Shark Alley / Dove Cay

Shark Alley / Dove Cay

A panoramic shot from the center at sunset.  Long Cay's the island on the left.

Good news, everyone!  I realized that I can upload videos, and I have taken some pretty cool videos.  The bad news is that I can't upload the quality that I would want to, so it turns out you can't really see them that well.  I might try uploading them to youtube in a higher quality and embedding them into my blog next time, but I'll have to make sure it won't crash the internet before I try it.

Anyway, this is going to be a shorter update.  On Tuesday, we had an "excursion" scheduled in the afternoon, where we could sign up for one of three places that aren't normally accessible.  The choices were the defunct Coast Guard station on the far northern part of the island.  While this can be accessible, it's about an eight mile hike one way.  Another choice was Long Cay, which is the big island you can see in the picture above.  It would be another terrestrial adventure, but because the island is uninhabited, a population of the TCI endemic iguanas lives there.  The final choice we had was a snorkeling trip to "Shark Alley", which is located around the tip of Long Cay.  If you read the title, you may have a guess as to which one I chose.

A picture from Shark Alley.  Can you see something hiding in the top left (that's not a blue tang)?

Before we get to the scheduled excursion, I want to briefly mention our own, unscheduled excursion.  The TCI have caves.  A lot of them.  In fact, they are still trying to locate and explore all the caves in the area.  When we have our field trip to Provodenciales (the touristy island in the TCI) and North and Middle Caicos (less touristy islands in the TCI), we will get to go into some caves.  To mentally prepare us for this, we had a guest speaker talk to us about the caves in the TCI and how he and some others are constantly exploring new ones.  He also mentioned how a lot of them are flooded or connected to the ocean, and he got talking about cave diving.

Two days after his presentation, two of the guys here said they found a cave and heard rushing water - and it was just a few hundred yards away from the center!  Naturally, due to the timing of this discovery, we got excited and headed out to investigate - bringing cameras, snorkel gear, and dive lights.

 

Looks pretty promising so far!

When we got there, it turns out that the water eroded underneath a cliff enough that it collapsed down.

 Here's a view of the water eroding under the cliff.  You could imagine that eventually, the cliff face would collapse down and form a fissure in the rock.

Basically nothing exciting, as there are a bunch of these eroded cliffs in the swim zone, and you don't need to trek through thorns to get there.  Even though it turned out to be nothing, it was still fun to go exploring a little bit.

Looking up from the "cave."

Going back to the trip that this post was named after, we headed out on Tuesday afternoon.  We arrived, and the staff had us buddy up, and then we were on our own, as long as we were back in about forty-five minutes.  My buddy, Matt, and I headed around the point to the deeper water to try to find the alley's namesake.  On the way there, we found incredible schools of fish swimming around the reef.

 Lots of fish and sea fans.

 Although it's tempting to just look at the school of French grunts in the foreground, look past them at all the fish in the background as well.  Amazing that there's enough food to support all these fish!

 Mean looking barracuda with a parrotfish in the foreground.

While attempting to get pictures of each other going under various swim-throughs, we also found eagle rays.  Lots and lots of eagle rays.  Like, so many eagle rays that we glanced over, shrugged, then went back to looking at coral. 

Ok, not that many eagle rays.  It's not that I don't love coral (they're actually some of my favorite sea creatures), but eagle rays are like the marine organism equivalent of a very loud throat clearing in a crowded room.  When you notice one, you stop whatever menial task you were doing and pay attention.

 In case you didn't believe me, if you full size this, you should be able to count eight(!) eagle rays.

 

Here's a video of an eagle ray swimming.  The uploaded quality is kind of lousy, but you can get an idea of how graceful they are when they swim.

Oh, and aside from the eagle rays, we successfully got awesome pictures of us going through the swim-throughs. 

I love this picture, even though the intensity of my gaze is kind of creepy.

And that dark figure I was hinting at in the (much) earlier photo?  It was a 5-6 foot nurse shark. 

 We found the lighting to be better from this angle.  It's an amazing feeling to be so close to a shark in the wild (but we were careful, Mom!).

Aside from pictures, I got some cool videos, but I'm gonna wait to upload any more until I get this quality issue sorted out.  So, to recap - lots of reef fish, tons of eagle rays, and a shark.  All in a single forty-five minute snorkel.  I love this place, although we saw a lot more eagle rays than sharks.  Maybe instead of "Shark Alley" it should be called "Elasmobranchii Alley," but I guess that doesn't have the same ring to it.

