So I leave in roughly 24 hours. Closer to 28, but who's counting?

It's hard to believe a summers gone by so fast. I feel like I was just getting lost in Waikiki, now I know it like the back of my hand. Not having cars, GPS or maps'll do that for you.

On the whole, I'm excited to go home. It's been a great summer, I've met some great people and had amaaaazing adventures, but home is calling.

Some Things I'll Miss

• Surfing after work
• Beaches everywhere
• Paddleboarding!!!
• Great Thai food. Mmmmm
• Cheap pineapples, mangos and lychees
• Yogurtland 
• The Hippie Quad at UH where I get delicious veggie food for lunch
• The crazies on Waikiki... I've grown fond of listening to them yell at inanimate objects
• The street performers on Kalakaua every night - steel drum guy, the silver and gold human statues, creepy Elmo guy, the magician who shows up on weekends, the little girls that sing...
• Using Hawaiian words in normal language
• The mountains... and the epic views that come with them. 
• Silly Japanese tourists. They're so funny, its adorable
• The amazing flowers/plants
• $3.50 Mai Tais
• Aloha shirts on Fridays 
• SHAVE ICE
• Stella, my bright pink mountain bike
• The funny lizards that make noises
• Mongooses!!!!
• And last but not least all the amazing people I've met out here that have made my summer amazing. 

Some Things I WON'T Miss....

• Relying on very late buses that don't believe in following schedules
• The giant roaches that live in my kitchen
• Paying $6 for a Bud Light and $9 for a box of cereal
• Taro and Spam

This isn't a totally complete list. There are more things I'll miss and more things I'll be glad to get rid of, but that's just the first things off the top of my head. 

I'm headed back to the mainland tomorrow at 1pm Hawaii time. I'm getting home at 7am Sunday Florida time. 

Mahalo to everyone that made this an amazing summer! 

Aloha! 

Hello all!

Finally some pictures!

So an bit of an update...we almost finished up our data collection, we might have one more dive this afternoon, weather dependant of course. We'd be going out to the Blowout, which is a pretty far ride and it's windy, so it may be too rough today. But regardless, this means that it's time to start data crunching! Yay! We started this morning, and it's going to be quite an arduous undertaking. There's a lot of stuff to consider!

But no one wants to hear about that....my weekend was far more exciting.

Friday was our last dive at The Plane. It was a great dive, although nothing too exciting to speak of, just lots and lots and lots and lots of fish that we had to count. It's pretty overwhelming sometimes. We did see some pretty cool fish that we don't normally see on transects though. Friday night we had an invitational dinner with the government officials of TCI. It was really nice. Everyone got dressed up, or at least as dressed up as you can get here...haha. The food was great and we got to talk to some people we don't normally see around town, when we're just out and about.

Saturday started with a great snorkel at the reef just off Long Cay. The pictures are from it.

This is a shot of a princess parrotfish and an ocean surgeonfish. The parrotfish is the colorful one towards the bottom.

Finally finally finally got my eagle ray picture! He let me follow him around and take lots of pictures. He had me swimming in circles above him, probably just to laugh at me. This guy had probably about a 4ft wingspan.

Cute little Nassau grouper!

After the snorkel, we had lunch and community outreach. I was in the pool teaching swimming lessons, which really just means I was in the pool getting jumped on and clung to. It was a lot of fun though, the kids really enjoyed it. Saturday afternoon is spent doing one thing: laying on the beach. Annie, our dive master, takes us out to Long Cay every Saturday after outreach. We hang out and talk and tan. We saw a little lemon shark in the water on the way there. The water was so shallow its dorsal fin was sticking out of the water, Jaws style. It was pretty awesome. I tried to get some pictures, but it was too far away and didn't come out well.

Sunday started out way earlier than normal....5:20 to be exact. A group of us went to East Bay to watch the sunrise. It was gorgeous. It was really cloudy at first, but the sun finally broke through the clouds. We got back to the center around 8 and slept until brunch at 11. After brunch we headed back to East Bay. On the way there it started raining, so we stopping into the Cox development (the only hotel on the island) and played dominoes and ate french fries until the rain passed.

This week is mostly dedicated to data crunching and paper writing. Saturday we present all our research. We're having a lot of waterfront in the afternoon though, hopefully some turtling or a few dives. I'm also scheduled (weather dependent OF COURSE) to go on a night dive tomorrow, so hopefully that pans out!!

Helloooo!

Still researching here!

Daily dives and all that. Today is the second to last one though, at least for research. We have one more REEF survey on Monday because we screwed up a survey last week and went to the wrong site. I've had a lot of good dives lately! At our last REEF survey at Mid-Cut, I saw an octopus and at The Plane, we heard the humpback whales! They were pretty far off, but you could hear them really well. I'm bringing my camera today, so you'll be able to see pictures of the Plane. It's a really cool site. Hopefully we'll see some cool shark or ray or something.

