The Trials and Tribulations of Science

Assembling the cages for my Independent Research Project (including the folding and zip tying together):  5 hours

Cutting wire mesh and wrapping it around four sides of the cages:  10 hours

Attaching dive weights to the bottom: 15 minutes

Drilling holes into ceramic tiles to put in the cages: 1 hour

Walking the cages out to the study site on the sand flat: 2 hours

Finding 10 pieces of rubble with Ramicrusta and 10 pieces without: 30 minutes

Moving 5 Diadema (long-spined urchins) to place in the cages: 30 minutes

Letting the Diadema go due to not properly covered cages: 10 minutes

Cutting off the dive weights to place in the cages and move them to a rubble patch: 20 minutes

Cutting more wire mesh to cover the top of the cages to keep the Diadema from being preyed upon: 2 hours

Tweaking the experiment: 10 seconds

Removing the 10 pieces of non-Ramicrusta rubble to be replaced with 10 more pieces of Ramicrusta rubble: 20 minutes

Measuring the Ramicrusta on all of the 20 rubble pieces: 40 minutes

Catching Diadema while simultaneously zip tying the tops of the cages: 1 hour

Doing this while a storm with thunder and lightning is about to sweep over: 10 minutes

Checking on the cages the Wednesday after the storm has hit to find that they are in disarray and one of the Diadema has escaped: 10 minutes

Learning that weather that could turn into a tropical storm is going to affect the island: 2 minutes

Removing the cages from the study site and releasing the Diadema to make sure they aren't killed from the cages rolling with the help of 9 other people: 1 hour and 45 minutes

Spending this much time on getting the cages ready only to have them removed and realizing that the time you spent collecting data to make the experiment work only to have the entire idea completely scrapped and knowing that you have to disassemble stinky, pokey the cages later: Priceless

Ahh...the trials and tribulations of scientific experimentation.

Sorry for the Absence

I really am sorry for the long silence that has occurred.  Things have gotten crazy and I have gotten lazy about updating.  Luckily this is going to be one of the more relaxed weeks that I am going to have since getting here, so hopefully I will be able to fill you all in on everything.

For the most part nothing too exciting has happened.  We all got to watch a sea turtle for about 10 minutes on one of our dives.  It was the biggest I have seen in Bonaire so far so that was really cool.  The only other thing that I can think of is that we went "spelunking" on Friday to learn about Bonaire's caves.  When I think cave I think of the traditional mouth of a cave carved into the side of a mountain sort of thing, but the mouth of this cave was literally a hole in the ground.  And not even a big hole.  We did this exercise where we all turned off our lights and sat in the dark to see if the bats would fly close to us.  I was a bit reluctant about this idea, but because there were other people there more nervous about sitting in the dark than I was, I was surprisingly calm.  I didn't have a bat fly close to me, but I don't think I needed to hear such a thing anyway.  There was also a part of the cave where we had to crouch down on all fours to get under.  I mention this because one of the girls made the comparison of walking like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings.  I was in the middle of scrambling under this overhang and couldn't help but smile to myself.  I couldn't laugh out loud because I was concentrating hard on getting out, but I thought it was really funny and that you would appreciate it.  It was extremely hot and I ended up sweating out of places I didn't know I could sweat.  Luckily, that was the case for everyone so we were all able to bond over it, I think...

We had our midterm in Coral Reef Ecology last week.  It wasn't too bad, although there was a lot of material to cover so I am unsure how I did.  Based on the key that we were allowed to look at after we finished the exam, I believe that I at least got some credit on all of the questions.  We also had our Advanced Scuba Final this week.  It involved dive physics and physiology, rescue skills, EFR, DAN Oxygen, and other fun stuff.  I got confused on the first few questions so we shall also see how that went.  Monday is our Tropical Marine Conservation Biology Midterm worth 300 points.  This is the one that I am really nervous for.  There was A LOT of material covered so getting it all back into my head will be an interesting challenge.  Considering that I haven't been doing particularly well on the quizzes I am truly worried.

Went to Lac Bay yesterday.  I am currently sporting a Portland sun tan, meaning my back is a different color from my front.  Luckily I wasn't burnt too badly (compared to another girl that must be in a lot of pain right now).  This was the one time that I have gotten any sort of prolonged exposure to the sun and I got burnt! How not fun is that?  Fortunately Marissa had aloe that she let me use last night so getting to bed was a lot easier than it would have been without it.

