Tag Archives: trash

2022

De-bris-ing Glovers (Day 6)

Leave a comment

Hi all, it’s Faith with Day 6 updates from the 2022 Belize trip!!!

We woke up to gloomy, grey skies with fierce winds, but that did not stop us from conquering the fore reef! Diving the fore reef was incredibly unique, it was unlike any of the shallow patch reefs we usually see. The water was a dark, royal blue, similar to the color of pen ink, and the waves were intense. Usually, the reefs are only a few feet below us, but the fore reef was around 40-50 ft below. Because of the depth, there was no color discrimination unless you swam really close to the reef. I saw lots of new sponge types, but the most interesting was the Giant Barrel Sponge. I saw it close to the “deep drop” towards the edge of the reef; it was on the much deeper side. Because the reef was so far below us, I didn’t see any echinoderms; however, I saw a sea turtle! It was too far away to identify, but from the shape of its bill and fins, I believe it was a loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta). It lacked the hawksbill pattern. The turtle was chilling under/ next to some coral, and it didn’t move even as we all approached it. I assume he was in the area because of the jellyfish swarm above us. Because the waves were so rough, we only stayed out four 20 minutes, and we swam through the jellyfish on our way back to the boat.

When we got back to glovers, I got to see some brown anoles (A. sangrei) because Dr. Correa’s son was catching them and letting us hold them. You can tell they are brown anoles because they are brown and have bright orange dewlaps (throat fans) that lack dots. I don’t know where he was catching them, but I assume they were crawling around the station.

After our much needed break, we made a research question to answer. We asked “How much of the trash that washes up on Glover’s reef can be disposed of on island, where is it located, and which area is the most efficient to clean?”

Our “trash” hypothesis was that the most debris would be located at the coral graveyard and that 50% would need to be taken off-island to dispose of. Our hypothesis really was trash because WE WERE COMPLETELY INCORRECT!!! After garbage collection and sorting, we found that 88% of trash could be disposed of on-island via burning, and we found that the mangroves behind the kitchen collect the most garbage by mass. Therefore, if we are going to do more beach cleanups at glovers, we should have volunteers focus on the areas near those mangroves.

While we were collecting the trash, Nate made an interesting find– an almost intact cow fish skeleton?!  I got to carry it back because everyone else thought it was gross. I mean, it is, but that wasn’t going to stop me! (Pictured below)

After listening to talks of Annelids, hydroids, ocean debris, and anemones, our group got to watch a hermit crab change shells! (Nate also found the shell while gathering trash, and he kindly gave it to the hermit crab). We all got very emotional, and it was the perfect way to end this reef day.

Till Tomorrow! P.s. I’m not sure why this blog didn’t get published on the day I wrote it, but it’s up now that we have better wifi, sorry!!!

QOTD: “I can’t explain it but our group gets really emotional over hermit crabs”

“Ugh, I lost my brainblast”

The Turtle we saw on the reef; as you can see, it is very far away. Potentially a Caretta caretta (Loggerhead)
The land hermit crab we saw change shells. The shell it is wearing is the one that Nate picked out!
The Cowfish skeleton Nate found!
Our Poster!!!
The 64kg of trash we collected from 3 different sites on Middle Key
2022

Day 6: A Trashy Yet Wonderful Day at Glover’s Reef + Mummified Fish

1 Comment

Our day started our with our first journey to the Fore Reef (outer reef)! The stony corals there are much bigger and seem for the most part healthier (although there is still some disease).  We swam through a bunch of harmless ctenophores (similar to jelly fish) that Phoenix identified as Comb Jellies. They have a distinctive jelly feel and appearance with a translucent color which made it difficult to capture on camera! It was super cute! Michael also spotted a  loggerhead sea turtle! The Fore Reed was a little rough so we headed back to Middle Caye.

There we started our data collection of all sorts of trash that has been collecting on the atoll. From Nate’s presentation, we learned that there is a gyre in the Gulf between Belize and Honduras that collects a lot of trash that will wash up on the shore and harm the environment and wildlife. After some hard thinking, we decided to research the percentage of trash that could be properly disposed of and destroyed on island. We predicted that > 50% of the trash we collected could be disposable and split into groups. My group went to the coral cemetery and there was so much trash here. The heart breaking part of picking up trash is when the trash was so brittle that it would break and make more microplastics.  Nate found a perfectly preserved- mummified box fish skeleton which was so incredible! I’ve never seen something so well preserved! The fish even had teeth! SO FLIPPING COOL!

