Visiting the Island

If you don't really know where the heck I am, then go into Google Earth and paste the following coordinates into the "Fly to" bar.
17 18 21.19N, 87 48 5.42W
You'll be able to see some of the buildings that I work in or live in. Fly around the area. There's a cute little island (I posted a picture of it earlier) just south of here. Enjoy the trip.

Sun & Star.......

Here's a 3D attempt using a slightly annoying animated gif. I'm not sure how I should display my 3D images for you. I could make an anaglyph for those with 3D glasses or a mirrored image for those that know how to look at images that way. For now, I'll mess with your brain with this animated gif that goes between the left and right images. It creates a 3D effect. Isn't your brain funny? This pictures is of a Sun anemone on Montastraea faveolata, a star coral.

5 Bucks on #7

I spent the morning with a group of Portland State University that have been studying mangroves on Turneffe Atoll (note: I picked a day when they were not going to be deep in the mangroves because there are millions of mosquitoes living in there --see "Donating Blood").
I acted as the photojournalist for the day.
Mangroves are unusual trees that thrive in estuaries and marine coastlines in the tropics and subtropics. To survive in these locations they have to deal with high saline. The plant has to secrete the excess salt that it takes in (picture on the right).These trees have really cool seeds that already look like little seedlings (below). The seed floats in the water with the brown tip down. The tip sticks into the sand/mud and wave and tide action slowly move it back and forth until it is in a position to begin to grow.

The mangrove forests are important for many reasons, but one that has been in the news recently is their role in protecting coastal areas from severe weather, such as a tsunami. Mangroves are often cleared for development. PSU researchers noticed that saplings established in areas where mangroves were cleared, but they grew very slowly. While saplings that established near intact mangroves were growing rapidly. The saplings may receive considerable help from the large mangrove trees (e.g., shelter from waves, nutrients from fallen leaves, sediment trapping, etc.). Thus, re-establishing cleared mangroves may be difficult. That's what these folks are trying to figure out. Click here to see the crew on our way to a study site. The sea is a bit rough outside of the reef.(Below a mangrove sapling next to a sapling scientist.)

(Two PSU students work with enclosures on mangrove saplings.)







They've made measurements, taken sediment cores, enclosed saplings, added fertilizers, and measure wave height and frequency.
They also timed how fast seeds floated through an area (below). "Five bucks on number seven!" Seedlings were dropped. The race was on. And today, they were making record time. This is just the beginning of the study. It will be going on for several more years. The hope is that they'll gain a greater understanding for the conditions necessary for mangroves to re-establish, so that the areas that have been cleared can be restored.

While they were busy collecting data, I wandered around "Coconut Island." It's a tiny island, and like every other beach around, it was covered in garbage (can you find the light bulb?). Nobody dumped garbage onto the island. It washed ashore. In fact many "pristine" beaches that you've visited have also been covered in trash. Early in the morning at resorts around the world people wake up really early to rake the beaches and pick up the trash, so that we see nice, clean, post-card-looking beaches. And in many places, such as Florida, they dredge up sand to constantly replace the beaches because they erode away. They're man-made beaches. The trash above may be from a cruise ship. You see, it's legal for cruise ships, and other vessels, to dump trash, human waste, medical waste, photo processing chemicals, etc. into the ocean if they're 250 miles off shore. There is no regulation, no law to prevent them. Where does it all go? Into the ocean is bad enough! But, it also washes up on beaches everywhere. The cruise ships that pass by Belize can show people the beautiful beaches and then dump their trash into the sea when they get out of range. Don't go on a cruise.
Oh, I watched a dolphin mother and her calf this afternoon too. The calf was very cute. Tomorrow I may go look for manatee. We'll see.

