Tag Archives: 2019

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Day 12: Sorry mom

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Man do I regret not bringing a hat. Can’t wait for my mom to see my burnt forehead and all the bug bites that I have accumulated. I wish I brought more bug spray with me. I feel like I would have less bug bites, but then again nothing can stop those sand flies. Unless you have baby oil, so future TFB’s, If you are reading this, bring a hat, lots of bug spray, sunscreen, and lots and lots of baby oil. Trust me. That is all you need to survive. Sorry mom.

I do miss civilization, but more importantly, internet. Staying here at Glover’s and Belize in general has definitely opened my perspective on way to save energy, and how I take lots of things for granted. I will take shorter showers and minimize the use of power as much as possible to conserve energy, and just appreciate the things/materials I have.  “Give energy saving a helping hand” reads a poster in our dorm, and that is something we should do more back home.

I will never stop talking about the food here in Belize. It’s like how can you not talk about it! Breakfast we had fried jacks with fruit. It is crazy how many different types of bread Belize has and the only bread that I’m costumed to is biscuits. Lunch we had hotdogs and the buns were handmade! Dinner we had curry chicken, rice, salad, and grapefruit juice. Pretty good.

Saw a yellow sting ray, lobsters, nerf shark, many lobsters, and lots of Christmas tree worms at the fore reef! Lots of them all bunched up together, and it was very memorizing scene. I hope to see more feather dusters tomorrow, but apparently Pierce saw a lot and maybe I am just blind? See you guys tomorrow!

Picture: Sorry not sorry mom?

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Day 11: DANGER FIREWORM

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Saw a fire worm under a dissecting scope today and lots of Christmas tree worms around the MPA protected reefs. Kaela straight up grabbed the fireworm, and some fireworms are dangerous. Luckily this fireworm was small and had few bristles so it did not hurt her as much as a mature fireworm. As a class, we all collected a wide variety of different species in under an hour, just by standing and waiting in the seagrass bed. Straight up chilled for about an hour and we ended up with so many different species!

I woke up today at around 5:50am and I was just super hungry. So you can say I was excited for breakfast, and Aunt Annette and Jamelle came in clutch. Breakfast we had tortillas, eggs, sausage, and juice. As we were on our way back to Glover’s, I literally told myself that I could use some good fried chicken, and at lunch we had friend chicken, fries, and cole slaw. Literally made my day. Dinner, we had mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, beef stew, baked chicken, and as an added bonus, we also had birthday cake since it was Kaela’s big 21. Hope your birthday was great Kaela!

Went out for our surveys today and we collected data from both MPA protected reefs and non-protected MPA reefs. Class biased on first survey but better on second. But still could have been better. I was very tired after this and I definitely felt like I was dehydrated. I nearly drank all the water in my water bottle (48oz)! That does it for today’s blog, see you tomorrow!

Picture: two bearded fireworms that were found!!

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Day 10: Holy smokes Glover’s

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First time having banana pancakes, and they were so so good. Belize just has great food and I will be sad when I have to go home and make my own meals i.e. cereal for breakfast. I will continue to talk about food until I am home crying about my “homemade” meals. Lunch, we had something similar to what we had a Las Cuevas, and this beef soup was so good. Just everything I have eaten here in Belize has blown my mind away.

First part of our day we looked at the percent coral cover that was on the coral graveyard. We then went on to our first snorkel experiment today with our transect and handmade quadrat. We looked at how the seagrass beds and algae interact on the reef flat. It was not bad until my mask starred to fog up and water flooded into the mask. Did not see any annelids since I had mask problems are the patch reef which sucked. Other than that I enjoyed the actual data collection!

More bugs got me again today! As we were working on identifying corals based off of the remains they left behind, multiple bugs bit me on my leg. Bites on my is now at 24 and it looks like it will only go up from here. I hope that I will make it out alive.

The view is really just a lot to take in. You have beautiful trees, with never ending wind, and it all complements each other for the best. Even the cloud cover does not ruin the scenery, but only enhances the view. The wind however does help with the sand flies, but yet I am still accumulating bites. Only a few days left, and it is sad to say that. That does it for today’s blog, catch you guys tomorrow!

Picture: Team Epiphyte collecting data at seagrass site (I am not pictured since I took the photo).