Once all the groups were back from collecting our trash we discovered that Middle Caye did not have the resources to take recycle plastics or take them to the mainland regularly, and that they burn all plastics so our hypothesis was sadly off in the fact that more than half of the trash we collected could be recycled and destroyed in a more ecofriendly manner. We can only bring a bag of glass and metal with us compared with the 6. In the future we decided to bring sacs instead of trash bags to collect the trash and it made us all much more aware of the trash we were generating on island.

Post trash sorting photo taken by McKenna!

I had my presentation on annelids and hydroids today. Michael and Sophia asked two important questions that I did not know the answers too so I did some research today to answer them.

  1. What eats these annelids on the reef?

Many worms are eaten by mostly many reef fishes such as wrasses or angelfish species.

  1. Why are Christmas tree worms so many different colors?

One article said that Christmas tree worms will often be in colors that match the reef around them, but I have seen worms that are colors that don’t match the reef around them. Another article says that the host coral can influence the color of worms and that the color of Christmas tree worms can be used to determine coral health.

Link: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-91924-5_15

Tonight at dinner, one of our wonderful guides, Ruth, taught us all about the history of Belize, the demography and mix of cultures present, and the many attractions of Belize! I am getting so excited to see more of Belize!

Peace and Love <3

~ Maegan

2022

Mondays are trash

Leave a comment

Contrary to this blog’s title, today was an exciting day! We went out this morning to the fore reef, which is the area of open ocean that’s right outside of the atoll. There, since the waves are stronger and the water is deeper, the organisms are typically much bigger, as they need to be stronger to withstand the greater wave energy, and they have more room to grow upwards. We saw some really cool organisms from a distance because the bottom was maybe 70 feet below the surface and none of us (except the water safety officers) could hold our breath long enough to get to the bottom. Some of the cool organisms we saw included comb jellies, which were floating near the surface, and if you looked really closely, you could see that their combs were lit up with electricity. We also saw a school of medium blue fish that we weren’t able to identify, a sea turtle, most likely a green sea turtle, that was just sitting on the bottom, and a huge barrel sponge. Unfortunately, I did not see any brown algae, as it is too small to see from 70 feet above the reef. surprisingly, I saw minimal sargassum, which I think was due to the fact that the waves were so choppy.

a comb jelly! (picture courtesy of Phoenix)

possible green sea turtle!

Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t really cooperating with us, so we had to head out pretty quickly. Lucky for us, that meant we could get the nightly presentations done in the morning in anticipation of a possible night snorkel.

The afternoon was a whole other ball game. Last night, we heard from the Belize Fisheries Department manager, and he spoke a bit about starting beach cleaning efforts on Middle Caye. Today, we did a beach clean up, but being TFBs, we had to incorporate science somehow! You can read about our research below 🙂

our poster

I was doing clean up in the mangrove area behind the kitchen, and there was a lot of trash! It was sort of sad because even though we had two giant trash bags overflowing with trash, we had hardly made a dent. We spent the whole afternoon doing the beach clean up, sorting the trash, and weighing it, before putting the trash back into the bags so they could be properly disposed of. The people at the Coral Graveyard also found a box fish skeleton!

box fish skeleton
trash party! -unfortunately I did not get any pictures during the actual trash sorting, since I didn’t want to touch my phone

After the trash shindig we finished the last presentation, and then, courtesy of Nate, we got to watch a hermit crab change shells! I had seen videos of it yesterday in Lilliana’s crustacean presentation, but it was cool to see in real life. We then went to dinner, and since the weather wasn’t looking good enough for a night snorkel, we hung out and talked to Ruth, the water safety officer, about her experiences as a native Belizean, as well as the natural history of the country.

