Getting Caught Up (Pt. 1)

Getting Caught Up (Pt. 1)

Just after sunrise at the docks in Provo.

Alright, so it's been a long time since my last post.  A very, very long time.  As in, this is my first post in the month of March!  I am therefore going to try to glaze over everything that has happened since then.  The beginning of the month marked our midterm exams, which consisted of three, three-hour long essay tests.

While studying for our final test, I created this little meme to describe how I feel about essay tests.

Anyway, I think they went pretty well, but only time will tell.  I'm just glad that they are over!  On the Saturday of exams (which was the third of March - it seems so long ago!) they even took away our diving so we could take the test in the morning.  Talk about a tough life! 

The week following exams, I thought would be pretty relaxed, but our professors instead tried to cram as much material in before break as possible.  We had our last field ID exam (this one was on reef fishes) on that Friday, as well as two projects due that Monday.  On top of that, we had another project assigned during the week that's due after break.  Although I like to complain, the projects due before break were a seagrass and a conch assessment, and both involved hours of time in the water, so it's not like they were bad.  The conch assessment involved traveling out to different areas inside and outside a local marine protected area (MPA) to see if there were any differences in the conch populations.  It was really just a brief study to get us used to working transects, but a group of four students will be conducting their directed research project on this, so I'll be sure to pass along the results for all those interested.  The seagrass assessment took place in the East Bay area that I mentioned in an earlier blog.  We broke into groups and took measurements on water depth, seagrass measurements, and invertebrate abundance along transects in the bay.  While doing so, we ran into some cool creatures, including king's helmets, bearded fireworms, and even a rogue sponge!

 We found quite a few basket stars in the seagrass.

 An upclose shot of a bearded fireworm inside a discarded conch shell.  You can see that it flared its venomous bristles.

The inside of a king's helmet, which is another gastropod (i.e. snail/slug-like) kind of like a conch on the outside, but, at least from what I hear, not as tasty.

The data collection of these projects was pretty cool, but the write-ups were what really kept us busy that week.  We also had some field sessions for our project that's not due until after break.  For this project, we are making a poster on a species that's found in the waters around South Caicos and presenting it to the class in a little mock conference.  I chose to do the bearded fireworm, because, well, they're awesome (and, at least as far as worms are concerned, quite a looker!).

 Another picture of the fireworm.  They really do look pretty awesome.

I apologize about talking about straight schoolwork for a while there, but it was really all we have been up to in the weeks leading up to our field trip and spring break.  On last Monday (the 12th), we headed to the airport and flew over to Provodenciales, which is the main tourist island of the TCI, for our two day field trip.  The interns and staff left early in the morning so they could get over there and set things up for our arrival in the afternoon.  Unfortunately, some of the firefighters over on Provo went on strike, so the South Caicos firefighters had to go over to prevent the international airport from being shut down.  This meant that there were no firefighters on South Caicos to work at the airport when the staff showed up, so they had to take a "ferry", which takes around two hours as opposed to twenty minutes.  Only on the islands, eh?  In order to allow us to get over to Provo, the firefighters had to take a ferry back in order to work the South Caicos airport.  They made it over, and we were able to fly over with no problem - in fact we didn't even know there was an issue until we talked to people later.

So we showed up in Provo, had a few guest speakers, and were able to walk around.  The hotels along Grace Bay (pretty much the only place with hotels on the island) are unreal.  We walked through the lobbies and pool areas of a few of these hotels in our free time, and I felt like I was inside Caribbean versions of Disney's Grand Meridian every time.  Beautiful infinity pools, swaying palm trees, and stunning architecture. 

I didn't take too many pictures because I feared getting kicked out, but look up some of the hotels online if you're curious.  They're gorgeous.

This wasn't Kitty Hawk or even Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic - this is a truly high end destination.  This is most apparent in the prices of everything in the area; they can get away with charging a lot of money for just about everything.  I understand that most things have to be imported which would raise the price, but $66 for a 24-case of cheap beer (i.e. Coors / Bud Light)?  Come on!  We also stayed in the Comfort Suites, which was the least expensive hotel on the island - not even beachfront and offered few amenities (but they did have hot, freshwater showers!) for over $200 a night. 

