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| Well, it's finally happened. i have officially returned to
America. i did a terrible terrible job keeping this blog updated
the last few weeks in South Caicos. woops. let me summarize
and re-cap:
the week dedicated to our directed research projects was
AMAZING. we were out on/in the water almost every hour of the
day...catching turtles, conducting underwater line intercept transects,
catching sharks and seabathing in between. the following week was
spent on data analyses and writing our final papers, making our final
oral presentations and group posters and then presenting all of
them. the presentations went well and it was neat to finally see
what other groups had been researching. we were all so busy with
our own projects we never had time to find out what everyone else were
up to. that same week a guy who used to be a Dive Safety Officer
(DSO) at our center a couple years ago came back down to the island to
help train a lady who was interviewing for the position (our DSO had
left to get married-Gerald-about a month into our program, and we just
stopped diving pretty much from that point on). The guy's name
was Ben Meister (pretty sweet huh?) and he was AWESOME. we got to
go diving everyday!!! it was UNBELIEVABLE!! the
visibility...and we went SCUBA diving in just our bathing suits, no
wetsuits needed in the warm water. we went to The Arch, The
Grotto, Troy's Dream, The Maze and we did a night dive at the
Plane!! Troy's Dream and The Maze were brand new dive sites
too! we were the first to ever dive them officially! And we
did a deeper dive (92 ft. was my max.). At deeper depths you can
get narc-ed out, but i don't know if i was narc-ed out or if it was my
usual extreme delight in the dive, but i was soooo happy about
the dive...things were BEAUTIFUL and the places were AMAZING and i
LOVED everything..hehe, it was probably a combination of both.
the sites were gorgeous...no words can do them justice...and i saw a
great big reef shark off the coral wall, and a school of 5 spotted
eagle rays gracefully flapping gently through the water in unison
(probably one of the most breathtaking moments of my entire life) and a
bazillion amazing coral and fish species. man, i am officially
hooked on SCUBA diving!!! i LOVE it! it's been amazing
having groups of friends to dive with too...we fool around and joke and
make funny poses underwater...like flips and logan and i tried to stick
our heads in a sponge upside down, but found out our heads didn't quite
fit...it was hilarious. no words. no words.
other than the diving and our research, nights were spent out in
town at the bars and the beach. we tried to take advantage of
every last minute we had together. random memories: snorkel beer
bongs, smoking in the streets, dancing, the day of ultimate frisbee in
the water at Sandy Point, the last couple days of tanning on the dock,
blue water snorkel, the slideshow, TRAMPOLINE!, conch wall and the
rock, pants off dance off!, wrestling, and soooo much more!!! it
was an amazing semester and i love everyone i was in south caicos with
sooo much!! i miss all of you already!!
it was really really really REALLY sad saying goodbye to everyone at
the airports. i balled a bit. being home was fun for about
a day. it was nice to see my parents and to tell them about my
trip. but now i am fully depressed and i miss the water and
people soooo unbelievably much. once again i'm struggling to
readjust to life in America. i guess i got used to island
time...i get so stressed even driving hahaha. i miss the warm
water and the sunny blue sooo much. i seriously am
depressed... and i hate that i probably won't see many of the
close friends i've made on the island. :(:(:(
so...i guess this officially ends this blog. South Caicos was
amazing. By far the best semester of my life school-wise.
classes in coral reef-filled warm waters-what could beat that? i
couldn't have asked for any part of it to have been better looking back
on it. it was perfect and an experience i will never ever forget. | | |
| ok, so i'm 10 days behind on this...woops. in short, it's been a very busy 2 weeks.
last monday, we went on a boat ride to middle caicos where we camped
for the week. it was overall a pretty nice trip, except it rained
quite a bit which made some plans get cancelled (bummer). we set
up our tents in these little straw huts that were there and camped out
on Bombarra beach. the first day we visited a basket weaver and
boat maker, then had a bonfire. the next day it rained so we took
refuge at the airport restaurant after visiting a second basket weaver
and exploring Conch Bar Cave--which was awesome. We killed
several hours in the restaurant and ate lunch there, but our trail walk
was cancelled because it was pouring rain. We did get to go on
the walk and hiked through the woods a bit the following day and ate
dinner at a local bar/restaurant. Our last day there I snorkeled
out on the reef and checked out Parrot Cay which was a little ways off
Middle Caicos. The reef was really cool because it looks a lot
different compared to the reefs here in South Caicos-there are a lot of
neogoniolithon heads and less patch reefs like in South Caicos.