After the snorkel, we were taken to Dove Cay, a small island that we can see from the center.  It's tiny, uninhabited, and aside from spectacular views, incredible rock formations with lots of little tide pool creatures, and some osprey nests, there's not much there.  Some of these pictures are going to be blurry in places, and it's because my lens was wet and I didn't think to take my camera out of the underwater housing.  You live and you learn, right?

 

Old osprey nest in the foreground with Long Cay in the distance.

Looking over Dove Cay.  That really is about the entire island.

 View of the "Sphinx" from the top of Dove Cay

In case you hadn't noticed, I love the panorama mode on my camera.  That's looking back towards South Caicos from the top of Dove Cay.

That pretty much sums up the trip.  I'm planning on making a few themed posts coming up (i.e. a post dedicated to the town, one dedicated to just coral, etc.).  But until then, here's some last minute musing on the trip:

• I need to take more pictures when I dive.  I take tons when I snorkel, but hardly any when I dive for some reason.
• Speaking of snorkeling, it's actually a lot of fun.  As much as I love diving, the lighting is so much better snorkeling, and the schools of fish tend to be much larger.  Plus, you can do some free diving, which is a ton of fun.
• At Clemson and Conneaut, I always love to air dry.  It doesn't work as well down here with the salt water and lack of freshwater rinses.
• It's exam week.  Thursday, Friday and Saturday we have midterm exams, which is probably why I spent so much time writing up this post :)

Sunday Strollings

Sunday Strollings

That's right, ladies.  I enjoy sitting on coastal cliffs and staring pensively into the sea.  But actually, this is the view from what we think is "Southeast Point", but I explain it all further down!

Sunday is our one day off.  Sure, we only have classes four days a week, but we are busy doing something for the community or the center on two of the other days.  Sunday is our one day of the week where we can sleep in however late we want, go wherever we want, and then do whatever we want when we get there (within reason, obviously).  So this Sunday, we looked at a map of the island that’s at the center and tried to find a place called “Southeast Point”.

 Here's a quick map of the island.  The red dot is the location of the center, conveniently southwest-facing for all those wonderful sunsets.  The yellow dot is the East Bay development that I mentioned earlier.  The purple dot is where I think we went initially on Sunday, with a hike afterwards to the actual southeast point of the island, but I'm not entirely sure.

We headed out a little after noon and tried to follow the directions.  Unfortunately, we got lost and ended up stuck in some shrubbery and had to turn around.  You see, South Caicos is not a lush, tropical island.  The interior more closely resembles a desert, with short shrubs and cacti.  When driving or hiking through the wilderness, I often feel like I'm in Africa, except instead of zebras and gazelles, we have wild donkeys.  

 While they were obviously brought to the islands for some purpose, now all they do is make noises and stare at you if you get too close.

And there's no big plains of grass - just shrubs (mostly with thorns) and rocks.  And these weird plants with bright orange veins.  Somebody (I think it was Emily...?) said that they reminded them of the plants from War of the Worlds (the new one with Tom Cruise), but I've never seen that movie so I cannot verify.  I'll just snap a picture next time we are out and I'll post it so you don't have to rely on my vague descriptions.  Anywho, although we got lost, we found these nifty old wells that are now just filled with stagnant water and are probably a major source of all the pesky mosquitos.
 

 They kind of look like this ring I saw in this videotape.

 

This is what the interior of the island looks like, although this is a path.  It's usually too thick to get through, especially because most of the plants are either nasty burrs or huge thorns.

Despite getting lost, we found our way back to the main "road" and located the correct turnoff.  After a short hike, we made it to the bay we were hoping to find, and it was worth the heat, wrong turns, and bashed in toes (next time, I don't plan on wearing my flip flops - those rocks hurt!).  

 A great sight after being lost for a half hour.

Aside from us, empty as usual.  I still can't get over the absence of people from all these beautiful beaches.

The sandy beach was actually pretty tiny - most of the coast is rock and worn down ancient coral, which is pretty cool.  But we mostly just used the beach as a resting point before hiking around the point you can see in the distance of the last picture.  Along the way there, however, I played around with the macro mode on my camera.

