Only 2 days left :-(

Hola,

On Saturday for the "Sea Day" only 4 kids showed up. I was actually pretty happy about that, I wasn't in the mood for children. We ended up having sea cucumbers, sea stars, two kinds of conch, hermit crabs, pea crabs, sea biscuits, and sea urchins....it was pretty cool.

Sunday we just worked on our presentations and our posters all day. Yesterday we had to sit through 27 15 minute presentations....it was a long day. We started at 8:30 and got done at 4:30. Some of them were actually pretty interesting. Today we are having 1 person from each project present to the public. Nick is going for our group. Tonight the grade school and high school are putting on a Christmas pageant, I'm pretty excited for that. Tomorrow we have site clean up all morning long to get rid of our stuff and pack and clean up the place. In the afternoon we're hopefully going to go to a beach, but there is a big storm system moving through here, so that might not happen. I just looked at the forecast for Chicago and got severely depressed....I don't want to go home to ice and snow :-(

Tomorrow night "the boys" (the group of locals we hang around with) are throwing us a good bye party on the beach. They are going to grill chicken, lobster, and conch for us....it should be fun. I can't believe there's only 2 days left! Sorry I have no pictures to put up, we haven't been doing much lately. I hope all of you are doing well and surviving the winter weather!!

Love,
Michelle

Shark Dissection!!

This is the lemon shark we dissected. It was a 6 foot pregnant female.

These were the babies. Steve said they were only about half way through gestation. There were 12 babies total.

Hola,

On Wednesday when the fishermen came in, one of them had a 6 foot lemon shark that he had caught. Steve, our director, asked if we could have it for dissection. The fisherman agreed so on Thursday, we got to see a shark dissection. The liver of a shark is HUGE, it makes up 1/3 it's total body weight. The shark was pregnant so we got to see her 12 babies. One of the babies was much smaller than the others which isn't normal, Steve thinks that maybe that baby was in a different state of development than the others. If that's true, we were witness to a scientific breakthrough. We went through the shark's stomach, but there wasn't much in it, only a few small bones. Once Kristine started going through the shark poo I left because it smelled so bad.

During the day on Thursday and Friday we just worked on our papers. Some people went gill netting on Thursday. I didn't go because I think it's mean. They stretch out this net and sharks get stuck in it. A lot of times they die since the need to be moving in order to breathe. It turns out they didn't catch anything so it was a win win situation for me. I ended up turning in my paper a few hours early yesterday and took a nap....it was glorious.

Last night a few of our local friends, Michael, Amyth, Audi, and Conrad threw a party for us. They cooked lobster and conch which was absolutely amazing. I couldn't tell if people were happier about the conch or the fact that there was a couch to sit on (none of us have had a couch to sit on in 3 months).

Today for community outreach we have "Sea Day" for the kids. I am leading one of the snorkels which should be fun. We're also going to have a "touch tank" for them with sea cucumbers and starfish and stuff. There are going to be activities as well that center around turtles which I think will be cool. That's about it for now, I hope all of you are doing well.

Love,
Michelle

DR is winding down

Hola,

The past few days we have been finishing up DR. We were in the field on Monday and Tuesday, but now we are done with data collection so we've all just been writing our papers. On Tuesday we did more beam trawling which was actually very hard this time because most of what we were trudging through was muck up to our knees. In the afternoon we did sand netting again, but this time I think we got a grand total of 5 fish for the whole time, which was pretty disappointing.

For my paper I have to analyze seagrass patches within Bell Sound. I have to compare the density of the patches and then the health of the seagrass within each of those patches. Unfortunately there was only one major patch that I was able to get seagrass samples from, so this comparison should be pretty interesting.

Our paper is due tomorrow, then we have presentations to the class on Monday and presentations to the public on Tuesday. After that we are pretty much done. I can't believe how quickly this went by, it still seems like I just got here.

