Today was sleepy. I took a dramamine to help with the 3+ hour boat ride from glovers reef back to Belize City, but the drowsiness side effect ended up meaning I slept most of the boat ride.
When we got back to Belize City I got to experience some very nice local snapper at a dockside restaurant, before we went to a convenience store where I restocked on bug repellent and other goodies.
After that we took a bus ride to the tropical education center, a lodge and education center attached to the Belize Zoo. We heard an amazing lecture from one of the leading Scarlet Macaw experts both about his work studying the nesting range ect of scarlet Macaw’s his experience trying to conserve them, and also his experience with the intersection of science and politics and public opinion which was perhaps the most interesting part!
Finally, that night we got to see all the nocturnal animals at the Belize Zoo on a tour! We saw everything from Jaguar’s to crocodiles, with one of my favorites being the Bairds Tapir (Belize’s National Animal) that had a very drippy and long flexible nose that it could wiggle every which way to try and get at the carrot in my hand!
We didn’t see any cockroaches today, probably because we stayed on relatively paved areas and did not get into any leaf litter or natural floor covering. We did see what someone thought was a cockroach in the bathroom, but I could tell it was not a cockroach as it did not have a pronoun (the head covering of a cockroach.) The beetles person thought it might be a type of Scarab!
This morning after breakfast, we had to say goodbye to Glover’s Reef (and Ruth). I had really started to get comfortable at Glover’s. The food, the views, the reefs, the hermit crabs and blue land crabs, the pelicans and frigate birds, iguanas, the snorkel shed, poster sessions, Clivus, and even the mosquito mangroves of death…. I’m grateful for it all.
After a 3.5 hour boat ride, we (quite fittingly) made our transition from ‘surf’ to ‘turf’ by dining on the shore at Calypso, a restaurant on the marina. After lunch, we all piled into two white vans and hit the road for the Tropical Education Center (TEC). On the drive, we passed a couple Police Security Checkpoints and got to see the dominant landscape features shift between developed cities, thick twisting mangroves, karstic mountains, and savannah peppered with palmettos.
At TEC, we received a lecture from Dr. Boris Arevalo, a conservation biologist who studies northern scarlet macaws. These macaws are a flagship species for several countries in Central America, so Dr. Arevalo wanted to better understand their nesting preferences on local and regional scales. The main points that I took away from his presentation was the importance of having a holistic understanding and management of BOTH breeding and foraging habitat, and that collaboration and communication are the most important tools for scientists. Some of my favorite quotes from Dr. Arevalo’s presentation:
“Conservation is a human issue”
“Scientists are professional beggars”
“Conservation is a business”
After dinner at TEC, we got a night-time tour of the Belize Zoo! We saw more animals in an hour than I can recount here, but I’ll try to list as many as I can remember. We saw three types of owls (spectacled, mottled, and barn), four types of cat (puma, jaguar, ocelot, margay), coatimundis, a paca, white-lipped peccaries, a tapir (which we got to touch), a four-eyed possum, a termite nest, an anteater, and most importantly…. I finally saw leafcutter ants (Atta cephalotes)! My excitement at simply seeing their little nocturnal parades across the paths bodes well for this trip. I’ll probably fully lose my mind when I get to see their fungus gardens.
Today started out with us leaving Glover’s Reef! I’m sorry to leave it, but I’ve been really excited for this new part of our class. We had breakfast at 7, then everyone kept getting ready for the journey until about 9 (during that time I finished the book I was reading – Ghost Story by Peter Straub). At 9, we boarded the boat and began to depart from the reef. Faith and I had a really fun time while that was happening, because we got emails regarding our CHEM TA applications at that time, which we had to respond to, but the wifi from the island was getting further and further away. We were both able to respond before we lost connection, though : ).
The boat ride lasted about 4 hours. The majority of us fell asleep for most of the trip, but there were a couple of times that everyone was up to look for some dolphins (I didn’t get to see any). Also, a lot of people said that they had seen flying fish as we were leaving. Anyway, we got back to Belize City around 1, and we had lunch at Calypso, which is a restaurant right on the dock that we docked at. Then, we went to a grocery store, where I bough lots of items that I started running low on while we were on the island, and Ava and I both got a Klondike Bar, which was a wonderful treat for the both of us.