 Not really sure what it is.  It kind of looks like greater star coral, but I found it in a tide pool, so it seems highly unlikely.  My guess is a type of colonial tunicate (sea squirt), but that's all it really is - a guess.  There's also an urchin, but the sun's in the way.

Some snails in a tide pool.

A chiton (and a little snail, too) out of the water.  I remember learning about these in invertebrate biology, but I hadn't actually seen one until I got down here.  They're all over the rocky intertidals around the island.

 

A little snail

Here's a place where you can really see the ancient coral.

We got to the point and found a place where it was deep enough to do a little cliff jumping.  If you're wondering what the view from the place we were cliff jumping was like, it's close to the location of the first picture of this blog post.  We then decided to hike around for a little, because we were very close to the ridges which are some of the highest points on the island.  I use the term "ridge" lightly, as the maximum altitude in the entire TCI (not just South Caicos) is either 157 or 158 feet above sea level.

This is a view looking back onto the island from the point.  Due to the people as a reference point, you can see how tiny all the plants are in this picture; they really are just little shrubs.  The ridges we hiked to are to the right, but are off the screen.

Unfortunately, my camera ran out of batteries right after I took this picture, so you're just going to have to take my word on the rest of it.  I know, Mom, you packed me an extra battery, but I didn't think to take it with us on our hike.  Besides, I checked it before we left, and it said it was only missing one bar!  Anyway, now that I'm done being defensive, we managed to hike to the top of the highest ridge nearby, and the view was phenomenal.  We could see ocean in two directions, the town and the rest of the island in one, and a secluded, empty (aside from all the trash that washed up) beach.  Up there, the breeze was fantastic, so the heat wasn't so bad, yet you could still hear the waves crashing in the distance.  Probably my favorite spot on the island currently.  We'll go back at some point, and I'll be sure to bring extra camera batteries to make sure I get some pictures!  

After checking out the view from the ridge, we grabbed our snorkel gear, and decided to start at the secluded beach and snorkel around the point and back to our first beach.  As it turned out, this was easier said than done, as the current did not agree with our plans.  It was worth the extra exertion, as we saw a huge school of fish, probably numbering the hundreds, as we swam along the point.  These fish weren't tiny little fish, either.  Although not huge, they were probably a little big bigger than the biggest blue gill we would ever catch at Conneaut.  In the middle of them all was a fairly large barracuda, but it didn't seem hungry, as it just swam slowly around.  There was a nice coral reef along the edge of the point, with a vast sea grass bed starting a little further out.  Once around the point, we reached a shallower coral reef, and we followed this into the beach.  It was actually very fun snorkeling, as the waves broke over the reef about halfway to the beach.  The wave action not only added some excitement as it threw us back and forth, but the net motion was in towards the shore, so it made it easy to get to the beach.  Once we got to the beach, it was getting to be time to head back, as we needed to get back in time for dinner, so we packed up and headed out.  On the way back, we were stared down by some donkeys along the road, but other than that, it was fairly uneventful.  

A pretty awesome day, but now just a few quick thoughts to wrap up:

•   It would be so interesting to investigate the social behavior of the feral and semi-feral dogs down here.  We can see that there are different packs that have different territories, and it would be cool to look into it further.
• Looking at the map above and how long that trip took us makes me realize how much there is to see on this island.  Even if I saw everywhere on the island, there's still so much to see underneath the water.
• I couldn't imagine coming here in the fall.  Not only would I miss football season (actually the reason why I initially chose to come on the spring) and the whales wouldn't be migrating through, but the temperature would be unbearable.  It's been in the 70s everyday, and it is just about the perfect temperature.

Star Light, Star Bright

Star Light, Star Bright

 Loretta at sunset.  She's an old U.S. Army surplus boat that the East Bay development bought to sink for divers, but they weren't allowed.  So now she's just sitting on the beach.

Amazing day.

It started off as a typical Wednesday – no class, a dive, and our first “school day” where we go to the local school and entertain the kids (I’m going to be helping out in a third grade art class!).  The kids were wild, but adorable – trying to guess our names, finding us shells in the sand, and giving lots of hugs.  As much fun as that was, the day really got started in the afternoon.  For our dive today, we went to a site called the “East Bay Spur”, which doesn’t have any particularly curious characteristics which make it stand out.  By that, I mean it’s not a major wall dive, where you hang out along a wall that drops off to thousands of feet below you, and it does not have any defining landmarks, such as the airplane wreck or “The Arch”.  But today, we had some special visitors, even if they were there only in voice.  That’s right, we could hear the whales on this dive.

