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Pre Departure Blog

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Hello! My name is Claire C, and I am a rising sophomore at Sid Richardson College. My major is biosciences with a major concentration in integrative biology, so naturally, I LOVE ecology and the outdoors.

I am so excited for this trip and cannot wait for all that I will learn in Belize! I am looking forward to learning about and seeing all sorts of plants and animals. While I have always loved the ocean more than anything in the world, I am most excited for the rainforest part of the trip. I have experience snorkeling and being around reefs, but I have never been to a tropical rainforest before.

I hope to learn a ton about how rainforest ecosystems and field research works. I expect to see some of the coolest ecosystems and organisms I have ever seen in my life. Being as isolated from other people as we are should let us see some fascinating animal interactions both within the rainforest and in the ocean. While seeing any animal is cool, I most want to see rays in the ocean. Whether they are spotted eagle rays, manta rays, or stingrays, I love seeing them swim through reefs.

I finished packing all of my gear last night, and I traveled to Houston today, so I am finally ready to go to Belize! My duffle is quite heavy, but that just means I have fun gear inside!

On this trip, I hope to learn how to keep myself safe and comfortable while doing field work. I also hope to learn some field research techniques that cannot be taught from a classroom.

That all being said, I am slightly nervous for how isolated we are going to be. I know we will do everything to keep ourselves safe, but being in a new and extremely disconnected ecosystem from people is still scary despite how fascinating and fun it will be.

I have been lucky enough to have been on in other international marine ecology field research class through my high school. The class took place in Baja California Sur which is a desert on land and is is home to the “Aquarium of the World” beneath the water. Through that class,  I learned how to do an underwater transect and fish census along with other techniques. While this class was definitely not exhaustive, it did give me some experience doing labs in the ocean that I can build off of in Belize.

I am so excited to wake up bright and early tomorrow to go to Belize!

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1 of 2 Blogs from Houston

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Belize is going to be fantastic, if I have learned one thing from the readings from the class. New words have entered my vocabulary, like karst and lagoon, but they are things I have not personally experienced. I am excited to be in these places that I have only heard of and emerge from Belize as some sort of a tropical field biologist, perhaps as a TFB that Surf and Turf has warned us of becoming.

Not having been there is what makes it exciting, but it also makes it more difficult to predict what type of life I will see there, and what it will look like when I see hundreds of species of life right in front of face. Although the readings have been good about providing descriptions, I am a visual learner and I expect that I have a lot more to learn through trial and error when it comes to identifying species, or even families.

One thing I have learned about identification of species from looking at images online is that there are tons of variation. Take a species of red algae for example, one image may be pink, another greenish-purple. A brown alga often looks yellow or green. Although I don’t usually have trouble identifying colors, the types of coloration in these algae has overwhelmed my ability to describe them. I hope with experience in the water I will be able to become sensitive to all the subtle differences in the color of algae, as it can be helpful in identifying them.

In addition to learning to identify species, I hope to be comfortable in the rain forest, the cave, and the ocean. With enough practice, I am sure these blog posts will become more interesting and I hope you will follow my journey to a fascinating place!