While most Mondays may be trash, today was certainly a good day! Tomorrow is the last full day on the reef, and we have a lot to do, so I will keep you all posted!

the boat in the open ocean above the fore reef
Sophia diving
2022

Day 6: One Man’s Trash.. Is Still Trash…

2 Comments

Even though the weather has been kind of windy and almost stormy recently, we decided to explore the fore-reef this morning! The water outside the atoll was choppier than usual but that’s what made it fun. I swear my gear hates me as my fin buckle broke (but Dr. Correa fixed it in true marine biologist fashion with some capo ties), and then as I was jumping in, my snorkel became detached from my mask and I had to dive down to grab it… As we were in the water, the swells were soothing and it was amazing to look at the drop-off of the slope. Here, there was so much coral growth and even a Green Sea Turtle! We also saw lots of Comb Jellies and some unidentified blue fish (possibly parrotfish?). No specific red algae sightings as we were too far up to exactly see anything but I am sure there was plenty on the sea floor below. Because of the weather and character of the waves, we sadly were only in the fore-reef for about 30 or so minutes. However, I am now super motivated to try to get scuba certified so I could explore more cool places like it for deeper depths and longer periods of time!!

After lunch we then began our next experiment, taking a break from our reef experiment, we began a new one that was about picking up trash and cleaning the shore line of the Middle Caye. We were trying to figure out how much of the trash would have to be transported to shore and how much could be burned. Before we began, Nate gave a presentation about marine debris and all of the different sources of trash (80% of which is from land based sources) and learned about the Gulf of Honduras Gyre that is a current that circulates the trash around and pushes it towards Glover’s Cayes. As Elena and I were cleaning up a small ~ 30 square foot area in only 30 minutes, we were able to pick up 28.7kg of trash… and it didn’t even look like we made a dent in it. With everyone’s combined efforts in three different areas, we were able to collect a total of 64.54kg of trash within an hour. Absolutely insane. Also, because of transportation issues, Grover’s has to burn all of the trash (except for glass and metal) because there is simply too much trash for them to transfer to landfills with the amount of boats that they have/logistics. As we were sorting the trash, we went through so many everyday items that it really made you start thinking about what products you consume/use and how they are packaged. I now am super interested in beach clean up as it is a direct way to help our ocean and maybe even join Rice’s Beach Cleanup group. (Also someone found a super cool mummified box fish !!!)

After some music to pick up our energy while sorting trash, making a poster and presenting it, we had some free time before and after dinner. After dinner, one of our marine safety officers, Ruth, explained some of Belize’s history which is so interesting. There are only 400,000 people in Belize and it’s about the size of Massachusetts but it has such a diverse population. There are foods and languages from all different cultures: Indian, Chinese, Kriol, British,  Mestizo, etc, it sounds amazing. I think she has convinced all of us that Belize has a lot to offer and that we all need to visit more 😉

– Sophia

Uncategorized

Trash Day!

Leave a comment

Hey y’all! It’s Michiel again : )

I woke up this morning after nearly freezing to death last night. It wasn’t actually cold (I mean, how cold could it get in the tropics?), but my bed is right by the window and the wind kept blowing into my sheet, and I couldn’t figure out how to close the window, so that was fun. It wasn’t that bad, though, I’m definitely being dramatic. After waking up, I met everyone for breakfast, and they make the most amazing pancakes here; I was so happy when I saw them waiting for us.

After breakfast, we went to the forereef. The waves were pretty strong today, so I started getting a headache on the boat and it kept getting worse as I was in the water, but it was definitely worth it because the area of the reef we saw was so amazing. We saw spur and groove formation, a swarm of ctenophores,  and a sea turtle lying in the sand! This area was also way deeper than any area we had been to before (about 70 feet) and there was a reef drop right next to it which dropped for hundreds of feet, so we really got to test our breath-holding abilities. One of the experienced divers actually went down about 100 feet! While we were there, we saw a school of fish, but I could not get close enough to figure out what they were. They were mostly blue and larger than a damselfish or a surgeonfish, so they may have been a parrotfish, but they may have also been something entirely different. Parrotfish and other types of herbivorous fish are known to travel in schools, so it isn’t unruly to guess that these may have been parrotfish, but, again, they were so deep that I couldn’t get a very good look. It may not have been an herbivorous fish at all. If it wasn’t, then I didn’t get to see any herbivorous fish today because we were too far from the reef to see that many.

