Oh Sweet Poseidon!

Why hello there!  My, it sure has been a while hasn't it?  I apologize for how long it's been since my last post; things have been super busy around here with our Independent Research Projects finishing up (well, the data collection part...), diving to see ostracods spawn, kayaking and snorkeling in mangroves, snorkeling in an Acropora cervicornis thicket, collecting plankton, playing ultimate frisbee against our professors, and spending a week in bed with bronchitis!  Oh, these last few weeks have certainly been quite the adventure, my friends.  It's gonna be a long post fo' sho'. BUT, there will be lots of PICTURES!! YAY!

Hm where to begin, where to begin?  Alrighty, so about three weeks ago we went on a night dive to see these little crustaceans called ostracods spawn.  About five nights after the full moon they bioluminesce (light up) in order to attract a mate or release their gametes (I'm not too sure which one it is...).  Anyway, we took a boat out to this dive site at 7:00 pm, descended into the darkness at 7:30 pm and did not turn our lights on.  After waiting several minutes I turned my head and these little spirals of light began to move towards the surface.  It was like being surrounded by tiny stars while you're floating weightless in the night's sky.  Everywhere I turned little glowing specks were lighting up and spiraling around me.  It was the most beautiful thing I have ever witnessed.  I was in awe the entire time. 
After a good 5-10 minutes of amazingness we continued the dive only to see something equally as cool: glow-in-the-dark corals.  That's right, we had blue lights with us, that if you shine them on certain corals, the corals will fluoresce a color that's a lower wavelength than blue (most of them were that green glow-in-the-dark color).  My buddy, Abbey, and I were holding hands while we were shining the corals with the blue light.  We get a little afraid of the dark sometimes...  But anyway, that was probably my favorite dive yet because oh my gosh it was just so darn cool!  Yeah, I know that was not a very descriptive reason, but you know what I mean.  I am still at a loss for words.  On the boat back after the dive, everyone was just so excited and happy; we all had such a wonderful time!

Ostracods.  We didn't take this picture, but it's like the best one out there to give you some idea of what we saw.  Just multiply those little spots by like 100.

Agaricia agaricites under blue light at night.  Jason Flower, one of the interns, took this picture on our dive!  Isn't it so cool?!

A. agaricites in the daytime.  What a difference!

Montastreaea faveolata under blue light at night.  Jason got this shot, too!

M. faveolata in the daytime.

Let's see...moving along now.  Ah yes, also that week we went on a field trip to the mangroves and seagrasses of Lac Bay.  Lac is basically the only place on the island that has these ecosystems, which serve as prime nurseries for many juvenile fishies, provide nutrients to the adjacent coral reefs, help provide a buffer zone between the land and storm surges, and are unfortunately among the many habitats being destroyed for coastal development.  So I really like these habitats, but I don't particularly enjoy snorkeling in them.  That's only because the water is very turbid (lotsa sediments) and you have to get really close to the mangroves to see anything in them, and by that time they are covering your head and you're face-to-face with a barracuda.  I get a little claustrophobic so I was kinda freaked by the snorkeling.  But, the kayaking was really beautiful; we were led on a tour of the mangroves of Lac via kayak and got to go through these little channels where you would just push yourself forward using the mangroves' prop roots instead of the paddle.  It was always one of my life's goals to kayak through the mangroves and I'm glad to check that baby off my bucket list! 

 Kayaking through the mangroves.  Stole this pic from Wiley Sinkus.  He was the only one to bring a camera on our mangrove adventure.

We're all professional kayakers, obviously.  (Another of Wiley's pictures)

Post-mangrove kayak.  (Photo credit: Jason Flower).

Alright, continuing to the next week... One day we went on a field trip to see an Acropora cervicornis thicket and compare the fish biomass there to that of a location where there used to be this coral, but most of it got destroyed from a hurricane.  A. cervicornis used to be the most abundant shallow water coral in the Caribbean, until white band disease and hurricanes wiped out most populations.  It is now considered an endangered species.  Luckily for our educational purposes there exists one thicket of this coral out in Lac Bay.  We snorkeled there two weeks ago and it was just breathtaking.  We did have to walk about a half mile in waist-deep water to get to it, though.  That was quite the workout, let me tell you.  But once we got there it was such a treat to explore its many branches and nooks and crannies.

A. cervicornis (also known as Staghorn coral).  (Photo credit: Juli Schroger).

Another thing we did that week was collect tons and tons of plankton and larval fish from Lac Bay.  We went out at night during the new moon and set up light traps and had plankton catching nets in which we collected lotsa little fishies and plankton.  Most of the time one person stood about knee-deep in water (song reference yay yayee) holding a flashlight into the water while another person had a big net that they fished up tiny plankton every once in a while and dropped them off into a collection bucket on land.  We also used a plankton tow collection thingy attached to the end of a fishing rod, so we would cast it off into the water and reel it back in.  Well, due to my impeccable fishing skillzz, when I cast off the plankton tow, the line broke and the tow was out in the middle of the water.  Surprise there, I know.  But, being the superhero that I am, I jumped in and rescued the tow before it was left to ol' Poseidon's mercy.  After that little adventure, we continued to collect plankton, showed some of the local people what we were doing, and did a lot of sitting around.  I mean, you can only collect so many plankton, right?  The next day we took our samples to the lab and examined them under the microscopes; that was pretty cool! 

