(I didn't skip week 9... I just counted my weeks wrong!)
Its officially gotten hot in the Turks and Caicos Islands! I am definitely my parents’ daughter , because my little toes are so swollen that they look like little sausage links: a phenomenon that none of my fellow students are experiencing (sorry mom and dad, but I got your weird foot swelling genes)!
It is week ten, and as our time here is quickly dwindling down, our work load is not... in scientific terms, there’s an inverse relationship between our time left and work to do :) Getting more in depth into research topics, most of us are filtering through the center on research days: napping and studying between our time in the field. Not to mention, our
final exams looming in the near future, I think all of us are a bit stressed, but still managing adventures when we find the time!
Last Friday, my research group had the pleasure of taking a day trip to (what I think) the prettiest part of the island, called coastguard point. Named after a former US coastguard station; now, of course, a creepy abandoned building. We surveyed multiple sites, and after 4 hours and 15 transects, we only recovered 7 conch. Shocking, but not uncommon in the waters of South Caicos. I was exhausted, and once we finished, I was more than ready to get home and into dry clothes! After returning and rinsing our gear (salt water destroys just about everything), we began our dissections. This is important to my project, because I am looking into whether there is a correlation between operculum length (the hard foot part) and their reproductive maturity. This could potentially be very important for fisheries management and could possibly change some current regulations on fishing conch. After our dissections were finished and we were de-slimed, it was time for a Friday night beach bonfire. This has become a common occurrence among the SFS students (as long as there is s’mores)! Since I grew up in good ole’ Indiana, I only experienced bonfires in our backyards and bonfires on the beach were only things in movies... so I’m always thrilled for waterfront fires, especially since the sand is fluffy and white!
The weekend was here in the blink of an eye and my favorite day of the week, Saturday! My group dove at 10AM and we had a mission on our dive... get silly videos! One of the other SFS programs has challenged us all to a music video competition. Naturally we accepted and are automatically confident in our ability to make a kick-ass video. Mount
Kilimanjaro (SFS: Kenya & Tanzania) has nothing on our corals heads and eagle rays... or at least that's how we feel. When it comes to our marine fauna, it’s personal for the South Caicos students :) Clad with our underwater cameras, seven divers rolled into the water just above the breathtaking corals at the Grotto. Once we descended, we got our jam on to the sound of our bubbles and the humpbacks in the distance... my new favorite music! On the rest of the dive, we saw a few turtles, eagle rays, and yet again the amazing coral heads around the Grotto. Later in the day, we opened the doors for outreach, where I was stationed at the arts and crafts table (my personal favorite) and helped kids make shark clothes pins. Towards the end of the two hours, we had another groove-fest with the kids to put into the video. Let me tell you, South Caicos kids can get down! Afterwards, a nap on the hammocks was imminent and some work to finish as
well.
Sundays are our day off, so we decided to head to the beach after brunch (and some delicious cinnamon rolls). The rest of the day, most of us worked on a paper due this coming week!
Monday and Tuesday were both designated research days, but unfortunately the water was too rough for anyone to go out into the field. So both days were pretty slow, and allowed us to work on projects and begin studying for our exams (with some serious pool time as well) :)
Today is Wednesday the 9th and it marks the start of the last month here. We got to visit coastguard point again, where there is a development called SailRock that is being built. Again, it was beautiful... and if I ever make enough money where I can buy a vacation home in the Caribbean, there's no doubt that I will buy a SailRock villa!
Fun facts of the week: A group of eagle rays is called a squadrant... which officially makes them ten times cooler! Also, there is something called the Eternal Reef Project, where you can actually arrange for your ashes to be made into artificial reef balls and placed into the ocean. Reef balls are used to stimulate reef growth, so technically... you can use your ashes to create a coral reef... creepy, but totally awesome. :)
Not only did I register for my senior year of classes this week (yuck), but there's only 29 days left of the program . I can’t believe that we are on the home stretch, but at the same time, I am so thrilled to continue doing research and all the adventures to come!