Unknown fish (possibly herbivorous)

After leaving the forereef, we had a little break, then watched some lectures and had lunch. After lunch, we started coming up with a research question that would involve a beach clean-up. We ended up with “What percent, by mass, of the trash on Middle Caye needs to be disposed of off island? What area is the most efficient for collecting trash?” We hypothesized that over 50% of the trash would need to be moved off island for disposal and that the coral graveyard would be the most efficient area for trash pick-up. To collect data, Ava, Michael, Maggy, Adrian, and I went out to the bunks to collect trash for a total time (between all people) of one hour. Different groups did this at different locations around the island. Back at the wet lab, we weighed everyone’s trash bags, separated burnable trash from non-burnable trash, and weighed the non-burnable trash. With our data, we discovered that only 11.43% of the trash here needs to be removed from the island because they actually burn the plastic here, so they only remove the metal and glass. We also found out that the most efficient area for trash pick-up was the area behind the kitchen because the people there collected 16.41 kg of trash per person-hour. We believe that the reason the most efficient area wasn’t the coral graveyard was because the coral graveyard’s trash was more spread-out and it was much smaller, so it didn’t contribute as much in terms of mass. Hopefully this data can be helpful to the Belize Fisheries Department because they have plans to do more beach clean-ups on Middle Caye!

After presenting our project to our professors, we had another lecture then dinner. Right before dinner, though, Nate set a shell down in front of a hermit crab, and we saw it change from it’s previous shell to that one! It was so gross. Anyway, we stayed in the dining room until it closed because we were all talking, and then Ruth (a marine safety officer) joined us and told us about the clothes she makes and the history of Belize. She taught us a lot, and she’s been a super important part of our stay here on the reef, so we couldn’t be more thankful to have her.

After dinner, we were going to go on a night snorkel, but the weather picked up and we decided that it wouldn’t be safe to go. The group just ended up working on our blogs and field notebooks before going to bed.

Overall, today was a great day! Here’s a group picture of us washing our hands after we finished handling all the trash, a picture of Sophia, Elena, and I as we were working on our poster for our trash presentation, and a picture of an iguana.

2022

Dramamine For The Win

Leave a comment

Reef day #5 was definitely the most packed (and exhausting) day yet! There was a storm last night, so there was leftover cloudiness and winds this morning. However, conditions still looked good enough to go out onto the fore reef! I took dramamine at breakfast, and thank goodness I did. We hopped on the boat, and as soon as we exited the lagoon through a channel, we could feel the intensity of the waves. Even in the water, we were being forcefully sloshed around. Looking up, people were at all different heights among the waves.

Even with the rough conditions, I had a great time on the reef slope! The depth was incredible, especially at the drop off. I saw so many schools of fish, and I could clearly see the spur and groove structure of the corals down below! We also took a video of all of us diving down and making owl hands. Hopefully we make Rice’s Instagram 🙂

I felt a little sick coming off the boat, but the dramamine helped to keep the nausea at bay.

Later in the day, we conducted a trash clean-up (as an experiment in true TFB fashion). We collected so much trash and sorted it into burnables and non-burnables. Our experiment hoped to characterize the trash at different sites along the shore of Middle Caye as well as the general efficiency of collection at each site. We spent the entire afternoon planning out our experiment, conducting our experiment, measuring and sorting to collect data, and then making a poster and presenting it. We are hopeful that this data will help to inform future trash clean-up efforts! I also managed to get a really cute, homecoming-style picture of TFBs lined up on the stairs to wash our hands.

I gave my first presentation today! I presented my reef taxa (anemones, corallimorphs, and zoanthids), and I feel like it went really well. Everyone asked really great questions too!

Before dinner, Nate (a fellow TFB) placed a shell in front of a hermit crab for giggles. Not only did we have some giggles, but we also witnessed something incredible: the hermit crab switch shells! I was able to get it on video and am thrilled to have seen something so rare to catch.

I didn’t have any taxa sightings today, but my other sightings and experiences were more than captivating! Ruth also taught us so much about Belize at dinner! Best off-the-cuff topic lecture ever!

The fact that my eye has been twitching since around 2:00 pm is a clear sign that I am more than ready to get some rest. I’m ready to sleep as soundly as I can to appreciate my last full day on the reef tomorrow!