It has also occurred to me that there are two people here that I have not introduced you to.

This is Paul.  He goes to Juniata College.  If he had a super power it would be that whatever glass he touches is half full and the word he dislikes the most is the plural of wasp.  He's pretty amusing like that.

This a Amanda.  She goes to Oregon State.  This picture is from our Rincon Walk field trip.  She is wearing a sun bonnet.  She's really cool and funny. 

So that is what has been going on as well as everyone that is on this trip.  I'll try not to be a stranger to the blog.  Love you all!

Regatta Break and the Return to Class

Regatta Break was a much needed stress reliever as well as a recovery time.  I was sick for the first half of the week which was truly an unfortunate occurrence, but it was fortunate to happen over the break.  It was also a really rainy break.  At night when all of the fun, music, food, and partying going on it would rain.  Rain basically stops the island.  Marissa and  I discovered a leak in the middle of our room.  Potentially a very hazardous and slippery situation.  I did end up going on three dives, which was a lot of fun.  The first one we went on was named Lighthouse.  It is on the very southern tip of the island.  There was a wind reversal that left the south part of the island calm.  This was probably one of the only opportunities to dive the south tip.  It was a really cool dive with some fun topography.  We did this dive with a large group of people which as good.  I saw this weird Crown of Thorns/anemone hybrid thing.  I had never seen anything like it before.  The other two dives were on Sunday before we had to go back to class.  We went back to the Hilma Hooker.  I was happy to hang out on it a little while longer and look at it.  My dive buddy, Andrew, and I saw some large Tarpon, a large barracuda, and a fatty tiger grouper.  There were a lot of people diving it when we got there.  In the afternoon, after grabbing a quick sandwich, we went to one of the most popular dive sites, Karpata.  It was hands-down the most beautiful dive I have ever done.  I could have been down there for hours, if only I could.  There was so much to see.  The reef was covered in coral and interesting topography.  It was covered in lots of soft corals.  I want to go again.  The only unfortunate thing was the rough entry and bit of wave action, but it turned out to be a solid 57 minute dive. Mom, I think that this dive is what you were expecting to see in Hawaii.  It was the best ending to Regatta Break possible.

I have a feeling that school will be as busy as possible.  Already I have another long To Do List that will never get done.  I'm excited to learn about videography tomorrow.  I also calculated that I have spent over 24 hours underwater.  That is one quality day.  Love you all!

Working, Studying, and Coral Spawning...oh my!

So this was honestly the busiest week I have ever had.  Whenever I managed to finish one assignment, there was always another one to fill its spot.  I will have to break down this week down day by day so that I don't leave anything out.

Sunday
Our Independent Research Project was due at midnight.  So of course, we spent the morning on Saturday at Lac Bay trying to prepare for doing our projects.  On Sunday, all of us were up and working on our proposals, but Maria, our teach for Tropical Marine Conservation Biology and one of our research advisors, decided to take us to hear and meet Ned Deloach.  He is one of the co-authors of THE marine identification book that is used by scientists and anyone else who is interested in the subject.  He also co-founded REEF.  If you guys would like to Google it, it's really hard for me to explain.  This talk went from 6:45-9:30pm.  Luckily, I had done a lot of work and was in a pretty good place at this point in the writing process, but a lot of people were not close to done.  We were all dying to get back to finish our proposals and Maria was taking her sweet time getting us back to the house despite the fact that she knows we have the proposal due, and not just that, but also reading for her class, which of course she quizzed us on in the morning.

Monday
Apart from the quiz, a good thing that happened was Sarah, one of the interns, taught the lecture in the morning.  Without her teaching, I'm not sure that I would have made it through the lecture.  We were all truly exhausted at the start of the week.  We learned more about pollution.  Another assignment that we did in class was getting into groups of four and summarizing an article.  They gave us a series of questions that we had to answer.  The frustrating thing was that they only gave us 20 minutes to read it and then talk about who was going to talk about what in our group.  These weren't short articles either.  They ended up giving us more time, because the assignment was impossible to complete in the time alloted.  In the afternoon, a guest speaker came in to talk about an on-going monitoring program that is currently going on Bonaire.  We then went on a dive to look at the monitoring system that is on the reef. It had been raining a lot that day so the visibility was terrible compared to what is normal for Bonaire.  We also learned how to take water samples.  I discovered that I am terrible at staying in the same place in the water without a good reference point.  We had split into three groups for the dive and I ended up in the group at the highest depth, so I got to play in the bubbles of the ten people below me which I thought was really fun.  After the dive, we went back to the house to dry off, but had to go back the lab to learn how to test water samples.  The night was spent preparing for class the next morning by doing the reading.

