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Reflection

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Final Blog Post

Reflection

Written at 5:32 pm on May 31st

 

We’ve been home a little over a day now, but my brain is still reeling from this incredible experience. We may have been bitten by bugs or burned by the sun, but this trip is one I’ll always remember. I relished the opportunity to learn about field work and to do science experiments in new environments with people who are just as passionate as I am (if not even more!).

 

I had never really visited a rainforest in its pristine quality such as the Chiquibul area around Las Cuevas. There were just so many hymenopterans, insects, and plant diversity. My expectations were high due to the Planet Earth’s wonderful episodes, but wow, I was still floored.

 

Similarities wise, when comparing the rainforest to a reef, there is an equal amount of diversity—there are plants and coral that are common or rare (for their respective ecosystems), and the same seems to apply to animals/fish in both places! It’s just wild to me how such brilliant ecosystems can support as much life as they do. I was also shocked at just how much rain affected the rainforest. The first heavy rain ignited the nuptial flight for some termite and ant species! I know that rain affecting the rainforest seems obvious, but this nuptial flight and predictability of some fauna presence made the whole phenomenon magical.

 

Despite the obvious difference of salt water vs. freshwater and marine vs. terrestrial, I felt that there wasn’t much that differed. Of course, the biological diversity and make-up of the ecosystems are totally different. But if one were to equate a tree to a coral, and a reptile to a fish, one might find similar compositions and proportions of those species. However, now that I think about it a little more, there are SO MANY undiscovered arthropods in the rainforest, and probably just as many microscopic organisms in the coral reef. If I had to guess which ecosystem has greater biological richness, my money would be on the rainforest.

 

This course was everything I hoped it would be and more. I surely expected more mosquitos in the rainforest and less on the island, but the opposite was true. On a more serious note, I am really pleased with how our group got along, how we approached each poster/project, and just hung out in the downtime. Academics wise, I really felt like I learned a lot about ecology, which as a BioSciences major, I don’t have to study in total depth. If I had to pick three things that will stick with me forever… humm

  • Scarlet macaws are endangered due to poachers who steal their babies to sell as pets. This was surprising to me because finding their nests must be pretty hard already!
  • Frogs are really hard to find in the rainforest, especially during the dry season. Also, their sounds can deceive the human ear, and it sounds like they go in all different directions. I was actually shocked by the chorus of the rainforest at night, and I couldn’t really distinguish which animals were making what sounds.
  • Corals can form viable hybrids that could help increase genetic diversity and resilience of global warming effects in the ocean. This is just incredibly crucial to the future of coral reefs.

 

If I really had to pick a favorite part, I would say that snorkeling in the forereef and in the backreef, with such still water, was truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. There was just such a range of fish—in age, size, color, and species. And the coral/sponges were also spectacular. And the water was so blue. And the list could go on.

 

My “technically” least favorite part was the humidity in the rainforest. So dense and thick, I almost found it harder to breathe. Now, this also could have to do with my being out of shape from the semester, but either way I was surprised.

 

And truly, if that is the worst thing I can say about this trip, then amen—this was truly an incredible trip. I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to go to Belize.

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Day 14: maroon me on this island

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We had a surprising amount of free time today, which hasn’t really happened in… ever. After dissecting a little lionfish (invasive species!) and promptly eating it in Scott-made ceviche, we were effectively left to our own devices. After a quick nap on the hammocks, we had lunch and then some of us went out snorkeling in the fore reef. I wasn’t necessarily excited to put on my dive suit and fins for the seventh day in a row, so I stayed on the shore and we spent about an hour collecting hermit crabs and putting them in a hole we dug. Sami and I thought it to be a little abusive but we watched anyway.