– McKenna

 

2022

Drop off and Sea Sick (13/06/22)

Leave a comment

Another early and eventful morning. After breakfast we went out on the boat to the fore reef, just outside the coral circle of the atoll. Once we got outside the reef the waters got choppy and I got seasick a little bit, I thought once I got in the water I would feel better but I still felt sick whenever I looked up out of the water. I was perfectly happy to just lie in the water and stare down below and get pushed around by the waves. Wherever we were was at least 60 feet deep I think, but it felt way deeper. One of our water safety officers free dove all the way almost to the bottom! I had no idea that was even possible for someone to do, but we looked down and he was just swimming along the bottom below us. We saw lots of fish, but a little too deep to get a good look, and even a sea turtle way below us. We swam over to the drop off, like in finding nemo, you suddenly can’t see the bottom of the water anymore and it just drops into deep blue and then black, maybe it only goes a little bit deeper, maybe it goes miles deep, you just can’t tell or see anything past the darkness. Weirdly instead of being scared I was just more curious then anything. My first lab research experience was with hydrothermal vents and those extremophilic organisms around them, so most of my first marine knowledge was of the deep sea instead of coral reefs. I would love to someday get SCUBA certified and dive right down to the bottom to just see what’s there past what I can see from the top. And someday I’m going to go in a submarine to the bottom of the ocean if I can, I want to see everything down there, it’ll be like stepping into a completely new world.

I got pretty seasick on the way back, luckily I kept my breakfast because it’s a shame to lose a good meal, and took a short nap on the dock to get my bearings. After lunch we put together a beach cleanup activity! We managed to collect about 64 kg of trash across the island and sort it out for disposal. Highlights include:

a complete fish skeleton (not trash, just cool).

A full tube of mascara

A tiny plastic sheep

A bottle of bright blue dye that turned everything else blue

A bottle of yellow smelly liquid (pee? I really hope not)

Several baby flip-flops (why do they need shoes, they can’t even walk)

A single Balenciaga slide

and lots and lots of plastic bottles.

There was plenty more trash but our bags were overflowing and we can only carry so much. It’s really sad how much there is on what’s supposed to be a conservation site, just washing up from other islands and everywhere else in the world the currents take it.

Before dinner Nate handed out some of the shells he collected to the local hermit crabs. One of them actually accepted it, and began to examine it closely, preparing for a move. We stood in a circle around it, completely frozen so we wouldn’t scare it and watched and cheered when it moved shells into a nice new shell that was a better shape and size.

The crab was treated to some coconut, because moving is stressful.

And the coconut was quickly swarmed by the other crabs, hopefully our friend got plenty to eat before it got crowded!

Uncategorized

Trash…a lot of it

Leave a comment

May 27th, 2019

 

Today started off with probably the most crushing activity that we had done thus far, marine debris (trash) collection at different sites on the island. I chose to be in what we call the Coral Graveyard, a site that is on the windward side of the island near the open ocean. I expected to find a lot of trash, but what I saw just dumbfounded me. Even on an island 28 miles offshore, there’s still so much plastic, Styrofoam, and other things that accumulate on the shoreline. At the end of our collection time (which was only 30 minutes) we had filled a large trash bag to the brim and still saw so much trash that we didn’t pick up. I even found a hermit crab stuck in a bottle, completely out of its shell. It seemed like it was roasting alive in the bottle. Another group found a hermit crab using a plastic bit as its shell.

To lift spirits, we performed a lionfish (which is an invasive species) dissection after. The dissection was fun and very interesting. My group was able to sex our lionfish (which was an immature male), and cut open its stomach to examine the contents. Fortunately, our lionfish hadn’t had a meal recently. Lionfish are piscivorous and tend to eat small fish, which many herbivorous fish are. Since the lionfish has no predators in these reefs, they can reproduce quickly and thus eat more fish. If the herbivorous fish populations decrease too much, then macroalgae could overtake coral populations and outcompete them. This is why, as a little PSA, it’s important to not release your aquarium fish or other pets into the wild as they can become invasive species and can severely damage an ecosystem.

Some caught lionfish
Uncategorized

When life gives you sharks, you swim as fast as you can and take a selfie.

1 Comment
The nurse shark below me

When life gives you sharks, you swim as fast as you can and take a selfie.

