The morning was a busy one, summarizing the two weeks trip with undoing all the luggage and reorganizing them according to the last day’s plan. All the cloths I have wore bore the memories of the parts of forests and reefs I have seen with. I couldn’t believe a chapter of my life is coming to an end. We set out into the ocean early in the morning. We stopped at Carrie Bow Caye where the Smithsonian Institute Research Station was situated. There on a 1.5 acre island stood cozy station where we heard about a retiring ecologist’s story. After that we continued on to our last ecosystem: Mangrove. The mangrove is a peculiar place where plants have engineered islands on sea water. It would have probably a small patch of island where mangroves started to grow. However as their high roots caught silts and their literfall accumulated, they expanded the island and host a immense biomass. School of juvenile fish swam among the eerie roots covered with sponges. I tried to look for brown algae but the mucky water made it hard. I couldn’t find one.
On the way to Belize City, we passed by a small island dominated by some trees and flock of frigate birds. Someone explained that it was their nesting ground that shrunk year after year because of rising sea level and hurricanes. The island was a fortress with small threats. More so the fate of the island made me sad.