Everyone's pretty enthralled in all the plankton they're catching!  Check out the headlamps; super intense, I know. (Photo credit: Jason Flower).

Hard-core plankton identification in the lab. Here are Jules and Hilary.  (Photo credit: Fadilah Ali).

Continuing with all of the fun that's been going on 'round hurr, last Friday all of us with CIEE (students, staff, interns, families, pets, etc) gathered at a local baseball field for some good ol'fashioned competitive fun, Ultimate Frisbee style.  It was students versus staff, and things got pretty intense.  Within the first round we had one black eye and one scraped knee (not on the same person, thankfully!).  Needless to say everyone was really competitive, but in a light-hearted way.  It was just really fun for all of us to blow off some steam and to play against our professors!  In the end, the staff ended up winning (dangit...) but it was all in good fun!

Now, getting to this past week.  Unfortunately, both Hilary and I came down with quite the assortment of pulmonary diseases and have been incapacitated for the whole week.  I hardly left CIEE property (let alone my room) for days.  At the end of the week we both finally made it to the doctors (we're both kinda stubborn and thought we were getting better...) and are now on antibiotics and are on the path to recovery.  Don't worry, we're OK!!  But, to ensure that we do not infect everyone else, we are currently residing in an apartment that is next to our resident director's house.  It is fully equipped, except for a TV (oh no whatever will we doooo!).  I have to admit, it's almost nice being away for a little while.  And, the front porch overlooks the water, so I can't really complain. 

The view from our illness isolation apartment.  Just remember that I've been sick for a week so I don't exactly look my best or know how to interact with the outside world anymore...

Anyway, I'm just looking forward to getting back into the swing of actual school and stuff (oh gosh what has gotten into me?!) because we only have FIVE SHORT WEEKS LEFT.  It's crazy to think of how fast time flies here, but as the saying goes, it's because I've been having so much fun!  I do miss everyone back home and look forward to returning to little ol' Narragansett, but I want to make sure I'm healthy enough to really enjoy the rest of my time on this incredible island. 

Well, I hope y'all enjoyed this rather long post, but hey, at least I broke up some of my narrative with beautiful pictures!! 

Sending lots of love from the Caribbean,

Catalina

Flying Through The Sea

Greetings my dear fans!  It sure has been a little while since my last post; that's because I've been so busy being an underwater scientist!  We've all gotten started on our Independent Research Projects and things have been rather busy around here.  Remember how I told you I was going to do research on those sea urchins?  Well, my research plan has changed a bit and now I'm going to look at the impact of all herbivores (plant-eating animals) on algae growth, meaning my research will extend to fishes and whatnot!  I won't bore you the experimental details, but it involves cages, tiles, and algae growth!


Aside from everyone working diligently on their research projects, we've done some cool things in our classes, including dissecting a ton of lionfish, snorkeling to observe the behavior of surgeonfish, underwater videography (pic below), learning Papiamentu (I'm practically fluent), and taking field trips to the villages/cities of the north (pics below).  It's been a really great past two weeks.  Be forewarned, it's gonna be a long post.

Let's delve more into detail for some of these events, shall we?  Firstly, underwater videography.  You might be wondering, what is that?  Well, it's when you bring a camera in this giant housing down with you when you dive and you essentially video tape the benthic environment (i.e. corals, sand, rubble, etc).  What is challenging about this particular skill is that you need to move rather slowly and remain relatively close to the substrate without touching it.  After we get the videos, we go back to the lab, take still-frames and then analyze points on those frames to see if they have different algae and coral species in order to categorize the benthos. 

Just doin' some underwater videography. 

With my dive buddy, Abbey.  We're about to characterize the benthos using a method different from underwater videography.  This one involves measuring the height of coral heads, looking for invertebrates, and determining percent algae and coral cover.  Check out all that extra gear hanging from us!

In addition to all of the underwater science that has been going on around here, we've really begun to learn about the culture of the island in more detail.  The last two Fridays we went on two amazing and informative field trips.  Last week we went to a cultural and educational center called Mangazina di Rei, which used to be the place where the slaves on the island got their weekly provisions of sorghum (a grain).  To this day, Bonaire still uses its salt pans to harvest salt from the ocean water.  Back in the day, slaves would work at the salt pans in the south during the week and then hike about 26 miles back to their homes in the north on the weekend, get their provisions, and then make the hike back down to the salt pans. 

At Mangazina di Rei, we tasted fresh lime/lemon juice, had pumpkin pancakes made above hot volcanic rocks, played traditional instruments to the Bonairean Harvest Song (our fave song), and even learned how to make cactus fences.  It was a great experience to learn more about the island's history and to see how the buildings were made (they use chalk made from the corals as a kind of plaster for the walls). 

Making the pumpkin pancakes.

Learning how to make a fence out of cacti.