Last night we had the Conch Invitational Volleyball Tournament. Last time we had a vball tournament people thought it was unfair that a few teams were full of volleyball players so this time Kate (the student affairs person) picked captains and we drew names out of a hat. I got Devon, Britta, and Margaret. We did pretty well in our first game and won like 21-3 or something ridiculous. In our second match we lost pretty badly so we were out. Colby's team (3 men and a baby) won the whole thing. Unfortunately Kyle, the one that gave me so much garbage about beating my team last time, won again, so he's pretty content with himself right now. I told him next time we'll play with real rules and then he'll go down big time.

Sorry this is a short one, but I didn't have much to write about. I hope all of you are doing well.

Love,
Michelle

Church anyone?

This is the church I went to. It had probably 8 rows of pews on each side....each pew could fit 4-5 people.

This is a dog I named Ethel. She hangs out with us at Trench Town (one of the bars) and I, of course, always pet her.

This is down by Regatta, we found some cool shells here.

Hey Everyone,

Yes, you read that title correctly....I went to church yesterday....willingly. Mass started at 5 and was over by 5:40, there were about 20 people there. The priest said most of the mass in English but said the important parts in both English and French (for the Haitians). His homily was about how only God can give you a brand new heart and spirit as well as how pride is the worst sin. I thought that was interesting. He was saying how people shouldn't be arrogant and look down upon other people. He also said that when priests do it, it is worse than when regular people do it since they are "married to God" and when Bishops do it, that is the worst.

On Saturday I was on dock duty for site clean up so I had to scrub the bottom of the boats. It wasn't too bad....you get to be in the water so it is the only job you don't sweat doing. For community outreach I was supposed to be on games with the kids but only like 4 kids showed up so I got put on sand sifting duty. We just got a pile of sand in for the vball court, but it's full of rocks and shells so we have to sift it all.

Sunday I went with a few people to East Bay and Regatta to look for shells. It was fun until I stubbed my toe on a rock and sliced the tip of it off. Don't worry, I cleaned it out 2 hours later when I got back. There were a ton of shells at Regatta...I found some baby conch shells which are quite possibly the cutest things in the world. After that was when I went to church.

Today in the morning I had to help out with mangroves. By the time we were done, Liz and I looked like we had chicken pox from all of the bug bites. It was kind of creepy working in the roots of the mangroves. It's really quite and you can hear when a fish eats something and when the donkeys yell at you. It also rained on us 3 times so that didn't help the spooky feeling dissipate at all. After Liz and I finished the mangroves, we had to walk 2 miles to help the beam trawl people. Once again it rained on us. We tried to take shelter under some "trees" but it was raining too hard so it all came through anyway....so we decided to rough it and walk in the rain. The bugs were no better by the beam trawlers so we all continued to suffer.....it was great.

When we got back from Bell Sound Courtney and I took a walk around town. We haven't been in any of the "fashion stores" so we tried a few out today. They surprisingly have some nice stuff in them. Granted it's $50 for a shirt, but they look pretty nice. They had shoes and accessories and my personal favorite; a palm tree bathroom set complete with rug, toilet rug, and shower curtain. I now know how I am going to decorate my bathroom when I move out.

The Net Finally Came!!

This is a brittle sea star. We saw tons of these today when we were beam trawling.

This is a shrimp. We were finding baby ones when we were beam trawling. The ones we found could fit on your finger tip.

This is a donkey dung sea cucumber. As you can see, it looks like poop. When you pick it up, it gets stressed and squirts water at you.....they're so cool

This is scavenger hunt night. One of the things was guys had to dress in drag, hence Kyle and Scott in my dresses. Another thing was breaking a rule. We killed two birds with one stone because the guys are in drag and a staff member and student were drinking together AND we were in Kyle's room which is also against the rules.....we were awesome.

One of the things we had to take a picture of was someone wearing a cowboy hat. No one has one, but I have one tattooed on my back, so that's what this is.

Another item on the list was a picture with a cop. Sanchez is a cop, but we couldn't find him, so Katie replaced him. We tried to replicate the unibrow and poofed up hat to our best abilities, I think it turned out pretty well.