Other noteworthy stuff....

Went cliff jumping again on Sunday. Found a bigger cliff! It was probably 35 feet tall and it was SUCH an adrenaline rush. SO much fun. I'm going to miss that a lot. Florida doesnt have any good cliffs :( haha.

Also saw the whales again yesterday! We were all sitting around, playing dominoes in the morning, as usual, when someone said they saw a spout just past shark alley. So all of us run to the conch wall and sure enough, there were a couple of whale spouts off the coast. After a little pestering of the professors, we got Tim to take the boat out. We didn't get in the water with them this time, but we did get pretty close in the boat. It's still a really awesome experience.

We have another invitational dinner tonight with all the government officials of South Caicos, so after lunch we'll be cleaning up the center and getting ready for dinner. It'll be really nice to see everyone all dressed up again. It reminds us that we're real human beings who bathe and clean up quite nicely.

This weekend will probably be pretty relaxing, but its our last weekend of outreach!! :( Next weekend we're presenting our research projects to the community. Only two more weekends left! It's sad, I'm not ready to leave South just yet.

Next week is all paper writing and data crunching and waterfront activities.


That's about all for now! I'll try to put some new pictures up in the next few days!

Hello hello hello!

Directed research is in full swing these days! We've been diving every day after lunch, at 3 different site, a low-diversity site, with very few fish, a medium diversity site and a high diversity site with TONS of fish.

Monday we went to the high diversity site, The Plane, and did a REEF survey, which basically means we just ID everything we see and then later put them in different abundance categories Single-1, Few- 2-10, Many 11-100, and Abundant >100. It was a really nice dive. Unfortunately, since we're doing research, I can't bring my camera as much as I'd like, but I'll try to sneak it in again soon.

Tuesday we started transects. Not nearly as much fun as REEF surveys. For a transect, you lay out a 50m tape measure and count each fish you see 2.5m on either side of the line. We went to the Plane on Tuesday and it was CRAZY. Neil and I had completely different numbers at the end of the dive. There were so many fish it was nearly impossible to count them all! We did look up from the transect long enough to see a small school of eagle rays (4) and a green sea turtle. During the transects, we spend most of the time looking straight down at the line and the fish near the line....I feel like a whale shark could be doing backflips around me and I wouldn't notice! Haha.

Yesterday was another transect at Mid-Cut, the medium diversity site. It went much better than the transect on Monday! There were less fish and we had a better idea of what we were doing. We saw some HUGE snapper...the biggest one was probably like 5 - 6 feet a weighed at least like 120-150 lbs. No kidding. HUGE fish. It was really intimidating.

Today was transect number 3 at the Blow-Out, the low diversity site....its basically solid rock bottom with a little bit of algae and soft corals, but there's still some fish. I saw a little reef shark cruising by today and a baby Coney (which is a type of grouper) that was about as long as my thumb!

During the time we're not diving, we're around the center doing research. We've had consistant internet, so we look up papers and read other research about our topic or similar research. We have a project proposal due saturday which is basically a 5 page paper talking about what we're doing and why we're doing it...so that's been taking up most of our time....

Tomorrow we're back doing REEF surveys, but I dont know what site yet, because the water's been pretty choppy lately. If it's really rought, we'll probably go to Mid-Cut again because thats the closest site.

Hey all!

First of all, happy Easter!

Today was another one of those days that are awesome. We had a wonderful Easter brunch with more pastries and sweets than we were used to handling, and all done with a very limited food supply (shipment comes in tomorrow or Tues) and NO butter! After we digested our delicious feast, some of us decided to snorkel out to Long Cay. It was a beautiful day, very little current, calm water, warm air. It was just under a mile swim, we guessed, but with our flippers it only took about 20 minutes to swim it.


When we got there, we wandered around, exploring the island. It's a really cool island...it's totally uninhabited, except for rock iguanas, but they're shy anyway. It's all sandstone that's been wind and wave worn, making for some really unique rock climbing opportunities. On the outside of the island (the side that faces open ocean), there are some really really amazing cliffs that are just absolutely breathtaking.

This is a picture of some of the cliffs. But being the adventurous souls that we are, we decided to find water deep enough below the cliffs to do some cliff jumping! It took a while to find, and after some time, we kind of forgot our quest and were just climing around on rocks, but then we found a prime spot.


The cliff was about 20-25 feet above the water surface, and the water below was like 10 feet deep. It was such an incredible adrenaline rush!

This is a group shot from our adventure. From L to R, is Curtis, Neil, Marine, Andrew, Me, Lee, Adam and Sam. It was so much fun. On the snorkel back (which seemed wayyyyy longer) we saw a huge eagle ray that got really close to us. It was a really great day!

Hope everyone had a great Easter!

Hey everyone!

So exams went well, we had them Monday through Wednesday. They were a little stressful but I think I did okay. As of Wednesday at 11 we were officially DONE with classes. Now we're moving on to Directed Research...but I'm getting ahead of myself.

