Tag Archives: 2018

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Day 9: snorkelers of the caribbean

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Today was the official changeover from Turf to Surf. At a relatively late awakening of 6:45, we piled into the van with all of our things and drove for two hours or so to the pier. Immediately, we felt the change of scenery. Tall trees and yellow grasslands eroded into salt and sand, and I stepped off the van with a completely altered mindset. The sight of the boats, the swell of the sea, and the smell of foam hit me like an old memory, and I remembered my truest and most long-standing call-to-arms: piracy.

Me spending two hours staring at the sea. PC: Jessica

Yes, the boat trip reminded me of pirates, and I ended up with a decent amount of sunburn from spending the two-hour ride perched up on the side watching the waves crash against the side of the boat. I had a good period of self-reflection, and decided again to learn how to sail, something I keep meaning to do. But the view was spectacular, the clouds unreal, and the changing shades from the sea and the sky like nothing I’d seen anywhere else.

The view of the sunset from the pier.

Pulling up to Glover’s and to our little remote island, I genuinely felt like I was in a movie. This place may actually be paradise. The buildings form a self-sustaining picturesque neighborhood, the ground occupied by charming iguanas and hermit crabs, and the seas crystal clear. We practiced snorkeling in the water close to the pier, and I saw an Utodea green algae. I almost immediately recognized the distinctive fan-like texture of the thallus, and dove down to get a better look. It’s surprisingly difficult for me to distinguish green algae from other things, as I barely know what corals look like at this point. Hopefully tomorrow, and with more practice, I’ll be able to pinpoint my taxon better.

I must note this place is nothing like the rainforest. It almost feels like a completely different class. I must also admit that I am a little nervous about snorkeling and that the reefs slightly freak me out. I am much more terrestrial-y inclined, but I also very much want to learn to enjoy the ocean’s inside. Effectively, my current love of the ocean is superficial, based on outward appearance, and I’d like to get deeper in the relationship—more committed. I’m going to try and really get to know the ocean.

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Day 9 (10? Time is a social construct ): Salty

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Today we began the second part of the class, also known as “Surf”. It is also the day I formally switch from talking about trees to talking about herbivorous fish, so stay tuned for pictures of fish like Dory from Finding Nemo (i.e. the Blue Tang) and many, many different species of parrotfish.

We left mainland Belize around 9:00 AM and took a boat out to Middle Caye Island in Glover’s Reef. It was a three hour journey, but it didn’t feel nearly as long since we were all mesmerized by the view of the deep blue water, and later when closing in towards the atoll, a crystal clear turquoise. The Glover’s Reef Research Station is located on this island, which is basically self sustaining. It runs on solar power, uses rainwater for drinking/washing and the only toilet are compost toilets. The decomposer part of the toilet is lovingly called “Clivus.” Yes, I too have many questions.

I have never seen water this beautiful in my life- I took this picture in the lagoon and made it my phone lock screen picture

After lunch, we put on all our gear for snorkeling-dive skins, dive booties, mask, snorkel and fins- and jumped into the water. I took my camera with me as well, which is supposed to be waterproof, but once I tried to take a picture underwater, it made a sound like it was dying and abruptly stopped working. I’ll have to check up on that ASAP. We swam over seagrass- I saw a school of medium sized fish (about a foot long) in a green-grey color. I’m not sure of their species, however. Dr. Solomon picked up a starfish out of the grass, which was about the size of a medium plate and golden yellow.

After we felt a little morecomfortable in our gear, we swam out to a deeper area where I finally got to see coral reefs for the first time in my life. I recognized brain coral, which looked like, well, a brain, and was a mustard yellow in color. I didn’t see any herbivorous fish, frankly because I was having some trouble with my mask that lead to my eyes being filled with sea water and me not being able to keep them open until after I took a nap two hours later. However, I was told that people saw a parrotfish, a nurse shark, a sting ray, and fire coral.

A photo of a blue tang (bottom) and parrotfish (top)!

After aforementioned nap, dinner and student lecture presentations, we made quadrats, which it’s a square made out of PVC pipes and a grid of criss-crossing string, as well as underwater clip boards, which is basically a regular clip board connecting to a pencil via plastic tubing, and waterproof paper strapped onto the board with rubber bands. We are now ready for Underwater Science™.