Hola,

Yesterday the net for beam trawling had not arrived, so we went sand netting instead. It's easy to do but hard to explain, but i will try. Three people string out the net which is 50 m long. Three other people start splashing and running around like 20 or 30 m in front of the net to try to scare the fish to swim towards the net. While the splashers are doing their thing, two people take one end of the net and loop it around to the other side of the net to make a pouch. Then, the person standing by them self starts walking and pulling the net tighter to try to make the pouch smaller. Once the pouch is small, one person dives down and closes the bottom of the pouch and we dump the contents into a bucket. Turns out we're not the best at it. We were really good at catching small fish, but the big ones always got away. I caught a barracuda between my butt and the net when I was on the "make the pouch smaller" job and i threw it in the pouch part, but it ended up getting away. Catherine, our DR teacher, saw a few larger fish burrow under the net to get out, so we like to think that is why the fish got out, not our inability to master sand netting. We did end up catching over 6,000 baby fish. A lot of them died which I was very upset about, so my mission today was to keep everything alive. When I was in charge, we only lost 2 fish so that was nice. Before we left yesterday it started raining while there was still bright sunshine and it made the biggest rainbow I have ever seen. It went from the public dock all the way across the island and you could see it's beginning and end....it was awesome. That little shower set the pace for the day.....it rained on us 3 times over the course of the day in the field.

Wednesday night we had a scavenger hunt for activity night. It was soooooooo much fun. Some of the things we had to take pictures of were a donkey, a horse, a bull, a chicken, people breaking a rule, guys in girls clothing, someone eating either a pickled egg or a pickled sausage (two very popular foods here), and other fun things. My team was Kyle, Katie, Scott, Britta, and myself. We had sooooooo much fun. We couldn't find a cow so we took a picture of milk. We couldn't find a chicken either so we went to the store and took a picture of some chicken tenders. One of the things was we had to take a picture of a famous movie scene. Since we are over achievers, we took several. Kyle and I ate the pickled sausage like the spaghetti in Lady and the Tramp, we did the scene in the gazebo from Sound of Music (the one with Ralph and Leisle), AND we did Jesus on the cross from Passion of the Christ....

Today the net finally arrived so we got to go beam trawling!!! We caught a TON of invertebrates but not too many fish. Of the inverts, we caught a crab, lots of baby shrimp and lobster, sea cucumbers, snails, slugs, worm things, clams, brittle sea stars, and starfish. To find the shrimp and lobster, you have to go through all of the Laurencia (algae) strand by strand and pull them out. The big ones that we found were only about a centimeter long and the smaller ones were probably half that size. When we were looking through the Laurencia we also found baby lobster and brittle sea stars. The sea stars are supposed to have 5 arms, but we found some with 2 or 3....we're hoping those injuries weren't our fault. Don't worry though, their arms grow back.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I finally found a seagrass bed the other day so I got to do some seagrass analysis. I had to cut 2 patches of seagrass from my quadrat which sounds quite easy, but it wasn't. Because I was wearing my wetsuit, it was really hard to stay under the water (wet suits make you float), and I'm not the best free diver and of course the seagrass was in the deepest place we had gone to. But I did it, don't worry. When I finally got the seagrass, I brought it back to the center and laid it out to dry. Then I had to measure the length and width of each piece as well as weigh every piece. Luckily I only had to do 100....there were probably 500 blades.

We have started a game that is going to go until the end of the semester, it's called assassin. Everyone is assigned a person and they have to "kill" them (by throwing a sock at them) when they are alone with them. Once they kill a person, then they have to kill the person that the now dead person was supposed to kill. Eventually it's between only 2 people. I think it will be fun. Well I think that's it for now. I hope all of you are doing well!

Love,
Michelle

Attack of the Cassiopea

This is pretty much what I look at every day for research. The circular things in the middle and right in the front of the picture are Cassiopeia. They are "upside down jellyfish" that swim around or stay chilling at the bottom.

Hola,

Yesterday we just did transects all day again. We had to walk quite a ways this time.....we weren't too happy. The truck almost got stuck in the road so we had to walk all of our gear the rest of the way....through brush....full of mosquitoes.....and mud. It was great. We actually found a seagrass bed so I had to cut samples of the grass. Then when I got back to the center I had to measure the length, width, and weight of each blade. Turns out that isn't as fun as it sounds.