It was strange being back in civilization again, especially when it came to crossing the street and seeing people on the streets rather than semi-feral dogs.  We manged, though!  Anyway, time to get back to the field trip - I've started fringing into spring break territory.  So the next morning (which is Tuesday if you are keeping track), we woke up early and headed to the dock to catch a ferry to Middle and North Caicos.

Crepuscular rays at the dock before heading out in the morning.

These islands have extremely small permanent populations, despite being among the largest and lushest islands in the TCI.  They have small accommodations for tourists, but are mainly based on people making day trips out to the islands.  Once we got to the dock at North Caicos, we loaded up on a school bus and headed out to Middle Caicos to check out the Conch Bar caves.  Along the way there, we crossed over the failed causeway that connects these two islands.  The government's initial plan was to build a series of islands in the middle of the channel and connect these with bridges capable of withstanding category three hurricanes.  Due to reasons that I cannot remember (although probably money), they decided to eventually just build a causeway to connect the two islands.  Within a year of this being constructed, a category one hurricane came through in 2008 and destroyed the causeway.

 Kind of blurry, but you can see the damage and current state of the causeway.  The whole thing used to be paved.

Some more of the causeway washed into the sea.

It's "repaired" now in the sense that you can drive a car over it, but it's not at all what it used to be.  This video (not taken by yours truly, unfortunately) shows a little bit of the damage as well.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_SnR4YOnMI

It's areas like this that make you realize that we have it pretty good in the States.  Here's a country in the Caribbean that doesn't have the infrastructure to build vital connectors, and when they do, they cannot even withstand a category one hurricane.

Anyway, we got to the Conch Bar caves and were given a tour of the area.  It was strange entering a cave without seeing signs informing the public about white-nose syndrome in bats.  The caves weren't really cool.  I mean, they were fascinating, but unlike a lot of caves in the Appalachians, they don't drop down deep into the earth, so it was pretty hot inside.  We got to see some bats roosting on the  ceiling and we got to see some pretty cool cave phenomena as well.

 A picture of a gecko that I took outside the cave.

 Graffiti.  When it's old, it's history rather than vandalism.

 Not as built up as some of the caves in the U.S.  We did actually walk across that (although it wasn't as deep of a drop off as it seems).

 Can you tell which is the actual way out and which is just a reflection in a calm, clear cave pool?

After the cave, we loaded back onto the bus and went to a little shop where we could buy hand-crafted trinkets.  This was meant to be a short, uneventful stop, but our bus driver drove us off the edge of the road on the way out.  We had to get out of the bus and the strongest, manliest men (i.e. me and about ten others) pushed the bus out of the ditch and back onto the road.  You really just have to be ready for anything down here, as people are a lot more laid back and stuff like this tends to happen.

We're basically Hercules.

We eventually made it to a local beach where we ate lunch and hung out.  It was the most spectacular beach and coastline that I have seen in my life, although I really haven't seen too many beaches or coastlines.  To get to the beach, you have to park above and walk down to half-cave before emerging onto the beach.

View from underneath the overhang.

The rocks in the distance had this fascinating effect where large enough waves would build up enough pressure on top to create little cascading waterfalls on the side that faces the beach.  When it had been too long since a large enough wave, the waterfalls would stop.  Not only that, but the rock formation caused the waves to bend around it on both sides and meet along the little sandy walkway to get to it.  This caused the waves to "battle" in the middle, as they both collided going in opposite directions.  The coastline was spectacular as well, as there were little pocket beaches wedged inside of these tall, overhanging cliffs, and waves were breaking away from the shoreline in beautiful patterns.  It was a fantastic place to spend a few hours, and if you ever are in the area, it's worth it to check out Mudjadin beach.

 Looking back at the coastline.  Between each of those outcroppings lies a hidden pocket beach.

 Here you can see the waves breaking over the barrier reef away from the shore.  The white water stretched as far as the eye could see along the coastline.

 The pseudo-waterfall that I mentioned earlier.  This is it running dry...

...and this is it right after a large enough wave came to push water over top.  A really soothing effect to watch.

 You can kind of see the waves reaching around both sides to meet in the middle.

Just a rock getting hammered by a wave.

Despite our best efforts, the staff was able to load us back onto the bus to check out our final destination of the day - a plant nursery on North Caicos.  This involved going back over the causeway and driving almost back to the dock.  The nursery was a nice place to check out, but it wasn't nearly as exciting as the other stops on the field trip, in my opinion.  It was just different to see a nursery, as there is essentially no agriculture on South Caicos.  The island is so arid and the soil just isn't as rich, making it more difficult to grow plants.  Despite being just a few dozen miles away and being a part of the same island bank, North Caicos is much lusher and is able to sustain agriculture.