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Day 9: The horrors of the Mangroves

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Today we made our way to Glover’s Reef research station. As we were waiting in Belize city for our captain to arrive, the smell was unbearable, but the scenery was great. Lots of marine debris were along the coastal line. Applied lots of sunscreen since I did not want to get burnt, and I didn’t get burnt since I sat near the front under the hood. On the boat ride to Glover’s, the open water was very “choppy”. I was sleeping when suddenly I woke up to a loud bang. That bang being my head against the hard seat. Great way to wake up!

We went for our first swim today in full gear and let’s just say it was a rollercoaster for me. I put way too much sunscreen on my forehead and that was a bad idea since it started to flow down into my eyes while we were swimming! It hurt so bad to the point where I could not open my eyes for a bit. So that was scary. Other than that, I enjoyed our first swim!

On our second “swim” I saw a Christmas tree that Amanda had pointed out. That was the one annelid that I really wanted to see since I knew they would be seen here in Belize. I also saw a Variegated feather duster that was on top of a rock near some coral. These feather dusters were the exact image on my taxa id cards, and also very small. Now that I have seen the annelid I wanted to see; I hope that I will find a Split-crown feather duster.

The bugs got me good today. Even away from the Chiquibul, I still manage to get bit by bugs. As were walking through the “Mangrove of death”, literally death, lots of sand flies were on me and they sure got me good. I ran through this, yet still got over 20 bites! Even on the way back, I accumulated more bites on my back and legs! Let’s hope that we do not encounter that area again or else I might not be home next week. See you tomorrow?

Left pic: view as we were pulling in. Right pic: just running through the mangroves.

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We Love Time Designated for Tick Removal!

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May 16, 2019

Today was our first full day at Las Cuevas Research Station, and we actually got to explore the trails here, as we set up seven camera traps (cameras strapped to trees that take photos when motion is detected – we’ll be checking the photos on our last day here). The crazy overgrown trails of the Chiquibul revealed some pretty interesting finds, including a group of curious spider monkeys and several blue morphos!

The sightings that really interested me (of course) were the beetles, my assigned taxon. Some of the more flashy beetles included a metallic wood-boring beetle (likely from the genus Euchroma) with a blue-green metallic body, as well as a large black beetle with a distinct red outline around its thorax and abdomen and vertical ridges along its abdomen only.

But there’s nothing like the feeling of finding a beetle that exactly matches a species from your taxon ID card, and I’m talking not just the kind of beetle, but also its exact position and proportions. This beetle was (drumroll please) Eburia pedestris, a longhorn beetle with four symmetrical yellow spots and long orange antennae and legs.

And believe it or not, all this was worth the ticks! After our hike, we spent around 30 minutes laboriously checking for and removing ticks. Many of us had to stop knowing the unfortunate truth that we may have missed one.

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Journey to the Chiquibul

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May 15, 2019

Today, we began our trek to the Chiquibul Forest with interesting narration and several stops along the way. During the drive, our guide Leo pointed out what he referred to as a Mayan village because 85% of the residents speak one of the Mayan languages.  We also passed a new Mayan structure that’s currently in the process of being constructed by a Mayan descendant.

Our first stop was “Rio on Pools,” a collection of small pools along a river. We got to swim, and the leaches were successfully avoided! When we got back on the road, we passed a ghost village. Leo said that this village thrived during the 1930s and 40s because of the forestry industry but was completely abandoned by the mid 90s.

Later in the evening after finally arriving at Las Cuevas Research Station in the Chiquibul, we gathered in the classroom to have student presentations. Scott showed me a Scarab beetle that he found! This is one of my first beetle finds (second to a firefly I saw at Crystal Paradise Ecolodge). It’s possible that this beetle was of the species Enema endymion or a close relative.

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May 23rd – A shark and a ray

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Day two on the reef was a lot less anxiety inducing than day one. In the morning we learned about how the different tools for taking coral coverage measurements work and practiced on land on one of the coral graveyards nearby. While we were taking measurements I found a Black Sea urchin which I returned to sea, except don’t tell Keegan because I forgot to show him before releasing him and that’s his taxon group. After lunch, we suited up and took the same tools out into the water and took measurements for the sea grass beds nearby. I kept getting water in my snorkel from trying to stay underwater for as long as possible to count all the grass, but luckily Bella and I were an efficient duo and thus finished early and got to check out the patch reef. While out there we spotted a spotted eagle ray and a nurse shark, and in my own taxon group we found a spiny lobster, though we could only see it’s long antennae peeking out so couldn’t tell if it was spotted or not. We also found a number more blue hermit crabs on land throughout the day and I spent a good 20 minutes trying to catch the speedy blue land crabs which live in holes beneath the bushes and come out at night. In the morning it looks like we were invaded by a bunch of rogue mountain bikers because of all the crab tracks on the sand. 