Barry and the turtle

This is a story about this little turtle. The students named her Hope. The researchers didn't have much for her.Shortly after I arrived here, my roommate, Mario Mota, who is a turtle researcher from Florida (formerly a dolphin and manatee researcher), was snorkeling off of what is called "front dock." This is the dock that we generally use for the boats. There is a "back dock" which is closer to the lagoon, near where the saltwater crocodiles live (I haven't seen one yet). There is a large fish that hangs out under front dock. His name is Barry. Can you guess what kind of fish he is? Try. I'll post a picture when I get around to taking one of him for those of you that can't guess. Mario saw some blood in the water and Barry grinning (that's a hint) nearby. Swimming round was a young (2 years old or less), female green turtle bleeding from a severed front flipper. Mario grabbed her before Barry came back for more. We didn't keep her long. The students had the chance to see her before she was released later on that evening. She may make it. They had an adult female named Calypso, who also had a missing flipper, nest here several times. She would apparently try to dig her nest , but struggled. Although they have mixed feelings about it, Calypso got help digging her nest. Hope has a long ways to go before she'll be ready to try something like Calypso did. (Here's a link to some info about green sea turtles, in case you want to know more http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/species/turtles/green.htm )

Working on the Atoll

Things are really, really busy here right now. Shortly after I arrived, the person that was training me, Kathy, got really sick. She only had a couple of days to fill me in on how they were conducting reef fish surveys along with how to take care of all of the reports, accounting, and random duties (e.g., making sure that we have enough food, getting broken furniture fixed, determining fuel expenses, etc.) before she had to be taken to the hospital in the mainland. Kathy ended up taking a boat to the mainland and is in the hospital. She was going septic. It's very fortunate that she got out when she did! She's been on IV antibiotics for days. It sounds like she's coming around now. We hope to get her on a flight to Miami tomorrow. I'm trying to figure it all out. I actually go to Belize City in the morning to pick up more people.

I'm trying to include pictures when I can. Here's one looking off of my front porch (I'm moving soon to a different room that won't be quite so scenic). Here's the group heading out to do a practice survey.

The picture above is an island near a place called Calabash. There is a group on the island in the picture studying the mangrove seedlings nearby. We plan to do out transect lines (fish surveys) near this spot.

The underwater pics that I've been taking so far are mostly for training purposes, so they aren't terribly pretty. However, I did dive down real quick to snap this picture of an anemone yesterday. I sure like anemones.

Donating Blood

I don't have a lot of time yet to make many posts. I hope to have more time soon. I'm in Belize at Blackbird Caye on Turneffe Atoll and the mosquitoes, apparently, are much worse than any of the locals can remember. Fortunately, I'm spending my days taking Elder Hostel volunteers out to the reef to learn how to identify reef fish rather than spending the day in the mosquito infested mangroves. A group from Portland State University at the station is spending most of the day in the mangroves getting eaten alive, however. I'm not sure that these PSU students are ever going to want to do field work again.
Small world stuff......While sitting in a rocking chair in the Sea-Tac airport, I decided to do something out of character. I decided to talk to the stranger next to me. It was late. I was bored. I was sitting in a wooden rocking chair....for hours. It seemed like a good thing to try to do. So, I commented on how it felt like I was sitting on my front porch. The nice woman, Andy, responded politely. Sat quiet for a long while and then started talking. It turns out that she works with community colleges. We had a nice visit about issues that many CC students face. I'm glad that I didn't follow my standard procedure and avoid random-stranger conversation. Perhaps more random. I've run into a number of people from Washington state here. It's odd. One woman in my Elder Hostel group that I'm training to ID reef fish to conduct fish surveys actually worked at YVCC and lived in Selah. Two students are from Spokane. Plus, a professor from San Jose State actually grew up in Ephrata, WA.
Other encounters. We ran into pods of dolphins this morning and afternoon on our way to our sites. I spent a long time with one foot of air and a few inches of water between my eye and that of a coastal Bottlenose Dolphin. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera on the first encounter and my batteries were dead on the second. I think that some of my Elder Hostel folks got pictures, however. Here's a picture of Mary, Tammy, Kathy, and Alice (Kathy isn't an Elder Hostel volunteer, but the others are). They are hard-core-fish-IDing snorkelers. I have to run.

Oh, yeah....the title

Hopefully the biologist out there will get the Cnido-site "joke." If you don't get it, then read about coral for a little while. You probably should read about coral anyway or look up nematocyst.

Birth

This is the birth of my blog. It happens to fall on my birthday, which is convenient. The purpose of this blog will be to post, if possible, pictures and commentary from my work in the Caribbean during the remainder of 2008.