Its officially gotten hot in the Turks and Caicos Islands! I am definitely my parents’ daughter , because my little toes are so swollen that they look like little sausage links: a phenomenon that none of my fellow students are experiencing (sorry mom and dad, but I got your weird foot swelling genes)!
It is week ten, and as our time here is quickly dwindling down, our work load is not... in scientific terms, there’s an inverse relationship between our time left and work to do :) Getting more in depth into research topics, most of us are filtering through the center on research days: napping and studying between our time in the field. Not to mention, our
final exams looming in the near future, I think all of us are a bit stressed, but still managing adventures when we find the time!
Last Friday, my research group had the pleasure of taking a day trip to (what I think) the prettiest part of the island, called coastguard point. Named after a former US coastguard station; now, of course, a creepy abandoned building. We surveyed multiple sites, and after 4 hours and 15 transects, we only recovered 7 conch. Shocking, but not uncommon in the waters of South Caicos. I was exhausted, and once we finished, I was more than ready to get home and into dry clothes! After returning and rinsing our gear (salt water destroys just about everything), we began our dissections. This is important to my project, because I am looking into whether there is a correlation between operculum length (the hard foot part) and their reproductive maturity. This could potentially be very important for fisheries management and could possibly change some current regulations on fishing conch. After our dissections were finished and we were de-slimed, it was time for a Friday night beach bonfire. This has become a common occurrence among the SFS students (as long as there is s’mores)! Since I grew up in good ole’ Indiana, I only experienced bonfires in our backyards and bonfires on the beach were only things in movies... so I’m always thrilled for waterfront fires, especially since the sand is fluffy and white!
The weekend was here in the blink of an eye and my favorite day of the week, Saturday! My group dove at 10AM and we had a mission on our dive... get silly videos! One of the other SFS programs has challenged us all to a music video competition. Naturally we accepted and are automatically confident in our ability to make a kick-ass video. Mount
Kilimanjaro (SFS: Kenya & Tanzania) has nothing on our corals heads and eagle rays... or at least that's how we feel. When it comes to our marine fauna, it’s personal for the South Caicos students :) Clad with our underwater cameras, seven divers rolled into the water just above the breathtaking corals at the Grotto. Once we descended, we got our jam on to the sound of our bubbles and the humpbacks in the distance... my new favorite music! On the rest of the dive, we saw a few turtles, eagle rays, and yet again the amazing coral heads around the Grotto. Later in the day, we opened the doors for outreach, where I was stationed at the arts and crafts table (my personal favorite) and helped kids make shark clothes pins. Towards the end of the two hours, we had another groove-fest with the kids to put into the video. Let me tell you, South Caicos kids can get down! Afterwards, a nap on the hammocks was imminent and some work to finish as
well.
Sundays are our day off, so we decided to head to the beach after brunch (and some delicious cinnamon rolls). The rest of the day, most of us worked on a paper due this coming week!
Monday and Tuesday were both designated research days, but unfortunately the water was too rough for anyone to go out into the field. So both days were pretty slow, and allowed us to work on projects and begin studying for our exams (with some serious pool time as well) :)
Today is Wednesday the 9th and it marks the start of the last month here. We got to visit coastguard point again, where there is a development called SailRock that is being built. Again, it was beautiful... and if I ever make enough money where I can buy a vacation home in the Caribbean, there's no doubt that I will buy a SailRock villa!
Fun facts of the week: A group of eagle rays is called a squadrant... which officially makes them ten times cooler! Also, there is something called the Eternal Reef Project, where you can actually arrange for your ashes to be made into artificial reef balls and placed into the ocean. Reef balls are used to stimulate reef growth, so technically... you can use your ashes to create a coral reef... creepy, but totally awesome. :)
Not only did I register for my senior year of classes this week (yuck), but there's only 29 days left of the program . I can’t believe that we are on the home stretch, but at the same time, I am so thrilled to continue doing research and all the adventures to come!
Great scenery and even better company on East Bay Beach!
Getting my groove on with Deon (on the left) at outreach!
If only the colors came out in pictures!