On Friday, the guy who was supposed to lead us back to South Caicos by
boat was going to show up at 7 am, but he was 4 hours late, so we all
sat on the dock waiting for him and napping. When he finally
showed up, the tide had gotten so low it took us 5 hours to get back to
South Caicos--one of the worst boat rides because we all were
fried.
Dylan set up a chocolate sedar, which was a lot of fun, but ultimately
left us with giant stomach aches because of all the chocolate we ate
and chocolate milk we drank. it was really creative and i learned
a lot about a jewish tradition. the same night, we dyed eggs and
decorated easter cookies.
Easter sunday was soooo nice! My room had kitchen crew and we
went all out on the meal. We set up the tables outside and spread
sand in the middle and decorated with conch shells with pink flowers
and candles, and spread sea glass and shells on top of the sand.
For dinner we made a pork roast-which is mighty fancy for here. I spent
the entire day in the kitchen between making brunch and dinner, but it
was totally worth it. We even had an easter egg hunt-dylan hid
plastic eggs with candy inside all over the center and property and we
went crazy, running all over trying to find the most. even our
professor, aaron joined in. it was such a fun night. we
went out that night and hung out at the beach because trench town
looked closed. the starry sky was amazing!
This week has been dedicated to nothing but our directed research
projects. I have been turtling and in the water non-stop. i
am soooo exhausted but we just keep on trucking. Monday was soooo
much fun-we went out with the shark team and set up shark and turtle
nets, then chased after turtles and sharks with hand nets and the
boat. We caught 3 turtles--one we tired out by chasing with the
boat and then Mark literally flung his body off the side of the boat
and pounced on it. another one all 7 of us ran around in the
water chasing until it stopped on the bottom and we picked it up.
the 3rd was caught in the shark net. for sharks, 4 lemons were
caught in the net and the group of us girls caught a 4.5 ft. nurse
shark with a net. we cut it off with the net and it came swimming
right towards me. when it hit the net i pulled up the bottom lead
line and flipped it up so the shark was caught. Dacia was on the
other side of the shark and pulled up her side until it was
caught. it was AWESOME!! my heart was pounding as soon as i
saw its giant head gliding towards me. it was such an adrenaline
rush!
we went turtle rodeoing that night at HDL and Tuckers and caught 3
turtles--all recaptures. there was a major breakout of bloodworms
and it was sooo gross! it was literally constant clouds of these
thin, red worms squiggling through the water, and all you could do was
just keep pushing through them. i could feel them squirming on my
skin and through my hair...yuck it was really unpleasant and the whole
time i was just thinking to myself "DO NOT swallow a gulp of
water!" Yesterday we did transects to assess the habitats at each
site we catch turtles at. it takes forever and it's rather
tedious, but it's solely for my project so it has to be done (and done
correctly). we completed 20 transects- 10 at Admirals and 10 at
Shark Alley. Last night we went rodeoing all the way out at Six
Hills, but couldn't find any turtles; although, we did see an awesome
octopus that kept changing colors like crazy.
Today we spent the morning doing transects at HDL and Tuckers, and
tonight we're rodeoing at Admirals and Shark Alley. the water is
SOOO calm and the visibility is 100%! We could see from the boat
all the way to the bottom of the water at deep parts of the
water...amazing. tomorrow night is our last night of turtle
rodeoing...i can't believe the turtle work is over. next week all
we work on is our data analysis and write-ups and
presentations/posters.
this program is quickly coming to an end, and while i couldn't wait for
this time to come previously, i'm suddenly overwhelmed with
dread. i have gotten really close with the people here, and
because we were ridiculously loaded with work earlier, we didn't really
start getting to know each other really really well until last week
when classes were over. i really do love it here in South Caicos,
and i am going to miss so much about this place. i'm going to
miss sea bathing A LOT, swimming laps in the ocean, snorkeling at
night, the coral reef, being in the ocean in just a bathing suit,
sitting at night at the conch wall talking, sitting on the dock at
regatta village talking, the starry night sky (phenomenal here) -
especially my gummy bear constellation!, drinking/smoking at regatta
village beach, boat rides-especially when aaron is driving, chasing
after sharks in the water with nets, the turtles, dancing at the bars
and of course the people i've grown so close to. i can't believe
i might never see a lot of them ever again. :( i
don't want to leave...
