The First School Week

I haven't written in a few days so please bear with me as I attempt to recap the journey so far.

Monday
This was the first day Tropical Marine Ecology.  The class simply consisted of us talking about what we will be learning in the class.  The professor, a French woman with a fairly strong accent, lectured about why marine ecosystems are more complicated than terrestrial ones.  I suppose that being a terrestrial mammal would make it hard for most people to understand a marine environment.

We went to Lac Bay in the afternoon to snorkel in the mangroves.  They were eerie because the visibility is lower than I have experienced in Bonaire, and there are a lot of fish, including the Great Barracuda.  They are not that large, but very fast and clearly hunters.  The mangroves contain many, many upside-down jellyfish, which look like anemones.  Also saw a lot of baby fish.  They were too cute for words.  I enjoyed seeing the mini fish, but it was a bit too creepy, imagining all of the things that can hide in the mangrove roots.  At least in Lake Pleasant, I know that there aren't big fish that could potentially come out of no where, but this is not the case in Lac Bay.  Luckily I had a wetsuit on or else I would have been very unhappy with all of the grasses touching me.

Tuesday
This was Coral Reef Ecology class day.  We talked about all the things we would be doing during the semester.  We did Coral Jeopardy.  My team, the Claminators, placed third out of four.  I at least answered one of the questions and helped the team.  We then continued to learn more about coral and algae.

The afternoon involved a dive where we looked for various phyla on the reef and collected algae.  I had a new dive buddy, Andrew, who I featured a few posts ago.  We also practiced rescue skills, and I was the victim in one of the scenarios.  My feelings were a bit hurt by how hard my rescuers found it to get me out of the water.  It was a fun dive though.  We were finally able to dive without having extremely strict objectives besides looking for various creatures among the coral and the reef.

Today
We did project proposal presentations in front of the class and had meetings with our advisor.  Everyone is a bit upset by the fact that we were forced to do the project proposal outline and a bibliography without having any meetings with our advisor first.  The vast majority of us felt lost and clueless.  During the advisor meetings after the presentations, many people had their projects changed, including me.  The only good thing that came out of this is that I know what I'll be researching.  My project is about Diadema antillarum (long-spined urchin) and Ramicrusta (a type of algae) in Lac Bay and whether the urchins are having any impact on the spread of Ramicrusta.  The thing is that not much os know about Ramicrusta so there are many wider implications that could come out of my study whether I get results or not.  It is going to be an interesting project at least.  I think that I was one of the few that didn't get my butt handed to me during the meeting.  Ah well, it's just a part of the learning process.

I feel as though I should also comment on the fact that things are not as good as they should be.  Before you jump to any conclusions, I am happy and I'm talking about the fact that the power completely shut down during class today, the guy who makes our food can't seem to prepare enough or produce enough variety, the front gate to the house that we use is broken, and the sink in one of the rooms fell out of the wall one night (proceeded to drip on the floor and flooded the room a bit).  It seems like the program and house was not built to hold sixteen people (not including the four interns in the room above the house).  Anyway, here is my update.

Now for some more introductions:

Ian

This is Ian. He goes to Vassar.  He cracks me up and definitely dishes sarcasm right back at me, which I love.

Osha

Osha is from Australia and has an accent that I really love, but sometimes no one can understand her because either her accent or the random words that she uses.  She is a sweetheart and gave me Nutella on a cracker today, so how could I not like her?

Dan

Dan goes to University of Oregon.  He and I are both doing urchins for our project.  He is really nice, although I have a lot more to learn about him.

Tom

Tom goes to Goucher and plays lacrosse there.  Tom is Tom.  He is really hard to explain.  But that's all I have for introductions today.  I have discovered that I need to get more pictures of people so that I can get them up on this blog.   Love you all!