 

Here's a picture of "The Arch"

You see, humpback whales pass through the Turks and Caicos on their annual migration.  Even though they don’t spend much time in the shallower reefs that we dive (but they do visit occasionally – just ask the other dive group that got to actually see the whales!), they pass through the deeper water off the reef walls.  And that leads me to the funny thing about sound – it actually travels better in water than in air.  You don’t normally think of this as being the case, because, well, you have a hard time hearing stuff in the water and especially telling where sounds are coming from.  Part of the reason for that is when sound travels from a location and passes near your head, your brain can actually detect the slight lag in time between when each ear hears the sound.  It uses these miniscule differences to determine which direction a sound is coming from.  In water, sound travels so fast that your brain can’t distinguish these differences, and you are not able to tell where a sound is coming from.  Bet you didn’t think you’d get a science lesson today, did ya?

 

Because we didn't actually see any whales, here's a picture of a lionfish we saw instead.  Unfortunately, we see a lot of lionfish.  It's unfortunate because they're an invasive species.

Anyway, to get back on topic, because sound travels so much farther and quicker in water, even though we heard the whales, they were most likely pretty far away from us.  Not that it matters, because their songs are, in a short description that doesn’t do them anything close to justice, hauntingly beautiful – almost eerie and just as melancholy as they are magnificent.  If you somehow are unsure of what whale songs actually sound like, you can look them up online.  If you’re too lazy to do that, think of the Brachiosaurs from Jurassic Park (especially the scene where Grant and the kids are watching them from the treetops)– their calls are part whale song, and we had the same sense of wonder as the characters in that movie when we heard an actual whale call in the wild.  

While the sounds were clearly the highlight of my dive, I also saw my first pair of (spotted) eagle rays in the distance.  I actually feel kind of bad devoting such a smaller proportion of this post to the eagle rays, because they are some of the most majestic creatures in the world.  They’re fairly closely related to sting rays, but instead of being circular and undulating their body to move, they have “wings”.  To move, they flap their wings, to literally, and seemingly effortlessly, fly through the water, and, as much as I hate to use a word twice, they look magnificent when they do. 

 Okay, I cheated.  This picture was actually taken today (the 21st).  Not the 15th when this blog takes place.  And I took it snorkeling, not diving.  Oh well.

So, after the dive, we just hung out until the night.  I was super busy this entire week, with four summer applications, two presentations, and a quiz all due throughout the week (the applications were due Wednesday and Friday, with the schoolwork all on Thursday), so when I got my work done, I wanted to get out.  A few of us decided to have a bonfire on the “East Bay” beach, named after the failed development that is constructed there.  It’s a large hotel that simply never was completed, and we never see people working on it.  Honestly, it’s kind of eerie walking by it, as you don’t often see an abandoned, unfinished hotel that the owners still keep up.  There’s rumors that it’s actually a drug money laundering scheme, as the TCI doesn’t have taxes for developments like it, but I’m not sure if that’s true or not.  Regardless, it’s a nice beach, and because the hotel isn’t operational, it’s always entirely empty except for us

 That's East Bay in the background, obviously during the day.  It's completely vacant, and I've never seen anybody working on it.  I'll probably end up posting better pictures of it later.

We headed over there after we finished our work around 8:30 or so.  The sky was so clear, the moon was absent from the sky, and as we walked out there away from the town’s light pollution, the stars came out.  And they were fantastic.  The stars were the brightest and clearest I have ever seen.  It was one of those nights where even the dimmest stars could be seen if you looked in the seemingly dark spots in the sky, and the Milky Way streaked across the starscape.  We walked the half hour to the fire pit, along the empty beach, beside the abandoned hotel, and under the starlit sky.  After setting up the fire, we sat around, had a few beers ($20 for a 6-pack of Coors Light – hooray island prices!), and relaxed.  When time came to leave, we packed up and headed back along the beach.  On the way home, we looked into the water and saw brilliant flashes of green – like fireflies in the surf.  The glowworms were mating and, in the process, creating little shooting stars in the sea.  After tearing ourselves away from the biological fireworks display, we left the beach and worked our way through the shrubs to get back to the road.  In doing so, the light from our headlamps reflected back at us in the eyes of dozens of spiders along the path.  Every few steps, we could see the shrubs twinkling back at us in the night, just like (are you catching onto a pattern here?) tiny stars in the grass and leaves.  Lots of little things, but they all added up to an absolutely memorable day.