So Monday half of us went diving. It was really nice and relaxing. We saw two big eagle rays and a bunch of big sting rays. It was just an all around good dive, and one of our last "pleasure" dives for a while. Tuesday, another group went out diving and when they were done, packing up on the boat, they saw the humpback whales again! A few people got really close this time, like within 20 feet! I was bummed that I didnt get to see them that time, but I'm glad more people got to see them. They really are some of the most amazing creatures. It gives you a real sense of scale when there's an animal in the water thats hundreds of times larger than you.

Yesterday was our last exam (but if feels like it was sooo much longer ago). To celebrate, we went out on Long Cay for a cook-out with all the students and most of the staff. We sat around the campfire and talked about our cultural experience on South Caicos (our last "class" with Richard). It was really interesting to think about how our opinions have changed since the first few weeks. I feel like living here, I've learned a lot about the people here, but in a way, I don't think I'll ever fully understand all the intricacies of their culture. Although the weather wasn't the best (chilly and sprinkling off and on), some of us chose to stay the night and camp. It turned out to be a really beautiful night, with very little rain. The only downside was that we had to be up at 630 to get back to the center in time for morning meetings and breakfast. But it was still a lot of fun.

Today has been amazing. Directed research started today and I'm working on a project for Ben about fish diversity, specifically how species richness is related to family richness and if there are any correlations. We will be almost every day for the next 2+ weeks. We had all morning to be lazy today and it was GLORIOUS. I probably spent a solid hour sleeping in the hammock, just because I could. For our project, we're surveying 3 different dive sites, one with high, medium and low, fish diversity. Today we went to the low diversity site, called the Blow Out. It was REALLY rough going out, more rough that its been thus far. On top of that, a bottle of WD-40 spilled on the boat so everything was really slick and slippery. We were all a mess by the time we got into the water. As soon as we made it off the boat though, things were alright. Although it was the low diversity site, it was still a good dive. We saw a nurse shark and some HUGE baracuda. My dive buddy for this whole thing is Neil, and our divemaster is Jan, one of the interns. They're really cool, and I'm glad we get to hang out underwater together for 40 minutes every day...haha.

Tonight I also got to go on another dive. FINALLY got to go on my night dive which means....drumroll...I'm officially an advanced diver! Yay! It was a REALLY REALLY REALLY cool experience. It was a little eeire, not being able to see anything past your flashlight, but it was really cool. We saw some huge jacks feeding. They were eating everything they could find. It was nuts! We also got to see an eel and an octopus along with some other really cool nocturnal fish that we dont normally see. Toward the end of our dive, we turned off all our lights and moved our hands in the water to see all the bioluminescence. It was beautiful. The dive was just all-around a really cool experience...very chilled-out and relaxed.

We'll be diving tomorrow, and possibly on Saturday. We have Sunday off and then we're back collecting data Monday-Friday. I'm really excited!

Awesome cliffs on Long Cay


Turtle!


Hey all!

Sorry it's been so long since my last post. Things have been CRAZY around here. We've been projected to death! We've had a project about projecting ecotourism developments, a project on coming up with research methods, a project about coastal zoning....and that was all THIS week. And then there was our conch paper last week. Today was the presentation for our zoning project, our last project until finals, which start on Monday. So needless to say, it's been a really stressful two weeks. Oh, and we had our final coral ID exam on Thursday. My brain's about fried. But we have managed to slip in a little fun here and there.

Wednesday, me and some of the other students led a field trip for a 5th grade class. We took them out to an area with a lot of mangroves and showed them all the cool things about them. It was a really fun time, the kids really enjoyed looking for all the critters that live in the mangroves, like crabs and sea cucumbers and sea stars. That afternoon, we had a really nice dive to a place called the Arch. Named because theres an area of corals that form a huge arch you can swim under. Not too much exciting stuff, a couple of spotted eagle rays and a green moray, but other than that, just a nice peaceful dive.

This weekend should be pretty relaxing. Tonight we're having an invitational dinner for the teachers and some other community members from the churches and stores. We've been setting up and cleaning a good chunk of the afternoon. It should be nice, we send out almsot 90 invitations, but we're exepcting about half that to show. It will definatly be nice to relax a little and mingle with the community in a different setting after this busy, stressful week.

Tomorrow is community outreach and HOPEFULLY another dive, if the weather cooperates. It's been really windy and rough lately. We couldn't go out last Saturday because of the weather either.

Sunday I'm sure will be spend studying. Exams start Monday and go through Wednesday, but Wednesday night we're having a cook-out with an optional camp-out that night. I'm REALLY looking forward to that! I'm not sure where we're going yet, but I know it will be awesome! Then Thursday we start our directed research! I'm sure I'll have a lot more interesting stuff to share then! That's about all that's new around here! I'll post again when I can!