 Not to mention, there was a pen full of goats at the nursery!

It's a tiny, baby Turks head cactus - one of the three national symbols on the TCI flag.

 

 A cone from the Caicos pine - the TCI is one of the few places this particular plant lives.

We headed out from the plant (and goat!) farm back to the docks to catch our ferry back to Provo.  Upon arrival, we had a buffet style dinner at a local, off-the-beaten-trail place and had a turtle researcher talk to us about his work.  The next morning, we began our work aspect of the field trip, where we took the streets and surveyed people around the island.  Yes, we were those super annoying kids that guilt you into an interview when you just want to relax on your vacation, but if it makes you feel any better, we didn't really want to issue the surveys, either.  At least our group was assigned to the Grace Bay area, and we spent our few hours on the beach (and we even got our surveys done, too!).  For our final activity of the field trip, we took a tour of the Conch Farm, a, you guessed it, conch aquaculture facility (the only of its kind in the world).  While it was interesting to see the facilities, the tour itself was the same that they give to all the tourists, so we knew a lot of the information on conch biology.

 Are you surprised that I have a panoramic shot of the conch farm?  The structure to the left is a dock destroyed in the 2008 hurricanes.  The offshore pens are on the right of the picture.  After the hurricanes, they were unable to rebuild, as they have not been forthcoming with their data to the Department of the Environment and Coastal Resources, so they no longer have an export license.

 Baby conch!  Although conch outside of their shells are pretty strange looking creatures, they have adorable little eyes!

Another baby conch picture.

 

The baby conch room.  They're kept in those pans.

 They had some donated baby sea turtles in one of the onshore ponds, too!  They weren't being grown for food, although sea turtles are caught in the TCI for local consumption.

Not the most charismatic animal.  And that doesn't even show the visceral mass!

The problem with this particular facility is that they have been unable to create a self-sustaining population.  Therefore, while their board tells people that they harvest egg masses from an "egg farm", they really just mean they collect about 200 of them from the wild each year.  Because they raise so many conch in such close quarters, each individual grows to a smaller size than they would in the wild, a phenomenon called "stunting".  Even with these problems, they are still able to create more conch biomass from each egg mass than they estimate would come from each in the wild, which alleviates some of the stress put on the fishery.

The story is that the guy who created the conch farm was an engineer who crashed his boat in this spot of the island, and he settled down and began the conch farm afterwards.  Supposedly, he kept the boat around, and that's it, still keeping watch over the grounds.

A picture of the onshore ponds.  Most of them had conch, but two had sea turtles, and another had Cassiopea spp. (which is the genus of upside down jellyfish).

Sorry for boring you with some of the science involved in the Conch Farm, but I just wanted to highlight that while aquaculture sounds like a great idea to help curb overfishing, by itself, it is not a perfect solution (although it's not all bad, either!).  Anyway, we made our way back to the hotel, had a final briefing, and our field trip ended just in time to get to Happy Hour at the local bar.  What else transpired on our five, unsupervised nights in Provo?  Well, you'll just have to stay tuned to Islands 'n Oceans n'at to read the next post, "Getting Caught Up (Pt. 2)"

As per usual, some random thoughts to end this post:

• I know I said it before, but you need to check out Mudjadin beach if you are ever in North Caicos.  It's unbelievable, but then again, it may just be that I haven't been to many beaches/coastlines.
• I really hate essay tests.  A lot of the questions on these exams were in the vein of "here's this topic, write as much as you know about it", so you can go on for so freakin' long.  Not to mention the shear effort involved in writing five pages front and back three days in a row (I know, first world problems, right?).
• It's amazing the different types of work available in biology.  There may not be too many jobs, but there sure is a variety.  From creating turtle education programs at the Amanyara (look it up - it's nuts), to living on North Caicos to study Caribbean botany, there's really something out there for whatever subdiscipline floats your boat.
• It sounds crazy, but our filtered rain water that's caught on these giant concrete slabs at the center tastes so much cleaner than the tap water on Provo.  Although it's safe to drink, it just doesn't taste...right.