Ceyda and I preparing to dissect our lionfish. PC: Claire

Afterward, we all piled into the boat and sailed off to our final activity at Glover’s, and a TFB tradition. This was maybe one of my favorite parts of the whole trip. We arrived at Southwest Caye, an island that houses a fairly traditional Caribbean resort. It was just us at first, and I commandeered the music (against Ceyda’s wishes, but with the support of everyone else). We ordered drinks around a picturesque wooden Tiki bar, and sat on the pier overlooking the water and talking. Rose taught us how to dance in the Belizean way (kind of similar to the Brazilian way). We walked around the island and took lots of pictures. We all signed a Rice t-shirt, with different sketches next to our names, and the tiki bar put it up on the wall.

The shirt we signed and put up in the bar.
Some of the crew posing at a palm. PC: Sam

We sailed home under a beautiful sunset, the sun setting on one side and the moon rising directly opposite. We spent the rest of the night after dinner sitting on the pier, talking to the coast guard guys and writing our journals under the light of the dock’s only lamp. I briefly taught Chloe and Claire how to fence. We told stories and joked until about midnight, and I fell asleep already missing Belize.

The unreal sunset we saw from the tiki bar.

As a note–I didn’t see any green algae today because I didn’t go in the water, but I’m sure if I had I would’ve seen many Halimeda tunas  and Rhipocephalus pinecones.

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Day 13: I Have Recovered from my Crustacean Blindness

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It was absolutely pouring this morning when we woke up. We had to wait out the rain and wound up doing our presentations in the morning. When the rain died down, we walked out to the fossil corals again as well as the mangroves to collect trash off the beeches. Honestly, it was pretty depressing. We were collecting data on what types of trash were on each side of the island and how much, but I definitely just wanted to clean the beach. There were so many bottles and shoes and random pieces of styrofoam; it was really sad. We found way more trash at the mangroves, but that was mostly because we were counting the number of pieces and the pieces at the mangroves were much smaller.

On a happier note, we spent the afternoon snorkeling through a few different reefs. There were way more fish than we’d seen at the other spots we visited. Scott found a big lobster just like yesterday and I could sorta see it, but it was definitely mostly just darkness, then he found two yellow arrow line crabs which I sorta saw the antennae also but didn’t really see. Scott accused me of crustacean blindness and made fun of me for being the only person on the trip who doesn’t need glasses (which is true, 20/20 vision for the win). Then I found my own yellow arrow line crab and was super excited.

We then saw a bunch more hermit crabs running around on the sand, one of them was in a huge conch shell.

I think one may have been another star eye crab, but I’m not sure. I also found a small yellowish shrimp that wasn’t in our reef creatures book and another Caribbean spiny lobster. I overcame my crustacean blindness!

We also saw a lot of other cool species swimming around. There were these red fish with giant black eyes that Andressa referred to as devil fish that are actually called squirrel fish.

We also found another lionfish that we’ll dissect tomorrow. The most exciting thing we saw was a giant nurse shark. It was just chilling on the bottom of the reef. It was maybe six feet long and absolutely beautiful. It had a water bottle tied to its fin though, which felt thematic, but also really sad.

We thought about trying to remove it, but we didn’t have anything to cut whatever it was tied with and we didn’t want to get too close to the shark.

Tonight we stayed up late to finish our poster on the trash and then to write our blogs and notebooks. This trip has been so great and I’ve loved getting to know all these people and spend so much time with them.

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Day 12: Mantis Shrimp are Freaking Aggressive

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We spent the whole morning analyzing our data from the coral and urchin stuff we did over the last two days. It was nice to just sit in a hammock staring out at the water that is an unnatural shade of blue and talk about data. I was actually dry for a few hours too which was pretty exciting. On most of this trip, I’ve either been in the water, getting rained on, or super sweaty.