Andressa and I making our Quadrat

 

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Day 8: Our Mini Weekend

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Blog Post #8

Day 8: Our Mini Weekend

Written May 23rd at 7:06 am

 

Yesterday (May 22nd) was a super start to our mini weekend. We spent it in transition from Turf to Surf, and did a few fun things along the way. No amphibians (or sponges) were spotted today because we were mostly in the cave or in the sun–two environments where neither of those are found.

After a bittersweet goodbye to Las Cuevas and the staff, we hopped on a plane and headed east for 3 hours. Then we reached the ATM Cave–its English translation is “The Cave of the Stone Tomb.” There was a 45 minute swim/wade in to the cave then we climbed barefoot.

The most interesting thing we saw was a nearly intact skeleton of a 16-18 year old–the namesake for the cave. Likely, this person was a human sacrifice for when the Maya civilization was in trouble, and they were desperate to please their gods.

Then we made our way to the Tropical Education Center, our home for the night. They put us in the adorable forest cabanas and fed us a lovely meal.

That night, we got the opportunity to get a night tour of The Belize Zoo! Of course, I LOVED it. There were so many species and wonderful nocturnal life. The highlight for me: Meeting Indy the Tapir.

We fed him carrots and watched his little nose trunk. He was SO CUTE!!!! What a great end to our night.

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Day 7: Resurrected Hatchlings and Magic Cameras

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We didn’t go bird watching this morning so I didn’t see very many birds in the morning. Instead, we got up early and hiked to the bird tower. The climb was tough but definitely worth. When we climbed the tower, we could see the clouds rolling across the mountains and the sun shining across the forest. There were no man-made structures beyond our research station in any direction which was a really crazy thing to realize.

We spent the rest of the morning collecting camera traps. The hike was long, but not nearly as long as it felt the first day. Along the way I kept smelling Hemipterans, I definitely learned their weird licorice-cyanide scent from the bugs I found before. We were able to collect them all by lunch. In the afternoon we caught up on our journals and blogs. I noticed a plumbeous kite building a nest up in the main tree which was interesting. It kept returning to this one Y in the branches with dead sticks.

I also watched the nest in the satellite some more. I thought that the sulfur breasted flycatcher was coming to the nest without food and sticking its head in with no response to the babies. I was skeptical of what was going on, so I walked around the satellite to the side you could see into, not the one where the birds were entering, and couldn’t see any of the hatchlings. I assumed the sulfur breasted flycatcher had eaten them, although that seemed strange based on its name. But then I was watching the nest some more and, contrary to what I previously thought, the sulfur breasted flycatcher brought something and then the babies started squawking. This was shortly followed by the slaty ant wren bringing something and the babies squawking. It now seems clear that both these species are feeding the antwren babies, but I’m still very confused. On the bright side, the hatchlings aren’t dead.

In the afternoon, Scott took us out to see fungus chambers of leaf-cutter ant nests. We started with a one-year-old nest and with a bit of work digging found a small ball of fungus and the queen. I was surprised to realize that the fungus chambers are three dimensional, which makes sense, I just wasn’t expecting it. I was amazed to see how large the queen was. She was huge and it was impossible to imagine that she could live for 25 years with her colony just producing eggs. We followed the one-year-old nest with the ginormous 20ish-year-old nest that we found while placing our camera traps. We dug for a long time, but the ants barely seemed to respond. We eventually hit some chambers, but they weren’t fungus chambers. They were trash chambers filled with beetle larvae and dead fungus. It was really strange and surprisingly warm and Scott was amazed that it was so high up. Normally trash chambers are deeper beneath the colony.

We finished our last evening here at Las Cuevas looking at our camera trap photos. With the very first camera we opened we found a tapir, which we all screamed and gasped at.

But the picture that took the cake was the next one, a jaguar.

We were so startled to see the perfect side picture of a jaguar walking down the trail right next to our camera trap. We also wound up catching a bunch of peccaries, a puma, a second Jaguar, a nine-banded armadillo, a rice mouse, and a coatimundi. We also caught a few Great Currasows (my taxon!).

The species variety and picture quality were crazy. We were surprised to notice the same richness at both our on and off trail camera traps, but a much higher abundance at our on trail traps. My theory is that trails feature animals that are easier to catch on camera traps. As a result, I think we caught most of the species generally found on the trails, however, I think we caught very few of the species living off trail. I think if we left the traps out longer we would wind up with a higher abundance on trail but a higher diversity off trail because the animals that choose to use the trail are mostly the large mammals of which there aren’t many species. We’ll never really know the answer though because tomorrow mornings (5AM) we get up and leave for Glovers Reef! Goodbye turf, hello surf.