It was basically go grab my mask, then swim out there and hold my breath while I scrub the bottom of the boat, and it was a lot of fun actually. The water was super refreshing, just what I needed, and I felt awake enough to go on a snorkel when I finished. We took a boat out to the far side of long cay and drifted in with the tide, swimming around it and back through shark alley, and getting back on the boat there. On the way we saw a lot of really cool things, including this one little patch that was probably the most intense square foot of reef I have seen. It was a patch of bladed fire coral, with a long spined sea urchin inside, all surround by fire sponge, with a spotted moray eel in residence inside it all. The best was the eagle rays. I'm used to seeing them, one or three at a time, and they are still amazing and worth following as long as possible. But yesterday I found myself swimming with a group of TWENTY spotted eagle rays. So crazy. There were also big schools of jacks and other fish, the tide coming in must have been very nutrient rich because everything was out feeding. It was a great snorkel.

Stayed in and watched the Giants game with a Phillies fan from the room next to me before we joined everyone out at the bars last night, since american baseball doesnt get played much here, and by much I mean at all. Go Giants though! Figured I would make this a long post since I probably won't be posting much until after I come back from break.

"Everythings groovy mon"

Just realized I haven't posted anything in a week. Well, let me hit up some highlights of this last week and throw up some pictures. So midterms were last friday, saturday, and monday. After that was finished, we moved on to the data analysis phase of our conch assessment project for Marine Ecology. In groups, we have to prepare a paper on our results, referencing a host of other scientific papers. I just finished my share of the literature summaries to pass around to the group. We are also starting a tourism assessment project for Environmental Policy that begins today, and we have a research proposal project and a lobster management proposal to do after we come back from break.

Sunday me and a couple friends swam out off one of the beaches to HDL and Dove Cay, where we explored the reef and the island on our own. It was a great time, its nice to not be rushed at a reef and be able to take all the time you want. There are a lot of interesting things that you can miss in a casual swim by. You could miss groups of freshly post-larval fish looking to settle on a patch of reef that are super small and transparent. You could miss a cleaning station, where all sorts of large fish like nassau groupers come and open their mouths and gills for little wrasses to come and eat little parasites and detritus off of them. All sorts of cool things hide under ledges and inside crevasses in the rocks. And then there are the big things. Like when five spotted eagle rays cruised by us, looking majestic as they glided through the water. The views above the water from the top of dove cay were great. It was cool to be able to look out at the surrounding coastlines and know what I would find under the water in spots all over.

We went hunting for lionfish on monday. A lionfish hunt involves scouring a reef for them and netting them and bringing them back for dissection. Lionfish are an invasive species here, originally from the indopacific, with no natural predators, an array of spines that deliver venomous sting, a wide range, and a large appetite. The more that are killed the better. We caught a lot and no one got stung. Not every day you get to go hunt venomous fish for class.

My pressure gauge broke on wednesday so I had to miss a dive, it was pretty unfortunate but I'll be able to get a replacement next week, since I'll be on the main island. Its pretty hard to be upset about things when you can go work out with a great ocean view, and then go jump in the ocean to wash off. Last night, I had a stingray wider than a bathtub swim right next to me when I was taking a sea bath.

Today we are visiting the only functional hotel and the two in development as part of our tourism assessment. Tonight we are going camping on long beach, I'm really looking forward to that. Then on tuesday we leave for Provo. We are going to some other bigger islands on a field trip for a couple days and ending up on Provo for our break to start. It actually made the most financial sense for me and a group of friends to stay friends to book a 5-star all inclusive resort for the rest of our break. Seriously. Its off season here so we got a great rate. Looking forward to that, using a real shower for the first time since leaving California will be awesome. Anyways here are some recent pictures of underwater fun we've been having here.




Brain Coral




Spotted Eagle Ray




I'm front left, yellow snorkel




Barracuda




Grunts chilling at Admirals Aquarium



Southern Stingray



Blue Chromas



Awesome picture of sea fans

Elkhorn coral

Yup, thats me.

Wide assortment of reef fishes

Lionfish

We've had some spectacular sunsets lately, even better than usual.

Last night after dinner



Someone got a picture of me watching the sun set over Middleton, night before last