In the afternoon we waded out to the reef that’s right next to the island. At first, it was super hot and disgusting because of the decomposing matter and the fact that our feet just went right into the ground respectively. But as we got out farther into the reef, it started to get cooler and we found super cool stuff. We picked up a ton of conchs, both alive and empty shells, tiny crabs, algae, and coral rubble. We brought everything back to the wet lab, where we have running ocean water, to get a better look at what we found. While we were still out collecting stuff we found a gigantic Caribbean spiny lobster. It was hiding under some coral. Scott spent at least 10 minutes trying to show it to me. I couldn’t see it because it was dark and because the lobster filled up literally the whole space and because apparently, I have crustacean blindness. When I finally saw it, I realized it was at least 3 feet long. It had long spindly antennae and stripy legs. On the way back to shore, we flipped over a piece of coral rubble and found 3 different lobsters. They skrted pretty quickly, but I think they were spiny spotted lobsters. There was one that was about 10 inches long, one that was 5 inches long, and one that was an inch and a half long. They looked like they might have been shrimp, but I knew they were lobster because of their thick antennae. In the tropics, you don’t find lobsters with the big claws like the ones in the supermarket, instead, they all have large antennae, either thick and spiny or wide and flat.

We had SO MANY CRUSTACEANS in the stuff we collected. We got a star eye hermit crab, whose eyes were gorgeous, and a white speckled hermit crab, who had slightly less gorgeous eyes.

There were a ton of crabs. Most of them were small green red ridged clinging crab, as in they were green but their common name is the red ridged clinging crab (because common names are useless). There were also a few other crabs one of which I think may have been a furcate spider crab which is a decorator crab. It was sorta fuzzy which I think was various algae it had covered itself in. We also had three tiny (<1cm) shrimp. One of them was a bumblebee shrimp which was kinda squat and covered in black and white stripes. I wasn’t able to ID the other two, one was super transparent and I have no clue what it was. The other had red and white striped arms and I think it was a sea anemone shrimp, but there are lots of small shrimp with red and white arms. There were a ton of tiny hermit crabs that I couldn’t identify too.

The most interesting thing that we found, I would argue, was a common mantis shrimp. It was about an inch and a half long. Mantis shrimp are known for either punching or spearing their prey. The common mantis shrimp is a spearing mantis shrimp so it has really sharp arms it can use to stab shrimp and what not. It would spend most of its time hiding under the large hermit crabs. But whenever it was disturbed, it would sometimes run up to one of the crabs and start attacking it. You could hear the pop as it punched the crabs with its arms and the crabs would totally freak out. I was showing all my crustaceans to the coast guard guys who are on this island with us and they thought the mantis shrimp was really cool. I really enjoyed teaching all these guys about the crustaceans that live in the ocean that is basically their backyard. I want to go into science communication and getting to talk to these guys about the crustaceans was a really cool chance to do it a little. There was a little bit of a language barrier, but I still got to show them the mantis shrimp and how violent it was and how beautiful the hermit crabs were and how pinchy the tiny crabs were.

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Day 14: I’d be Lion if I Said Today Wasn’t Amazing

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I woke up this morning at, surprise, 6, before getting ready and eating breakfast. Scott brought out the lionfish to thaw before we began our dissection. Elena and I had two pretty small ones, names Bambi’s mom and Mufasa that we weren’t able to glean too much info from, but the dissections were still pretty cool. After, we had a really great time chilling in the hammocks and playing with the volleyball while Scott prepared the fish. We all took a taste of the lionfish ceviche after, which was pretty great.

Lionfish Dissection!

We ate lunch then I took some time to pack up my stuff, which was difficult because I managed to put stuff in every building. Afterward, we all packed up on the boat for one last outing to a resort on Southwest Caye. There, we chilled in the Tiki Bar, took photos, and danced with Rose. We all signed a t-shirt that would stay at the bar with little drawings of our time here. Overall, it was a really great way to celebrate all that we’ve done.

My Husband And I

We came back an ate a quick dinner before going to the dock for some Scott led meditation. We spent ten minutes mediating with the wind and the waves in the background, which was really nice. After, we put the dive lights into the water off the dock and worked on our notebooks. We all sat on the dock and chatted with some of the guys on the island, which is where I learned that I’m a koolie gial so life goal made. Afterwards, we went to sleep for the last time on Glover’s Reef ☹No corallimorphs, zoanthids, or anemones seen today

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Day 13: A Shore so Trashy that You’d Think We Were in Jersey

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I woke up to thunder and rainy skies, which was a surprise since last night was the only clear night we had had. I went to the lecture hall to work on blogs before traversing the flood to go to breakfast. We all came to the lecture hall for our last round of lectures by Claire on crustaceans, Jessica on sponges, and Elena on mangroves and sea grass beds.