Later, we got to the Tropical Education Center, which is beautiful. The trails here are wonderful to walk on, and the cabanas are delightful to stay in. I’m really sad that we’re only staying here for one night. We were also given a presentation by Dr. Boris Arevalo on Scarlet Macaws. The data he presented was really interesting, but he masterfully weaved in advice throughout the presentation about doing research and continuing in our careers, which really motivated a lot of us to do incredible work in our futures. After the presentation, we had dinner, then we went to the Belize Zoo for a night tour! It was amazing. I saw a lot of my taxanomic group (mammals), including jaguars (Panthera onca), a puma (Puma concolor), an ocelot (Leopardus pardalis), a margay (Leopardus wiedii), white-lipped peccaries (Dycotiles pecari), a tapir (Tapirus bairdii), a paca (Agouti paca), and a northern tamandua (Tamandua mexicana). The jaguars would roll over and climb trees so that the zookeeper would feed them pieces of chicken (and one of them was named Lindo), and the ocelot made a really funny noise as it ate the chicken that literally sounded like “nom nom nom.” Also, we got to feed the tapir some carrots and feed it! It was adorable.
I’m really glad we saw all these species today, and I hope we get to see more at Las Cuevas. Here are some pictures I took during the tour!
Baird’s Tapir (Tapirus bairdii) Thank you Ava for taking this picture!Puma (Puma concolor)Jaguar (Panthera onca)
Just before 9:00 am this morning, the TFBs departed Glovers Reef. I had such an amazing time as a marine field biologist in training, and I already miss GRMS! I got a picture with Ruth before I left. I am so thankful for everyone at Glovers and for our amazing water safety officers! I will miss Clivus too (the composter toilet system <3).
While on the boat, I sat on the stairs so that I had a perfect view of the ocean. The view was beautiful, and I felt so at peace. I sat there serenely for an hour, and the only reason I moved was to avoid getting sunburned.
We ate lunch at Calypso, and I got fresh watermelon juice and basically a mountain of pasta bolognese with garlic bread! So delicious 🙂
We all hopped into a van and went to a supermarket called Brodies. I bought bug spray (FINALLY!!!) and a few hiking-friendly snacks. Then, we drove to the Tropical Education Center (TEC)!
We got a quick tour and then went to a guest lecture given by Dr. Boris Arevalo. He lectured on nesting ecology and habitat selection of scarlet macaws in Belize and his research and work on the subject. I really enjoyed his lecture! He opened my eyes to the struggles of conservation work and how to weigh the importance of its impacts. This lecture also taught me a lot about research of my taxa and of scarlet macaws, as birds are my rainforest taxa.
After dinner, I rode in the bed of a truck to the Belize Zoo, where we had a night tour! Carlos the zookeeper led my group’s tour. We saw jaguars, pumas, and ocelots being fed, and we also saw a tapir (Belize’s national animal)! I also got to see some of my taxa, including the spectacled owl, barn owl, and mottled owl! I’m not sure how likely we are to see owls while we’re at LCRS, so I was excited to have the opportunity at the zoo! It was incredible to see the animals active at night.
It was a late night tonight, and it’s going to be an early morning tomorrow, so I’m excited to get some sleep in these cute and cozy cabana lodgings! I’m rooming with Maggy!
My Belize ecosystem count is now at 2, and tomorrow’s travels will take it to 3!
I’m actually so sad to leave Glover’s Reef, I miss the hermit crabs, the iguanas and lizards, the giant blue crabs, the breeze, I even miss the sand everywhere and maybe even the mosquitos. We said our goodbye’s to Glover’s this morning, I can’t believe that was still today!
Then got back on the boat to Belize city. I slept through most of the boat ride, even the bumpier parts, but it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the first ride into Glover’s. I also got to eat some of the candy I bought back when we first got into Belize, some chile and chamoy lollipops, (I bought some more sweet and spicy candies when we went to the store again today). We had a long and relaxed lunch at Calypso, right on the dock where we got off of the boat. Then set off to the Belize Zoo and education center. I unfortunately did not see any of my taxon today. My rainforest taxon is lichen and fungi! Both pretty interesting but super hard to identify specific species or even classify in some cases!
Also yesterday on Glover’s we got to eat Lionfish ceviche! It was so good, I’ve never had ceviche until now and I think I’ve been missing out. I don’t know if it’ll taste as good without the fresh caught lionfish. We also had conch at dinner, it’s common to eat here in Belize but I’ve never had it before, and it was pretty good! I’m not a huge fan of seafood so I’m glad it was fried and had a relatively light flavor and a nice texture.
We also got a night tour of the zoo here after dinner. They only have animals native to Belize and all of them are rescues, either from people keeping wild animals as pets then dumping them when they get too big or aggressive, or were going to be killed for hunting livestock by farmers, or brought in as infants that wouldn’t have survived otherwise.
I think my favorite was the Tapir, his nose was just so long and funny and kept wiggling around!
Tomorrow we have another long travel day, but hopefully it’ll be just as much fun!
Today we started our time on land! While most of the morning and early afternoon was spent traveling from Glovers Reef to inland Belize, this evening we got to hear a very interesting lecture and visit the Belize zoo after dark to see the nocturnal animals. (Side note: We learned today that the Dramamine we took for the forereef boat ride was actually just ginger pills, so that’s why it didn’t work at all, luckily I had real Dramamine for today.)