Now, let me tell you what the Harvest Song is.  So we learned it when we went to Kunuku Arawak our first week on the island and have seized every moment to dance to it since.  The song's title is something like, "Rei my lo" - which means "King of the sorghum."  The sorghum was considered the most valuable crop on the island back in the day (and even today), so the Bonaireans would sing to the King to ensure a bountiful harvest.  There is a dance accompanied to the song, that involves two parallel lines of people standing arm-in-arm, facing each other.  You take about eight steps forward, and about eight steps backward, all to the lyrics of the song.  It's not a very complex dance, but it brings people together.  The more people involved, the more lines develop behind the first two initial ones.  I hope you understand how this goes...  Anyway, we all love dancing to it because we truly feel a part of the culture here when we are dancing and singing with the Bonaireans. 

This past Friday night we went on another field trip, only to Rincon, one of the oldest still-populated parts of the island.  It was once the place where the slaves lived and is now a place where family members are neighbors and everyone knows each other.  We had a walking tour of the city, led by two local women whose stories were insightful and whose spirits were contageous.  They provided us with anecdoes about the area and about their lives.  For instance, they said that they used to have to carry wood on their heads for their fires and that they used the pods from divi trees for glue and for making leather. 

On our tour, we sampled a local liqueur made from cactus, limes, and sorghum at the Bonaire-based distillery, went across the street to have homemade cookies from a woman who runs a cookie business from her house, were hooted and hollered at by the locals (an everyday occurrance, actually), and then were treated to a delicious dinner of goat, rice, and plantains at a family's house.  Let me just tell you, I have never felt more at home than I did that night.  When we arrived at the house for dinner, each of us received a personal handshake from one of the hosts, which I found to be most welcoming.  The family's friends and relatives came to the house while we were dining, adding to the sense of unity and just overall welcoming atmosphere that was all around us.  They were just so darn friendly and happy that I wanted to become friends with them.  Unfortunately, many of them (aside from our guides) only spoke Papiamentu, one of the native languages of the island, so communication was difficult. 

What was a more universal language, however, was that of dance. After dessert, we had expressed interest in hearing the Harvest Song (our jam, like I said), and so they bumped the jams and we got up and started dancing. I was honored to dance with two of the older Bonairean men (one I think was the man of the house while the other I think was just a neighbor). The movement wasn't too challenging, but was one I knew came from their hearts. I will always remember dancing with them. 

The bottle on the right is Cadushy, the liqueur made from Bonaire's cacti, limes, and sorghum.  The rest are from the other Antillean islands, such as Aruba and Saba.

Our guide, Maria, demonstrating how she would carry bundles of wood on her head as a child.

They call this the "Love Tree," because of the little seat made from the branch.  How romantic!

It's a divi divi tree, which grows westward due to the trade winds.

The gang.

Something I found most interesting was that the people of Rincon do not really leave.  They are born there, they grow up there, find a mate (haha there's the inner scientist in me), and settle down next to or near their parents.  They obviously venture to other parts of the island and see what is there, but do not move away from Rincon.  When we were telling our new friends about where we're from and about our Independent Research Projects, everyone was so intently listening to us, hearing our stories, wanting to learn about us.  I was so touched at their sincere interest even if they couldn't fully understand us.  They were just interested in learning about our foreign ways of life and what brought us to Bonaire. 

I had never before really considered what the natives must think of us Americans, and I feel a little guilty for not thinking about that before.  Here we are, visiting their homeland for four short months, trying to understand their lifestyles, but then we go back to our lives of luxury and indulgence, with a world of opportunity at our fingertips.  The people I met last night love their lives and live with such happiness, they do not need to go galavanting around the world to find it.  However thankful I am to have the opportunity to travel, I know that I am a lot like the people of Rincon, always tied to my homeland, and my family.  It is comforting to know that no matter where you go in the world, the people are the same; they love their families, their friends, and their traditions.

Anyway, another fun thing that happened this week was a dive we went on to find spawning Blue Tangs.  They form these aggregations, where tons gather in one place, and then a male and female swim up the water column, release their gametes, then swim back down.  We didn't end up seeing any of the Blue Tangs spawn, however (kinda disappointed, not gonna lie), but what made the dive fun was that while we were looking for the fish we were just suspended in the middle of a blue, blue sea.  We couldn't see the bottom, and were about 50-60 feet deep, just floating weightless.  While we were waiting for the fishies, we were doing flips, taking pictures, and just reclining, enjoying the weightlessness that we were experiencing.  It was the most sublime feeling ever. 

This dive made me realize that diving is the closest thing to flying.  When you're suspended in the water column, with perfect buoyancy, you are weightless and then have the power to glide anywhere: up, down, left, right, and diagonally.  It's really unlike anything you can experience while on land due to the restraints of gravity.  What I love even more is being able to swim through a school of Brown Chromis or staring down a French Angelfish.  I just feel so close to the marine life when diving, it's a most incredible feeling. 

School of Blue Tangs.

School of Brown Chromis.



French Angelfish.

So yup, I'm loving every moment here, learning so much about the culture, the ocean, and about myself in the process.  If you read this entire thing, you are an amazing human being because I think this is the longest post yet.  It's time for me to go snorkeling (I'm helping someone with their research, this is serious business around here).

I love you all!

Catalina