It hit us today that some of the things we did today were among the last things we will do. We gave our last taxonimic briefings and made our last poster. Although it is surely sad, we did contribute to our island in a real way. We picked up trash that has been washed up on Middle Caye, on two sides of the island, one windard and the other leeward. Yesterday, we learned that humans have contributed immensely to the amount and type of debris in the ocean. Depending on the trash (whether it is very or not very transportable, bouyant, and degradible), it can have variable amount of presence on our environment. Plastic like size of a shoebox, for example, can be broken up to millions of smaller pieces, called microplastics. Their degrability is extremely low and can last for thousands of years.

We set out to see what kind of trash we will find on the island and found that the leeward side of the island received more individual pieces of trash and more kinds of trash, including cloth, metal, and paper. However, the windward side received less of the more transportable debris like hard plastic and styrofoam. The transportability differential likely contributes to the leeward side’s receiving more pieces and more kinds of trash because easily transported trash are more likely to end up in areas that do not receive as much wave energy and hence have a higher chance of being stuck there.

After trash collection, we went out to a portion of the reef inside the atoll called “the aquarium” due to its abundance and diversity of marine life. Huge mounds of coral and human size sharks are found here, and when we found nurse sharks, we all kicked our fins as hard as we could toward the shark. Don’t worry, if you are worried, because nurse sharks are not known to be actively aggressive to humans. Their main response to humans is to flee, if they notice close human presence. In other news, we tracked down schools of blue, silver fish as they travel through and sometimes knock themselves into coral. Our excited tracking of the fish caused the fish to swim fastly before us, as if we were herding them. When surprised of our presence, some reacted by fleeing so quickly that they scraped against coral rubble in the process, with their collision audible to us.

Another unexpected encounter was when I observed a large fat parrot fish eat a handful of the wrinkled brown algae. It was so disproportionally big to the fish that I laughed out loud underwater. Fortunately, this reef was covered in this type of brown algae, in addition to a lot of crustose coralline algae and blistered saucer-leaf algae. A lot of y-branched red algae also grew on other types of algae, which often grew on limestone deposited by corals. Life on life on life has been a big theme of this trip and it has really come to a culmination in today’s trip to reefs and channels in the atoll. The geography of the water also lent very well to my practicing diving to the benthos, and I am very happy to say I am not only comfortable in the water, but extremely fond of being in the water, and not to mention swimming with sharks. That is one thing I owe to this place, my new relationship to water, going from barely able to swim to doing all sorts of tricks 15-20 feet underwater all the while avoiding the burning fire coral.

Shout out to my swim instructor Mahdi!

Uncategorized

Day 5 (5/20): Trash is Trash

Leave a comment

Today was a good day. It was pretty laid back and I really enjoyed the time allotment of activities. After breakfast, we decided to knockout the taxonomic presentations (mollusks and annelids presented by Damien and crustaceans presented by Anna) because we planned for a night snorkel if the wind was not too choppy. Afterwards, we started a new project at 9AM today- we were asked to test host preference of Christmas tree worms in relation to certain species of coral. Figuring out the logistics of the operation took some time, and it also involved going to a back reef through “the mangroves of death” as Scott and Adrienne refer to them- this name was given primarily because the mangroves are known to be a wet habitat with roots waiting to trip someone over and mosquitos by the millions. Today, we were lucky though; there were hardly any mosquitos (first time ever according to Scott and Adrienne) and the roots were visible and dodgeable.

In the water, we collected Christmas tree worm data- in the middle of data collection, the water safety officer Adolpho yelled at me across the ocean telling me he found 2 huge Great Barracuda (Sphyraena barracuda). Unfortunately, I did not make it to Adolpho on time to see the barracuda. No piscivorous fish were seen by me on the back reef. Data collection finished around 11:40AM and after lunch, we performed data analysis of the Christmas tree worm data and then Isaac presented on marine debris. This discussion led us to the next project of the day- quantifying marine debris on Middle Caye.

Christmas tree worm on a Pseudodiploria coral

The main goal was to see which type of debris (plastic, metal, fabric, rubber, etc.) is the most abundant on the island. After 30 minutes of trash collecting, the group ended up with 40 kg of debris! This project really put the amount of debris in the world into perspective. Controlling how much trash someone produces and proper waste disposal and recycling and creating biodegradable materials and so many more aspects of debris are such complicated topics to discuss, but it’s a discussion that needs to be had in order to preserve the world that we live in today.