Scott gave us our topic for today, which would be to look into marine debris. We decided to look into the different compositions and amounts of trash on the windward and leeward sides of the island. We headed out to the dead coral graveyard to start collecting the trash for 15 minutes. The amount of trash was really disheartening, but we tried our best to pick up as much as we could in that time. We sorted as we went, with Andressa writing it down. We finished up the windward side and moved to the leeward side where we repeated the process. We were all pretty sad after, but lunch cheered us right back up again.

After lunch, we geared up for our last boat snorkeling trip. We went to the Aquarium, which was an area of patch reefs with a bunch of cool fish, a deeper spot above a coral reef, then a shallow sea grass area. We got to see a lot of great species, like a reef parrotfish an eagle ray, another donkey dung sea cucumber, a starry eyed hermit crab, and, most appropriately, a nurse shark with a plastic bottle attached to its fin. We swam around for a few hours before getting in the boat and heading back for dinner.

A Giant Caribbean Anemone Peaking Out

 

We finished working on our poster of our findings from this morning, titled Talk Dirty to Me, and presented to Scott. Afterwards, we all hung out in the lecture room to finish up our blogs and notebooks and listen to everyone’s surprisingly great taste in music.

Multiple Anemones in the Patch Reef

Corallimorphs, Zoanthids, and Anemones seen: 4 giant Caribbean anemones, all larger than the ones yesterday at over 15 cm and hidden in the crevices of the shallow coral reefs. 1 flower anemone on the side of a reef in the 1st dive spot, next to fan coral at about 5 cm at the opening. 1 yellow polyp rock seen on top of a piece of dead coral, about 50ish polyps on it. 2 White encrusting zoanthids, both on the bottom of the benthos, not surrounded by anything. One was about 75ish polyps and the other was a few hundred.

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Day 12: We Shore Love Snorkeling

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I woke up at 3:45 this morning to prove that I was able to naturally able to wake up at whatever time I wanted before waking up at 6:00 to actually start my day. We ate breakfast before moving to the hammocks to work on our poster on our findings from day 10 and 11 about the hard coral coverage and sea urchins. We spent about three hours analyzing our data and writing up our poster before presenting to Scott and Javier. Afterwards, we started lectures with me giving my presentation on corallimorphs, zoanthids, and anemones. We ran out of time and had to break for lunch but came back and Sam gave his lecture on brown and red algae and Jessica gave hers on invasive species.

After lectures, we geared up sans fins and waded out off the shore into what felt like boiling water. As we got deeper, the water became colder and more and more organisms came out. We picked up conch shells to look for any small creatures that we put into Scott’s bucket. I focused on finding anemones and corallimorphs but I stumbled across a few cool green algae and conchs. We swam farther to the barrier reef, where the corals contained a ton of really cool critters. We saw two nurse sharks, a puffer fish, plenty of damselfish, a giant lobster, and some really cool corals. We swam around for about an hour and a half before heading back to the shore to analyze our creatures.

2 Sun Anemenomes, Chilling on a Conch Shell, 5 cm apart Cuz They’re not Friends

We took our buckets back to the wet lab and began sorting out our taxons. We found a big surprise with two small octopi that had been hiding in our shells and a small wrasse that seemed terrified of us. I took all of the anemones and the medusa worm into my bucket and worked to identify them. Sam, Jessica, Andressa, and Claire identified their critters as well before we presented to the rest of the class.

After we ate dinner, I showered and we all sat on the dock to watch the sunset, which was really nice. After, Javier gave us a presentation on the history and culture of Belize, which was super interesting, We all chilled by the hammocks after to work on notebooks while listening to music.