Tuesday
For class we went to catch plankton.  We all went on a boat, got into groups of four, and did four different stations.  The four stations were vertical plankton tow, GPS and water testing, point sampling (the device broke so my group didn't get to do this), and Sechhi disk (which tests for visibility).  We did this near shore and further away from shore.  We had time to go snorkel on Klein Bonaire for about ten minutes.  We then went back to shore to dry off and get to the classroom to do a plankton lecture.  After lunch, we went to the lab to look at the plankton we had captured.  This doesn't sound like too crazy day, but let me just tell you all the assignments that were due this week.
1) Service Project Proposal for Thursday (in groups of four)
2) Reflection Paper from out trip to Mangazina de Rei for Friday
3) Plankton Lab write-up for Thursday
4) Reading for Coral Reef Ecology on Thursday
5) Reading "The Story of Papiamentu" p. 1-55
6) Summary of the Papiamentu Reading
7) Be prepared to give a presentation to the class about how one of these cultures: Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, or African influenced Papiamentu, but you don't know which so prepare for all of them
8) Studying for Papiamentu class Thursday night
9) Graphs of Beach clean-up data due Sunday
I even feel as though I'm possibly missing some assignments.  So I was working on all of these assignments in addition to all of the class time that we were putting in.

Wednesday
We went to Lac Bay to start working on the research project.  I spent the vast majority of the day building cages for my experiment.  I fortunately had at least one person working with me to get it done, but I still haven't finished making the cages so I have to work on those over Regatta Break so that I'm ready to set the cages out the next time we go to Lac Bay.  I also have to make a stand so that I take the same picture every time I go for my project and drill holes into tiles for my project as well.  So much for Regatta break being relaxing.  The really awesome thing that we did Wednesday was our night dive in tandem with a coral spawning dive.  My dive buddy was Beth, as usual.  I trust her a lot so it was comfortable.  I got to see two coral spawn, meaning releasing their egg/sperm packets.  It was really cool to see.  We also got to see a lot of bioluminescence and brittle stars.  The eels are also active at night to there were more of them swimming around.  The corals are also more vulnerable at night because they let their polyps come out so I had to be extra careful about not accidentally touching one.  It as fun to see the reef that we have swam in countless time transform into an entirely new place.  This dive marks my completion of the requirements to become an advanced diver.  YAY!  This dive ended up adding another assignment to the list above which was two paragraphs: one scientific about what we saw where and one about what we thought.  This wasn't a bad assignment, but it felt like some of these assignments were there for the purpose of busy work which was frustrating.

Thursday
We were supposed to go to Lac Bay in the morning, but Caren took pity on us and cancelled that trip so we didn't have class until two which gave me time to work on all of the homework we had.  We learned about oceans, currents, climate change, and REEF Fish ID.  It was a fairly relaxed class compared to what we had been doing during the week so far.  Because we saw very few coral spawn, some of us decided to do another night dive to try to see more.  I saw some sperm get released, but no egg packets.  I got to see a lettuce leaf slug, a peacock flounder (which Beth pet), a spotted lobster, and lots of creatures that I already mentioned above.  I had busted my butt working on assignments non-stop all week.  I worked, went to bed, got up, and continued to work.  It was a lot of fun to do.  I'm glad that did it.

Friday
We were supposed to have class at 11, but it was cancelled due to the fact the discussion that was planned regarding how the various cultures influenced Papiamentu, did not correspond with the reading. We did, however, go do a walk in Rincon for the class.  I got chewed up by mosquitoes and have to reflection paper for it.  I was just so exhausted at this point that I didn't particularly enjoy it.  Because of this week, I have developed a head cold.  I have been fighting it since Thursday after the night dive.  I don't like being sick, especially during a time where there is so much going on.  That's what I have for now.  I'll upload pictures later.