 Just some quick thoughts to end this on:

• I always think it will be a great idea to get a shower right after our last water activity because I'm already wet, and the shower won't feel as bad (we don't get hot water here, unfortunately).  But, every time, without fail, the warm air dries me by the time I can get ready, so it really doesn't matter.
• Burrs here are terrible.  Not because they're small and annoying and get stuck to your clothes so you have to pick them off.  Burrs down here are nasty, and constantly stick directly into your skin.  And they're everywhere.  I often think I wouldn't mind trading burrs for venomous creatures on the island.
•  It still amazes me how much life there is underwater, especially in super-productive areas like seagrass beds and coral reefs.

And that's all.  I'll try to make another post by this weekend, and I'll make sure the picture to words ratio is a little more bearable, as well as post slightly more relevant pictures!

Everyday Life

Everyday Life

I'm going to probably open each blog with a sunset picture for the foreseeable future.

I'm pretty sure the ants here have made a nest inside my keyboard.  Everytime I get on the computer, I see them crawling in and out of my keys.  I guess I really should have gotten my keyboard replaced after the infamous freeze pop incident, but how was I supposed to know that it would attract ants later?

Anyway, I thought that I would devote this post mostly to what life around the station is like, because it's a lot different from a typical school.  Our days are, for the most part, planned out in advance for us.  We have classes four days a week (M, Tu, Th, F), with usually around four (although sometimes more, sometimes less), hour-long lectures each day.  We then typically have some sort of exercise, which can be as awesome as snorkeling through mangroves and seagrass beds to prepare for our field identification quiz, as we did on Monday and Tuesday, or it can be as ordinary as using Excel to analyze some fishery data in order to assess stocks using all sorts of exciting formulas.  Actually, that last part probably came across as sarcastic - even though not as much fun as a field exercise, I do enjoy (to a certain extent), the math aspect of fishery management.  I gained a much greater appreciation for the field; while it may come across as being as simple as counting fish over a period of time and setting catch limits based on this data, it has to take into account not just biology and math, but economics, culture, and quite a lot of luck, as all fishery assessments are estimations.

This is why I always feel so safe at the center.

So, yeah, kind of got off on a little tangent there, but as I was saying, we have classes four times a week.  On Wednesdays and Saturdays, we go diving and we have community outreach and center clean-up.  Community outreaches don't start until Saturday, but they can range from activities with local children, to teaching classes to adults, to setting up small-scale farming on the island.  I signed up for beach clean-ups, where we will, obviously, go out on some local beaches and pick up garbage, but we also plan to document the amount of trash to see if any trends develop over time.  Naturally, I picked the "sciencey" project.  The dive sites that we have gone to are beautiful, despite some degradation.  South Caicos is considered to have some of the healthiest reefs in the greater Caribbean region, due in a large part to the absence of tourism in the area.  We have only gone on two dives, but we have seen huge stingrays, some great barracuda, and even a sea turtle, not to mention all sorts of incredible invertebrates!  Unfortunately, the staff didn't want students to bring cameras on the first few dives to allow people to get acclimated, but I assure you, I will soon have some pictures from diving, and when I get those, I'll spend a post describing the seascape in more detail.

Until then, here's a picture of the boats we use to go to different dive sites!

Oh, and Sundays we have off, so we usually spend all day exploring the island.  Once again, when I get more pictures from some of the places we have been, I'll go into more detail.  But I will tell you that it is, without a doubt, the most unique place I have ever been.  And that's all you get for now.  Tantalizing, eh?

Despite getting off track in a few spots, I described the general outline of the program above.  Now, I'm going to spend the next few paragraphs (and pictures - I know you love the pictures!) finally describing everyday life at the center.

 After that huge wall of text, here's a picture of the center taken during a break period

We have breakfast at 7 every morning, except the weekends.  A few of us usually get up at 6 to work out.  We often do some weight training in the abandoned salt shed next door.  It's actually a designated national historic area.