Corallimorphs, Zoanthids, and Anemones found: 7 giant Caribbean anemones seen in the shallow reef of both color morphs. They were either on conch shells or in the crevices of hard corals in the reef. They were mostly alone but a few were in close proximity to each other. Sun anemones, saw 3 10cm ones, 2 20cms and 1 40 cm one, either on the benthos or attached to rocks in the reefs. Many of these grew close to each other. Brown sponge zoanthid found in the coral near the barrier reef, hidden in a crevice. It formed a small mound near the floor of the coral.

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Day 11: Not the Three Reef or the Five Reef but a Journey to the Fore Reef

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I woke up at 6 this morning and worked on my blog post from yesterday before having a great breakfast of fryjacks and mango jam. This mango jam is actually my favorite thing on the island. We went to the lecture hall where Lindolfo gave us a great presentation about the marine protected areas and what the officers here do to take care of the reefs in the area. After that, we geared up for our first snorkeling excursion of the day.

We took the boat out onto the fore reef near Long Caye and dove into the deepest water we’ve been in yet. The currents here were pretty strong, which made it hard to swim a little but the view underneath the waves was worth it. We also took some great photos of each other under the water here. We saw a southern stingray on the benthos right before coming back into the boat to go to another spot on the forereef, where we saw parrotfish, fire coral, and other organisms that I had a little trouble seeing in the water without my glasses. Everyone started getting pretty queasy after this though so we got back into the boat and headed back for lunch.

A Slightly Blurry Ringed Anemone

After a great lunch, we all took a communal nap by the hammocks before getting ready again to go urchin collecting. We decided to use the sea urchins as a measure of the health of the MPA vs non-MPA zones so we headed out in a boat to the MPA zone from yesterday to collect first. Collecting the urchins was hard since they were spiny and stuck to the rocks but we managed to round up 74 in total, including a West Indian Egg and a Diadema. We headed to the non-MPA zone to do the same thing, this time collecting a ton of huge diadema and 76 urchins in total. After we caught them, we measured them and released them back into the ocean.

After coming back and showering, we had dinner and headed into lectures, where Ceyda talked about herbivorous fish, Elena talked about piscivorous fish, and Andressa talked about Marine Debris. Afterwards, it was off to the races for the Dermit Crab Races!

THE DERMIT CRAB RACES

We went around the island to find our chosen steeds, with everyone getting a hermit crab except Sam and Elena who raced with Caribbean Blue Crabs. We made two lines in the sand and put coconut on one end to entice them. The Caribbean Blue Crabs were fast but ran off the track, which left the spot open for my large hermit boy, Alejandro, to steal the spotlight and win the races. My crab won and everyone else’s was trash. Afterward, we all watched the storm roll in and worked on our blogs and notebooks.

Corallmorphs, Zoanthids, and Anemones seen:

A Giant Caribbean anemone seen in the MPA zone, at about 3 ft in depth on the side of a rocky outcropping. The tentacles were the purple morph and was about 20 cm in length.

A Ringed Anemone hiding under a conch shell in the MPA zone at about 3 ft in depth. I couldn’t see the base, only the tentacles that curled up out of the side of the shell.

2 sun anemones in the non-MPA zone, both fairly close to each other on the side of a rock, about 1 ft from the surface. One fan coral close by but nothing else around them.

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Day 15: When it’s Time to Find Home, We Know the Way

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Blog Post #15

Day 15: When it’s Time to Find Home, We Know the Way

Written at 9:39 am on May 30th

 

Yesterday was mixed with bittersweet emotions, memories, and travel. I really didn’t want to leave Glover’s Reef or Belize. Going back to the real world will for sure be a transition.

I woke up to see the sunrise, and it was actually gorgeous. The pictures don’t do it justice. I just soaked it all in. 

After packing, we had breakfast and said goodbye to the Glover’s Reef staff, as well as the Coast Guard and Fisheries guys too.

As we made the crossing back to the mainland, we stopped by Carrie Bow Cay, the Smithsonian Marine Biology research station. We met with the station manager and one of the scientists doing research there right now! She was studying the resistance of an acropara hybrid (stag and elk horn mixed tougher) to heat stress. She could really help figure out how to save some coral reefs when it comes to ocean warming.

