February 18, 2017

Hey all!

My apologies for not updating anything for the past few days. A lot of it has been mostly travel, so there wasn’t much to talk about (I figure I already ranted enough at the beginning of this anyways). But, today was so amazing that I had to pick it back up. The rest of my entries may not be daily. They may be every other day, or something like that. It’s hard to believe, but we’re even busier in Cayman than we were in Costa Rica.

If you’re not totally familiar with the program, I’ll try to give a quick rundown just so you know what’s going on here. Basically, we just spent 6 weeks or so in Costa Rica traveling to different field stations basically every week, conducting a research project at each one. Now, we finish the course with marine ecology. We spend three weeks at Little Cayman Research Center on Little Cayman Island conducting projects on the reefs surrounding the island.

Cool, now we’re all on the same page. First things first, if you don’t have an idea about where LC is, look it up on a map. Seriously. We’re south of Cuba, east of Grand Cayman, and just northwest of the middle of nowhere. The island has ~100 residents, nearly all connected to the dive industry. Food has to be barged in, trash incinerated, and freshwater comes from rainwater collection cisterns.

It’s amazing.

But before continuing with that, I’ll try to catch you up (quickly) from where I left off.

I survived the caterpillar. Turns out a close relative of it, the puss caterpillar, is the most venomous caterpillar in the US and regularly sends people to the hospital. Good thing they don’t live in Costa Rica.

We spent about three days at La Selva writing up our final manuscripts. Because Hannah was leaving us after La Selva, we needed the final paper in publishable form ASAP. So we basically wrote, got feedback, wrote some more, and explored in our free time. Hannah (the student) and I took bikes that had been rented from the station and went on a bike ride into the primary forest of La Selva for a few miles. It’s a gorgeous place.

After La Selva, we headed back to San Jose. It was only an hour and half bus ride, so we got to San Jose before noon and had most of the day free. Some us went to the store and bought snacks for LC, and I grabbed a six pack (of Toña, the Nicaraguan national beer) as a send off for Costa Rica. We had an awesome dinner all together in the Park Inn. This is traditionally known as the Last Supper, for many fairly obvious reasons.

I got up at 3:45 the next morning to pack (packing that night would have been a bad idea, trust me). We left at 4:30 and were on a plane by 8:30. We got to Miami and had a 6 hour layover for our flight to Grand Cayman. It was both awesome, and horrible. Gabby and I had a serious craving for fast food, so we grabbed Einstein Bros bagels the moment we got through security (we had to go through again after clearing customs), then immediately got chicken tenders at Wendy’s. Which we followed with a burger from Wendy’s for the flight.

We flew to Grand Cayman and cleared customs around 7, and got to our hotel around 8. The place was weird, especially after coming from Costa Rica. Grand Cayman was filled with people on dive vacations, honeymoons on their yachts…. you get the picture. Definitely a quick change. We had until noon the next day to do whatever we wanted. Callum, Sam, Braden and I explored a bit of the town center near us, came back to see the beach, then I went to pack my bags. The beach was INSANE; imagine pure white sand, turtles swimming just offshore in turquoise water and tons of tourists. Ok, maybe the last one wasn’t great, but definitely notable.

At 12:30, some of us went to the poolside bar and ordered piña coladas to have before the flight. We left for the Grand Cayman airport and cleared security in no time. Our flight to Little Cayman was incredible. We walked onto the tarmac and were told to go to the propeller plane waiting. Being close to the back of the line, I got to watch everyone pass the tiny Twin Otter (small propeller plane) and head to the bigger one, only to get turned around and told to go to the small one. It was great. The plane fit 10 of us and two other people going to Little Cayman. I was in row 1, which meant I was 6 inches from the cockpit. That 45 minute flight, suffice to say, was a otterly amazing (was that a stretch? naw).

Little Cayman airport is one runway with no lights and a small wooden building with a hand-painted sign that says terminal 1 gate 1. As if you had a choice. We met Celia (the final professor for the course) on the tarmac, and we all drove to Little Cayman Research Center. The island is 10 miles long and 1 mile wide (at its widest) with only one road going around the whole thing. It’s just great.

And the research center is amazing. Located right on the beach, with bunk rooms, amazing facilities, and super cool people (there are scientists here right now working on Nassau Grouper spawning biology). With an hour free before dinner, we moved in and some of us went snorkeling on the reef right in front of the center. We saw turtles, rays, and thousands of fish. It’s a pristine Caribbean coral reef, as our front yard. Jeez.

We had intros and lectures until pretty late at night.

Today, after breakfast (which is at 7 am!! We’re making progress!!) we had a lecture on coral reefs, then the divers met with the dive master here and got gear and a safety talk. We then had an hour before lunch, so we went snorkeling again. The reef in front of the station is a barrier reef that extends the length of the island, so there’s no shortage of things to looks at. After lunch, the divers all met up and set up our gear, then everyone (including those not diving, they’re always included at the dive sites) drove to Cumber’s Cove, our first dive site for the trip.

This was one of the MOST beautiful things I have ever seen.

Just for our check-out dive, we spent 45 minutes exploring a near-shore reef and it was breathtaking. It’s hard to explain the experience of being in 50 feet of turquoise blue water with 80 feet of visibility next to a 20 foot tall reef. The sheer scale of everything was mind-blowing. After the dive, we had some time free to prepare for a short talk everyone would give on a creature of the ocean they had seen today. People presented until dinner.

After a lecture from Madi on fish behavior, we were treated to a guest speaker. If you look up “bloody bay wall national geographic”, you will see an unbelievable picture made by Jim Hellemn. Jim just happened to be on Little Cayman photographing the grouper spawning occurring off the island, and agreed to talk to us about his work. He used to be an electrical engineer for the military, then worked for a sub-ocean imaging company, then became an underwater photographer. He told us about the work he does, and you can see some of it at “coralanchors.com”.

Long story short, he takes thousands of high definition photos of reefs and stitches them together to form pictures of full coral reefs. The bloody bay wall picture took 1.5 years to make. As an engineer currently doing work on marine ecology, I was obviously incredibly excited about meeting him.

Anyways, that’s enough for now. I’ll probably be posting less frequently just because of the nature of work here. We’ll wing this one.

Thanks for stopping by!

March 2, 2017

Wow, time really flies.

I know it’s been a seriously long time since I last wrote an entry here, and there are a few reasons for that. Number one is that we just don’t have any time. I’ve started hitting summer job apps almost every night, and writing and editing cover letters and application supplements takes a lot out of you. Also, most of our free time tends to start around 8:30 or 9 every night and we’re getting up at 6:30, so I haven’t been sacrificing the sleep to keep this updated.

A LOT has happened so far. We’ve completed two projects, been to an island-wide going-away party, a beach cleanup, island barbecue, been on multiple (mind-blowing) dives around the island, and more. I’ll try to cover it all, but I’m not gonna get a lot of the smaller details like in my Costa Rica posts (maybe that’s a good thing). Little Cayman is a wonderful place, and if you’re at all interested in coral reefs, this is a place you should visit at some point in your life.