We heard about Scarlet Macaw’s nesting and habitat selection from a scientist named Dr. Boris. He focused a lot on the functional aspect of science (researching in order to conserve nature) which I found very exciting! Aside from a wealth of knowledge about the Scarlet Macaw, he also gave us a lot of good advice on being a researcher and the difficulties it sometimes presents.
Also, I figured out pretty quickly that you need to keep an eye on where your walking at night, as leaf cutter ants are nocturnal and we saw a few large lines of them hard at work right across our path! Snakes are also a good thing to keep an eye out for late at night.
After dark, we got to go on a night tour at the zoo! Here I was able to meet a Tapir named Indy (who loves carrots).
We also saw a lot of predatory cats which was super cool! Since it was night (and our guide Carlos had chicken livers) they were very active. We met a jaguar, that had been trained to roll over, as well as an ocelot, puma, and margay.
I also saw the first individual from my jungle taxonomic group today, a tiny brown moth I had no hope of identifying! I am looking forward to seeing more moths/butterflies over the next week that I will be able to identify (and I’m sure many I wont!).
There was a lot to do today, since it was our last day!
We started out by going to a non-MPA to collect our last data set for our research question from three days ago. We used the transects and quadrats for the last time, which was very bitter sweet. The reef was very sparse, with very few live corals. There was a decent amount of brown algae, mainly the saucer leaf algae, covering the rubble. We saw some Caribbean reef squid though! There were six or seven of them, and they were all in a row in the seagrass bed that surrounded the reef. Doing what, I don’t know.
Afterwards, we went to a reef in the MPA, which they call “The Aquarium.” There were tons of fish, including parrot fish, angel fish, damsel fish, and others that I couldn’t identify. There was also a lot of brown algae! Yay! It was mainly saucer leaf algae and funnelweed, intermixed with some white scroll algae and y-branching algae. I saw a really cool blue variety of the y-branching algae, which I believe to have been dictyota menstrualis. It was right in the middle of a patch of saucer leaf algae.
dictyota humifusa with saucer leaf algaesquids in a row! (to the right)
After lunch, we compiled and analyzed our data, and presented it to the professors. You can read about it below! The poster doesn’t include in the discussion that there may have also been a difference in the non-MPA sited due to environmental factors that we couldn’t take into account, such as differences in the amount of fishing in each area.
We enjoyed some presentations from our fellow classmates, and then had a lovely dinner, which included friend conch! It was actually quite tasty. But it wasn’t until after dinner that the real fun began! We performed dissections on the three lionfish that were caught by Prof Solomon this week, and added our data to the list of lionfish data from the previous years of the BIOS 319 trip. Once we were done, Prof Solomon filleted the lionfish, and put them into a mixture of lime juice, tomato, and onions to create a ceviche. It turned out quite delicious! I would definitely recommend eating lionfish! Although I think I still smell like fish.
their names, from top to bottom: Main Course, Appetizer, and Snack
Anyways, today was the last day on the reef! It’s amazing that the time passed so quickly! Tomorrow we will be taking a boat back to the mainland, and starting the land portion of the class. See you all then!
-Elena
Prof Solomon fileting the lionfishPerforming the dissection on Main CourseSophia and I
Today we finally finished our sea urchin/coral health correlation study. Unfortunately the last reef we surveyed was not the healthiest, with very little reef structure or live coral. However, there were Sooo many urchins. We collected over 170 of them. I remember turning over a rock and seeing both the rock and the sand under it simply covered in urchins. I had to get someone next to me to come help me collect them because I couldn’t carry them all.
We also saw reef squid for the first time. There were seven of them right off the boat, and they seemed to be all in a straight line in the middle of the water column. I didn’t see any new species of green algae, but I did see some very unique looking individuals. One was a a green bubble algae (dictyospaeria cavernosa) that looked way more yellow than any I had seen before. When I lifted it up it looked like the inside of the bible had been completely filled with sand!
I also saw a Ventricaria ventricosa (sea pearl) that looked like a deep shade of blue that really stood out from the dark green I usually see. I am not sure what caused this appearance but it was really pretty!
When we finished collecting and analyzing our data, we found a that more sea urchins were correlated with a lower percentage of coral cover being alive. However, our conclusion was highly suspect as for example, we got better and better at finding urchins each time we collected data.
Finally, at the end of the night we dissected the lion fish we had speared over the course of the week. It was a little gross, but it was also really cool to open up the stomach and find the little fish the lion fish had been eating still inside!
Hi all, it’s Faith with Day 7 updates from the 2022 Belize trip!!!