Afterwards, we stopped at Twin Cay, a mangrove island, to explore what life is like under its roots. There were tons of fire sponges and orange encrusting sponges. I had no idea that mangroves could host these organisms because I didn’t come across any sponge references in mangroves in my research before class. I was fascinated. There were also tons of upside down jellyfish, and I spotted my fair share of baby barracuda.

Before I knew it, we were back on the boat headed to lunch at the marina restaurant. I ordered creamy shrimp pasta and a fruit punch drink—both delicious!

As our goodbye salute to being TFBs, our van to the airport had no air conditioning, so we all sweated out the rest of the salt water from the mangroves. The flight home was captained by Claire’s dad again (it’s so fun getting a shout-out from the cockpit!), and before we knew it, we were back in Houston.

This was truly the best “study abroad” I could have asked for with my limited credits and availability. I feel so lucky to have gone on this trip. Reflection blog post coming soon.

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Day 15: Culture Shock

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This morning, we started the day by riding the boat out to the nearby Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, which is situated on a teensy neighboring island called Carrie Bow Island. We got a short tour by Clyde, one of the managers, and received a short talk from a professor working on coral research at the station.

She showed us her rows of tanks of baby corals that she’s been growing as part of an experiment. A hybrid between to species of coral has recently emerged and appears to have increased resistance to high water temperatures. She is studying this coral to elucidate the mechanisms behind this heat resistance. If she succeeds, it could mean worlds for the future of coral reefs.

It was incredibly inspiring to see how determined researchers head the fight for the survival of coral reefs.

Our last stop before returning the airport was the mangroves of Twin Caye. Snorkeling here was not at all like snorkeling at the reefs. Mangroves are a type of tree that can grow in salty or brackish water. They have characteristic prop roots that reach far down into the water so that the rest of the tree stands above the water.

The roots of these trees provide a vital habitat and nursery to many species of sponges, fish, algae, and some Echinoderms, as well as many others. Water here was murkier than at the coral reefs because the sea floor is covered in silt and decomposing mangrove leaves.

It seemed that every inch of available space on the roots was colonized by something or the other. Bright orange fire sponges encrusted much of the tree roots, and all forms of algae grew everywhere. Schools of baby fish undulated as if they were a single entity, flowing between vegetation.

We didn’t get to see any urchins here, but we did find two large unidentified sea stars on the sea floor. They were heavier, had more slender arms and spinier skin than the cushion stars I’d seen before. They were bright, fiery orange, and a lot larger than I expected starfish to be – easily twice the size of my hand! After examining them closely and snapping some pictures, I let them drift back down to the silt bottom where we’d found them.

Here’s on of the starfish we found!

We weren’t given a chance to shower before we re-entered human civilization (thanks a lot, Scott and Adrienne! I’ll bet the people sitting next to me on the plane really appreciated that LOL). After eating at a restaurant on the dock of Belize City, we headed to the airport to go home.

You guys!! There was AIR CONDITIONING at the airport!! WOW!! And there were OTHER HUMANS who were not TFBs or encrusted with a solid layer of Eau de Wilderness™! IncREdiBLE!! When the surprisingly short flight to Houston landed at Hobby Airport, I experienced the oddest sensation of emerging from a separate world back into the familiar concrete jungle of bustling human traffic.

And really, my time in Belize has been an absolute dream. Now that I’m sitting in a cushy bed in an air-conditioned building and without moisture clinging to my every pore, I feel like I’ve been living a different life for the past two weeks. The culture shock is so real.

I don’t think it’s hit me yet that it’s over. I half believe that tomorrow morning, I’ll wake up and head out on a boat again to sea. Some time in the next few days, I’ll be posting a reflection about this trip. Honestly, right now, I don’t know where to begin – all I’m feeling is that I wish I were still in Belize – but stay tuned while I gather my brains for one last word dump!