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May 21st – Spelunking, Skeletons, and Holding a Boa Constrictor

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This morning we left the Rainforest to head back to “civilization” for a while. After a 3 hour stomach churning ride along dirt roads, we arrived at the ATM cave. We took a 3-hour adventure through the cave, which involved swimming, wading, navigating crevasses, and eventually going barefoot to look at the remains of pottery and human sacrifices from the Maya over 1000 years ago. It was weird to me that you can get within a couple feet of these thousands of year old artifacts with only a piece of orange tape between you and a skull.  I’ve found a lot of things in Belize are less regulated than the US and everyone is a lot less concerned about being sued so you can do more exciting things. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures in the cave because a few years ago a tourist supposedly dropped his camera and one of the skulls and broke it.  

After the ATM cave, we headed to where we are staying tonight to get settled in. After dinner, and gasp, a brief period of WiFi access, we rode to the Belize zoo in the back of a pickup truck. Because many animals are nocturnal, we got to see a lot of species we wouldn’t normally see in the rainforest during their active times. We saw several types of owl, a Morelet’s crocodile, a kinkajou, and 4 species of big cat: the puma, jaguar, ocelot, and margay. The zoo keeper also had pieces of raw chicken to feed the cats.

By far my favorite parts of the zoo were getting to hold a boa constrictor and feeding carrots and bananas to a tapir! I still can’t believe what a cool opportunity that was… you definitely don’t get many chances to feed a tapir in Houston. As I write this I’m drifting off to sleep even though it’s only 9:30pm Belize time… tomorrow we head to the reef and you all can look forward to hearing about crustaceans from now on! 

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May 20th- We all get chased by soldier ants, a tapir photo, and (only) 44 tick bites

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Today was our last day here at Las Cuevas and so we spent the morning going out to collect all the camera traps we had placed at the beginning of the week. When we were out, we ran into the spider monkeys again and watched for a while as they tried to scare us off by throwing sticks down. Today must have been a good day for monkeys, because we could also hear the sound of howler monkeys calling off in the distance all day, which sounds to me a lot like we are in the movie Jurassic Park. I also managed to rack up 44 ticks pulled off of myself after our second trip down the monkey trail, and that is WITH bug spray. Certainly less than the hundreds I got at the beginning of the week though. 

In the afternoon, we finished processing the data from yesterday afternoon’s experiment before going back out into the field one last time to examine young and old leaf cutter ant mounds (which mostly involved watching Scott digging holes to look for the fungus gardens and running from the giant soldier ants that can bite through rubber). 

After dinner we had our lectures and then went through the pictures from our camera traps and found we had captured a picture of…. drum roll…. A TAPIR!!! We also had photos of some smaller mammals like a possum and skunk, and some birds, however one picture that didn’t turn out clear appeared to have some sort of large cat, perhaps a puma? Unfortunately because you can only see the faces silhouette, I guess we’ll never know what was out in the forest that night… 

Tapir Spotting!

Though an exciting day of mammal siting, the amphibian count for the day was zero again, likely because of the dry and hot weather we have been having. 

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May 19th- Ant attacks, a venomous snake, and a bird I thought was a jaguar

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Today was a VERY long day of field work and quite frankly I’m exhausted. In the morning we sampled plants in disturbed and undisturbed areas of the forest and compared the diversity we found there. After making our poster presentations and eating lunch, we went back out to the disturbed habitat to take measurements of the leaf toughness of the trumpet tree leaves that do and do not contain ant colonies to defend them, and in the process I got bit on the hand by a number of ants.

From the top of the bird tower

Because these measurements took so long, we went right into hiking uphill to the bird tower to try and catch the sunset, but alas it was a cloudy day. We hiked back after the sun went down and I walked right over a Mexican Jumping Viper before Pierce noticed it (Yes, it’s venomous, but no, I did not get bit). We also saw a cute tree rat, the biggest cockroach in the world (literally, they are one of the largest cockroach species in the world), and a bird with reflective eyes that we all thought was a jaguar until we got closer. And THEN, it was time for all our lectures for the night.

I didn’t see any amphibians today, which I would assume is because we did our field work in the drier sun-exposed disturbed area, so the amphibians were probably deep under the leaf litter to keep from desecrating, if they were there at all. Phew, I’m tired, so that’s all the words you get today.