Do YOU exercise in a national historic area?  (and yes, that's a big tire in the background!)

There's not much in terms of workout equipment, so we improvise.

After breakfast, we have a short morning meeting at 7:45, where we go over the plan for the day, play a short game, and the student of the day inspires us with a quotation.  We then usually jump into class.  As mentioned before, lectures are an hour long, but after two of them we get a 20 minute break!  Then, we go back and usually have another two lectures before lunch.  Everyone here takes the same classes at the same time.  It sounds useful, but it really isn't that great.  You see, back in Clemson, whenever I would see my roommates working, I wouldn't feel bad slacking because they were engineers, and, well, work is what engineers do.  Now whenever I slack off and see everyone working, I feel almost guilty because we're in the same classes.  The good news is that this irrational feeling passes pretty quickly. 

Here's a picture of the view from my seat in the classroom.  You can't tell because it's too bright, but I can see the ocean in the distance (hence why I always sit in that seat!)

As for lunch, and all meals really, the food is always good.  So far, I haven't had any complaints.  The best part about lunch is that we get off from 12:30 until 2:00 for it, so by the time you eat, it's usually about an hour break before afternoon activities start.  

This is the common area where we eat meals and tend to hang out, study, etc.

Afternoon activities are usually our field  exercises.  This week alone, we toured a fish processing plant, went snorkeling, and worked magic on Excel.   These usually take some time, and may occupy us until dinner.  If not, we usually play volleyball, snorkel, or just hang out. 

Island jam session.  It actually didn't sound half bad for our first time.

After dinner, we rarely have anything planned.  It's our time to complete school work, or, more commonly, play games.  We can also head outside of the station to explore the island or the town.  Or we can just forego the exploration and go to the bars (we know where they are!).  However, on Tuesdays we have a student activity, such as live action Clue or a movie. 

Not a bad setup.  Although the board is nice, the darts are pretty lousy.  Just more TCI problems.

After packing up for the night, we head into our rooms.  I got stuck in the room with six people, so it's kind of packed - three bunk beds.  The bedrooms, like most of the center, are essentially outdoors.  Sure, there's a roof and walls, but they are not sealed to the elements.  Hence why mosquito nets are necessary.  And why we also find cockroaches in the bathroom (some of them are pretty big, too!)  But it's not a bad setup.  

Sure it's crowded, but we hardly spend any time in our room anyway. 

Well, not the most exciting post in the world (but it sure was long!), but I wanted to spend some time going over the mundane to give you a better look at what it's like here.  I'll probably try to do some of these themed posts in the future, such as one that focuses on the town, etc.  I think it will be a good way to keep posting new stuff even if nothing too new and crazy happens.  You see, while I'm staying at an incredible place, it still is a small island with little chance to get off and travel around.  I can see myself getting locked into a routine pretty quickly, and while I will be enjoying it, I'm not sure how I would be able to keep you entertained by simply talking about what I have been doing once it reaches this point.  

Anyway, til next time, here's some more quick thoughts:

• Putting sunscreen on indoors is not a good idea here.  Oftentimes, your hands will get too slick to grip your door and you'll need someone to rescue you from entombment.
• I mention it earlier, but everything is open to the outdoors.  Which is part of the reason why there's no air conditioning (the other part being how expensive electricity is here).  At least it has been breezy since we got here, keeping us cool!
• I'm still amazed at how safe I feel on the island.  I have never felt threatened walking back home at night (and don't worry, Mom, I always walk with a buddy!). 

First Week

First Week

 I could get used to this.

Apparently a lot of people make titles for their blog posts.  Whoops.  Guess I’ll start doing that from now on.  Anyway, on with the latest happenings.

I’m not going to lie, the first night here was pretty rough.  None of the rooms are air conditioned, and therefore have to be cooled by the breeze.  Due to the set up of this contraption, when the wind is strong, as it has been this past week, it whistles and howls everytime there is a gust.  By itself, this noise is manageable, but when you factor in the dogs that were having a barking contest right outside the center, it makes it fairly difficult to get a good night’s sleep.  Thankfully I was exhausted after the day of travel and the lack of sleep the previous night, so I was still able to fall asleep at a somewhat reasonable time.