| | |
| i don't think i've ever been so happy to be done with work before in my life. ok, that's definitely a lie because i feel sooo relieved at the end of each semester, but this program has just been so intense and frustrating, to be done has felt amazing. we had 3 finals this week, one as day from thursday to saturday. i pulled 2 all-nighters studying, but i think i pulled it off pretty well. we'll see...i'm just soo happy classes and tests are over!! now we only have to focus on our directed research projects.
in celebration of the end of classes, everyone (all the students and our 3 professors) partied in town last night. it was soooooo much fun! we celebrated molly's 21st birthday too since we couldn't earlier in the week with all our work. we started out at good ol' Trenchtown, where they played a burned CD Molly had made, and we all went nuts dancing. it was a blast! after the CD played through once, we all walked over to the Haitian Bar - the Cash 'n' Carry. We all like that bar a lot more-it's bigger and has more room to dance and it's brighter too. We were dancing machines!! holy crapola it was a lot of fun :) This time, instead of being weirded out by the sketchy locals, we were followed to the Haitian bar by 4 middle-aged American men who we on S. Caicos for a fishing trip. they all had wives but they were creeps! they were trying to dance with all the girls and were blatantly yelling crude comments at us. but regardless, it was soooo much fun dancing tho!!! the people at the bar put on the electric slide. whoa, that was a surprise!! hahaha it was so much fun. and we had our mix played again...we were dancing all over the place. it was such a perfect night. we got rides back to the center on the creepy guys' gator (boy did that remind me of Shoals!!--i had to help the guy learn how to drive it...he forgot you had to put it out of gear to start...) and they continued to be drunken American creeps. i sat in the front facing back because the seats were full and the guy told me i should sit on his lap because it was safer, to which i refused. then a guy in the back part told me i was the best dancer ever, but then 2 minutes later randomly shouted out "take your tops off!". it was some craziness but all-in-all the most fun we've had here at night in South Caicos.
quick note--the latest thing we've been joking about is the whole liability case thing. so, anytime something fun randomly pops up during times when we don't have anything scheduled, the staff will go and do it and refuse to let us come along because of "liability". first of all, staff members are higher liability cases than us. second of all, it's the lamest excuse ever. it's like on Appledore at the Shoals Marine Lab--one day this ginormous ship came into the area and suddenly the captain was shuttling everyone on the island out to see it. when something cool and exciting came into the area, everything would be stopped and we would take advantage of it. here, this is not the case which is unfortunate. like when there were whales just behind the island across from here, nothing was done. and when cool ships came into the area, staff would go out but refuse to let us come. the other thing is, it's pretty much just carrie and dave (our student affairs manager and site manager) who we have problems with. actually, that's the case overall--no one here likes carrie because she's a full out bitch who just says rude comments to everyone, and dave is just a crappy site manager. but we love our professors and interns. albert is a pretty bad teacher, but he acts as our student affairs manager since none of us can talk to Carrie because she's so awkward and mean to us, and he would also make a great site manager because he would be sure we took as much advantage of South Caicos during our stay here. but, all bitching aside-there is some humor in this whole rant. for site cleanup, we have to use machetes, electric weed-wackers, very large clippers, pick axes, climb up on the roof using broken ladders, and clean out gutters with red ant nests inside...etc. and yet, while none of those are considered liability cases, riding a bicycle is. or taking a boat ride in the boats we use practically everyday for classes to a place we always go to to see a boat that has come through, that's a liability case. so...when we were riding back on the gator last night--we just were yelling out about how having drunken men drive us on crappy roads in essentially a riding lawn mower with about 3 x's the number of people it has room for...that had to have been a liability case and yet it's not since we were doing it on our own... | | |
| i just finished my first final of three--resource management, which is the one we all failed last time. i actually feel good about this one, although i better have done well after pulling an all-nighter studying last night. it was crazy--the amount we had to study for the test was ridiculous...but i'm soooo happy it's over!