Today we were supposed to do beam trawling, but our net still hasn't shown up. Instead we did some work with red mangroves in the afternoon. It was high tide so we were up to our knees in muck, but luckily the bugs weren't too bad, the Cassiopeia were. Cassiopeia are small little jellyfish that can shoot pneumatophores (stinging cells) into the water column. I got stung 3 times; once on the back of my knee, once on my thigh, and once in my armpit....it was glorious. I wasn't the only one that got stung, most of us got stung. Don't worry, the stings aren't so bad. They are just kind of annoying. They don't hurt too bad, it's more like a dull sting. In the morning I got to sun bathe which I haven't done in forever, so that was nice.

Right now Termario, one of the local kids (he's 7) is showing me that he knows how to braid hair better than I do. I wish I could show you a picture of what he is doing to my hair. Termario comes around a few times a week. His parents play volleyball on our sand court and he just chills with us. His favorite person is Mitch who is 6'7. It's quite funny to see them walking around together.

Tomorrow we are hopefully starting the beam trawling, if the net shows up that is. When we do that we drag it along the bottom to collect the organisms. Then we record what organisms we caught and let them go (hopefully). That's about it for now. I hope all of you are doing well.

Love,
Michelle

More DR

This is everyone from the school that turned out to watch the bball game. A few locals showed up as well, but they sat on the other side to cheer their team on.

This is our team getting their butts kicked. The high school team all rolled up in a car with the music blaring and got out in what seemed like slow motion. It was at that moment we realized we were doomed.

This is Rachel and I at the invitational dinner. We were clean, it was nice.

This is my gang....everyone's all dressed up. Left to right: Courtney, Britta, Katie, Scott

From left to right: Laura, Kenny, Christina, Erica, Lacey.

Hola,

Thanksgiving dinner was awesome. They made turkey, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, stuffing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, walnut pie, and more. We were all so full after dinner we couldn't move. They definitely did everything they could to make it feel like home.

Friday it was back to the grind. We did more transects that we had to swim 45 minutes to get to.....it was a long day.

Saturday we had our normal things; site clean up, meetings, community outreach. Before community outreach though, our school put together a basketball team to play the local high school's. I don't know what's in the water here, but the high school team was HUGE! We never got an official score, but it was a very little to a ton. We left with a few injuries as well. Mitch sprained his ankle and Gabe banged up his knee. Although we got slaughtered, the game was fun. After that, we had community outreach. I was supposed to be on games with the kids, but since most people in town were on the bball court, only 1 kid came, Nick, and he swam the whole time, so instead the people that were on games ended up setting up for the invitational dinner.

This dinner was for anyone that hadn't been invited to one yet. The only person I actually knew that came was Ganger aka G. He brought his kids and his wife which was nice. We had a nice dinner and then went out. It was a pretty uneventful night.

Yesterday I was on kitchen crew. When you have it on Sunday, you have to cook brunch and dinner for all 40 people. For brunch we made breakfast burritos, muffins, and oatmeal. I made the hashbrowns to go along with the meal, but for some reason they turned blue.....I have no idea what happened. For dinner we made chicken fettucini alfredo. I had to mince 50 cloves of garlic which was awesome. I tried to do it like they do on the Food Network and it actually went pretty well. My fellow crew mates were impressed with my skills. Juston found the recipe for the alfredo but I was in charge of cooking it. It started out a little rocky, there wasn't enough butter.....we had checked the stocks of butter saturday morning, but they ended up using most of it for dinner, so we were a full cup of butter short. But we cooked it anyway. After everything was added, we had something that resembled very think cream of wheat. Even the guy in our group couldn't stir it at that point. So I had to think fast. I decided adding milk should help. We ended up adding 3 boxes of milk (yes, our milk comes with boxes and does not need refrigeration). After that though, it was PERFECT!! I was so proud of that sauce I couldn't stop smiling. Everyone loved our food so it turned out to be a good (but long) day.

This week we just basically have DR. I don't know what we are going to do though, because we don't have a net for our beam trawl (a net is pretty much the only part of it we really need). I really don't want to do transects for another week, but we'll see. I'll keep ya posted. I hope all of you have a good week!

Love,
Michelle