            The first few days were mostly orientations, so no class(!), but they made up for it by giving us six hour-long lectures on Friday and five on Thursday.  The good news is that now that the course introductions have been taken care of, the field components will start becoming more numerous.  For example, tomorrow morning we have a snorkel expedition for Marine Ecology to identify species that live in mangrove and sea grass habitats, which aside from being an awesome usage of time, prevents us from having a lecture that morning!  Not that I don’t find the course material interesting, but it’s just more fun to be out in the water.  

            Sadistically, the staff didn’t allow us to go into the water until we had a swimming check-out around 4:00 on the first full day.  That may seem like a short time, just a few hours, to be denied water privileges, but when you are able look out over turquoise water all day, it’s torturous.  Needless to say, after people were getting checked out, they instantly grabbed their snorkel stuff and headed to our snorkel/swim zone.  Located right outside the center, we have a little section of the ocean that’s out of most boat traffic and has a small reef, sandy bottoms, and a little sea grass.  For how small the area is, it has outstanding diversity, from small invertebrates that hang out in the coral crevices, to much larger creatures, such as stingrays, spiny lobsters, and, if you go on a night snorkel, some vibrantly colored octopi.  

Great barracuda near a sea grass bed. (kind of hard to see, I know)

One of the few good underwater pictures I took.  It's deceptively difficult to take good pictures underwater!  I'm pretty sure that this is a lizard fish.

            I’d love to keep going, but I have to do some classwork before the Super Bowl – yes, even though the center doesn’t have a television, we are able to go the only operational hotel on the island to watch the game.  Before I head out, though, back by popular demand are some more quick thoughts: 

-          Despite being so small, there’s so much to see on the island, from the saltwater ponds in the middle of the island (the Salinas) that were used to evaporate salt when this place used to be a leading exporter of salt (but more on that later), to the rocky cliffs and beaches around the island.  We are going to do some major exploring in the next few weeks.

-          We may get very few options at meals, but it always surprises me how good everything is to eat.

-          While I’m on the topic of food, being “Student of the Day” sucks.  It’s just a misleading title given to the kitchen slave, and it’s not fun.

-          I actually don’t feel dirty or grimy despite not bathing in freshwater yet.  That will probably change, though, when I stop having clean clothes.

I just want to start off by apologizing for the absolutely ugly template that I apparently had.  When I type, I just see a plain white screen and did not know that I had a picture of an old chair in the background.  Hopefully, it's fixed now.  Anyway...

Although I'm not a huge fan of waking up at 3:00am for a flight, watching the sunrise from thousands of feet above the ground almost makes it worth it.  The sky burns an orangish-red along the horizon in every direction you can see out of a plane window.  Watching the world wake up from the sky, as fog retreats through the valleys, is quite an experience.  With the scenery, I was unable to get any sleep on my flight, but it was totally worth it.

Unfortunately, taking a picture of bright lights through a scratched plane window kind of dilutes the effect, but take my word for it - it was unreal.

Aside from that, the trip from Miami to Provodenciales, the main island in the Turks and Caicos (hereafter referred to as the TCI) was fairly uneventful, but the scenery was spectacular. 

The short, 25 minute flight to South Caicos, however, was slightly sketchier as we moved away from all the tourism money.

We flew like kings to our final destination - they actually had to bring in two planes to fly all 36 of us.

Nothing really happened on the flight, and we were picked up and taken to the Center where I will be staying.  It's an old inn, with a kitchen area, classroom, study area, and a few wings of summer camp style housing.  We sleep six to a room in three bunk beds.  The view, however, is absolutely stunning. 

This is about a fifteen second walk from my door.


We spent the first night getting to know our classmates and the staff, and called it an early night.  Three hours of sleep will do that to you.  Even though I have been here a few days longer than this, the internet kept crashing when I was trying to blog, so I'll write more about snorkeling and the town and island later (and when I have some fly pics).

Before I stop, though, here’s just a few quick thoughts so far:

Biodegradable soap smells amazing.  I feel like I’m walking through a forest of eucalyptus everytime I take a (saltwater )shower.

Salt and sand are going to get everywhere.  I guess it’s a good thing that there’s no carpet to ruin.

It’s pretty chill going to class barefoot.

Speaking of class, I still can’t tell if it’s a good or bad thing that I can see the ocean from our classroom (yes, we only have one classroom).