this week has been sooooo awesome!! monday and tuesday i ended up going out with the sharking team during the day and it was awweeessooommme!!! oh man, it was so much fun. we ended up chasing after sharks in the boat, then trying to surround then with these giant nets we had. it was so much fun, it was ridiculous. we would drive along a channel, then point out a shark, chase it with the boat to tire it or sneak up on it, then when we got close and it was resting, we would all jump out of the boat and feed out the net and try to either chase the shark into the net or walk with the net and surround it. when the shark ran into the net we were supposed to reach down in the water and grab the line of the net that was on the bottom and pull it up to wrap the shark in the net. on monday, we only had the flimsy turtle net with us, and we ended up finding a 6 ft nurse shark. we spent the whole afternoon chasing it and trying to catch it with the net, but it would just thrash it's head from side-to-side once and rip the net and swim through. this thing was massive!! it came at me a couple times and it was sooo scary! our hearts pound sooo fast and hard everytime a shark comes at us, it's pretty scary because this thing with a massive head suddenly appears in the water and swims straight at you, and you're supposed to just stand still and let it swim into the net you're holding. we weren't able to catch the 6-footer, but aaron (the turtle and shark advisor) did chase after a small nurse shark that had bumped off the 2 nets the shark team had set up and left. it was swimming away and aaron was trying to herd it back towards the net, and ended up grabbing it by its tail in the water, because it had bit his shorts!! it would not let go!!! omg, we all went running over to him and we were holding it up away from his leg, and it just wouldn't let go, even when we bumped it on the nose-so aaron had to cut his shorts with a swiss army knife. omg it was so awesome. the 2nd day we brought out a better net and were able to catch a 4 ft. nurse shark. it was massive too...oh man it was so cool to touch it. we also caught a lemon shark-which looks more like the shark you tend to picture in your mind..pointy teeth, great white shark kind of look to it. when we were taking down the nets they had left set up, i came upon a boxfish so i untangled it from the net and it just hung out in my hand underwater until it had recovered and swam away. it was really really cool. oh man, sharking is awesome.
oh yea--monday night i went turtling out at Admirals and Shark Alley (an hour after we got back from sharking), and we caught one hawksbill and one green-one at each site. we finally caught a turtle at Admirals! it was a lot of fun that night because we finally have some moonlight back (my flashlight died again but it was fun to swim around and see the dark shapes of coral and swim around only with the moonlight to guide you--it's intense too). the water was really calm so it was each to maneuver around the coral and swim where you wanted...overall a very very fun night (and day). after finals it's basically all directed research projects, so i hope to do a lot more sharking during my days if i can. | | |
| saturday night we all went to dinner at Mama Love's and again, stuffed ourselves with amazing food-stewed conch, conch fritters, rice and beans... oh man it was great. yesterday was our day off and as usual we had to spend the entire day working. we have a project right now (our very last one!) which consists of analyzing the current Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) which are no-take zones where no fishing activity is allowed. Each group is assigned a different industry that has interest in the exploited fisheries (my group is aquaculture) and we have to re-zone or leave the current MPAs based on what works best for our industry. it's actually a tough project--we had/have to research a lot.
today i have the whole day to work and then it's back to turtling tonight-Admirals and Shark Alley tonight. final exams start on thursday morning...i'm really nervous and i just want them all to be over!! it's so stressful...
as of tomorrow, I only have a month left here in South Caicos. It's going to fly by...although at this point every single one of us have mixed feelings on the matter. i think everyone is looking forward to getting back, but we will definitely miss the water. i find that we get pretty restless when waterfront sessions (dives and snorkels) aren't scheduled, so we're stuck in the center all day and have no time in the water. i think the water is the only thing that keeps us interested here. other than that, i'll be happy to go home...which is a bit disappointing and i'm sad south caicos couldn't be the next appledore-but then, I should have expected that. anywho, i already have a trip planned with my parents to go to portsmouth (NH) the weekend i get back. i can't wait to get back on campus at UNH.
i've been keeping in touch sporadically with Dr. Haney about my summer plans, altho we have not heard about my summer grant yet...anyday now actually (eek!). he wants me to work quite a bit with this summer's REUs out on Appledore, so it looks like i'll be going back out there quite a few times between collecting for my project and helping Haney and Morin's interns--*Kyle, if you are reading this, will you be going out too???? PLEASE COME!! I MISS YOU!! it's going to be really strange and sad to go out there and not know anyone :( being in south caicos makes me miss appledore a lot (in case you couldn't already tell). i'm starting to get really excited and anxious for the summer--i can't wait to live in dover and take trips to cape cod and boston and vermont and see shows at SPAC... | | |
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