Today we woke up and gathered our last non-mpa reef data. The waves were brutal; McKenna described them as, “being thrown in a washing machine.” The reef was about 5 feet deep, and it was mostly sand. The winds made this data collection positivelyhorrendous! It was really hard to keep our quadrats in place, and the transect tape kept coming undone. I EVEN GOT FIRE CORALED (or “fire hydroided” since fire corals are actually hydroids). Nevertheless, we powered through.
The urchin collecting went surprisingly well. Today we collected 177 E. viridis (Reef boring urchins). per usual, we found them burrowed in tight niches of branched hard corals and under rocks. We found some exceptionally large ones today being 1.25 inches + !!! Even though there are always urchins we can’t grab, I usually notice more species variation on the reef. However, this patch reef only had E. viridis; there were no pencil slate urchins or boring urchins in sight!
Outside of the urchin hunt, we didn’t find any other echinoderms. I’ve really enjoyed being the urchin- identifier on the urchin counting team for the past few days. I realize I haven’t described it much, but that is because we usually only find Reef urchins and the occasional sea egg. Today, however, I got to throw the urchins back into the sea. They look like little soot sprites as they float to the bottom.
After the data dive, we went on a recreational snorkel. I was also fire coraled here, but I’ll forgive it. This reef had significantly less urchins than the non-mpa reef we had snorkeled earlier. The ones I saw were E. viridis and they were burrowed in coral crevices. Even though we didn’t do a formal collection, the reef had a visibly lower urchin count.
This reef also surprised us with 2 Caribbean reef squid (the only squid in the Caribbean), 2 spiny lobster, and a lionfish! (I found the lionfish btw)
Back on land, Caio showed me how to catch lizards so that I would be prepared for seeing them in Las Cuevas. (I think he likes me more now that he knows I’m the reptile taxon). According to the Caio technique, you have to cup the lizard with your hands when they can’t see you. Then, you let the front legs perch on two fingers while you press (lightly) on their torso with your thumb. I put a picture of me holding one below! The lizards we caught we brown anoles (A. sangrei), and they were climbing the trees behind the kitchen.
Later in the day, we analyzed our data about corals and urchins, answering the question, “how does the sea urchin population correlate with the live coral count, and how does this change across mpa and non-mpa reefs?” Our data was mostly inconclusive because of our improved ability to find sea urchins and environmental factors.
Last but not least, we dissected the 3 lionfish we hunted! Liliana got to dissect the big one; meanwhile, Maegan, Michiel, Ava, and I dissected “Snack,” the small 23.6g immature female. We didn’t get much data besides that, but she did eat a tiny fish in her limited years. Snack, Appetizer, and MC (main course) made a great ceviche. Also MC was a giant lionfish weighting 680g!
Anyways I’m about to enjoy some ceviche, till tomorrow!
QOTD: “Surchin af”
“BRB I’m gonna go rub this book on my head”
E. Viridis from urchin hunting!Ceviche Prep!!!Dissecting Snack, the small lionfishMe holding an Anolis sangrei, brown anoleCaribbean Reef squid I found
Our last full day at Glover’s 🙁 We started it off with our last data collection for Sunday’s research question about coral cover and sea urchin abundance at a non-MPA site. This was pretty quick as we have all become really efficient with our methods and were even able to collect 177 (!!!) sea urchins, all Echinometra viridis. It was pretty sad how dead this reef was but I still saw an Amber Pinshell mollusk and some Common Sea Fan. We were also able to go to a protected area where there were so many different reef fish and I got to dive down a lot to observe them closer. The water was pretty rough but it made it all the more fun! I saw lots of Branching Vase Sponge, saucer leaf brown algae, Jania spp. and Amphiora fragilissima red algae, a parrot fish, more French Angel Fish, a puffer, and some stag horn coral! Also, Dr. Solomon secured us our third lion fish of the trip, a small but the perfect addition for our collection.
“Surchin for Urchins: The Correlation Between Number of Urchins and Percent Live Coral”
After finishing up our poster for the experiment, we had a few topic lectures so we would have more time for the lion fish ceviche!! After dinner, we gathered in the wet lab and first dissected the fish. We had three different sized ones: Snack, Appetizer, and Main Course. This was of course based on their sizes, and I got to work on Main Course, and it was hugeeee. We first took the 680g (!!) fish and measured the gape width and length which was about 3 cm and 3.25 cm respectively. Then, we sexed it and found out that it was a male before cutting open it’s stomach to see what was inside. It had these two little pieces that were pretty digested but we think it may have been some kind of invertebrate. It was super cool to be able to analyze the food that we were about to eat, especially something that is harmful to our environment. After all the fish were gutted and cleaned, Dr. Solomon made it into a delicious ceviche that we enjoyed with some plantain and corn chips. Highly recommend, 12/10 experience and a great way to end the first part of our trip.
