National Kids week in the TCI

So it was National Kids week here in the TCI. Events went on all week like a movie night, a barbecue, and a game day. Friday was game day so me, Nick, Courtney, and Rachel went down to the Regatta to see what they were doing. When we got there, there was a hula hoop contest going on. We wanted to join, but there weren't enough hoops. When it was the guys turn, we forced Nick to participate, but once again, they couldn't find an extra hoop. I ended up blowing up balloons for some of the kids and then giving "donkey rides" which are just piggy back rides. The kids taught us all how to dance. They were laughing quite hard at our attempts. The girls wanted to play with our hair so we let them. Luckily since mine isn't very long, they didn't like it. Courtney, who has hair down to her lower back, ended up getting "dreads" from the girls. When we got back, Court ended up spending an hour to get the dreads out.

Yesterday for community outreach I was in the group to go to Bell Sound where the family BBQ was. By the time we got there, everyone had left so Steve, the center director, showed us around the Sound (that's the place I am doing my research at). He told us the developers plans are to rip out the mangroves and dredge a channel through it. This will ruin one of the last nurseries for fish and sharks in the Caribbean. Our research efforts won't completely stop their plans, but they may change their plans depending on our results, so seeing the Sound how it is now and hearing about what might happen to it in the future was good motivation for my paper.
Last night we went out to the bars because it was Rachel's 21st birthday. I didn't take any pictures, but I may be able to get some from other people.

This morning around 7 a HUGE storm rolled through. We all thought we were in a hurricane. The wind was howling, there was a ton of thunder and lightning, and it was pouring. We all set our buckets out to fill with water so we can do our laundry again. Our bucket ended up overflowing. Some of the rooms ended up flooding because water was rushing in under the doors. Luckily our room was not one of those. I did, however, have to run out in the middle of the storm to get my clothes that were hanging on the line to dry. I was too late though and they are still soaking wet. I should have just added soap and left them out there. Well, that's pretty much it. I hope all of you are doing well!

-Michelle

We've all become the smelly kid

Hey Everyone,

I forgot to mention in the Tuesday post that our food came. When it comes, it gets here on a giant barge filled with train cars. Next time it comes I will try to get a picture. This time it didn't have too many cars on it so it didn't look as impressive as it did last time.

There really hasn't been too many exciting things going on lately. Since we finished our conch assessments, we've gone back to our regular schedule; class in the morning and fish id's in the afternoon. Now we are learning reef fish, we have 84 to memorize by Monday. I think I know 30.....I have my work cut out for me. Since there is nothing exciting going on, I figured I could show you some pictures of what I see everyday for class:

This is a nurse shark, scientific name: Ginglymostoma cirratum. It is very shy so it's usually hanging out under rock ledges when we see them.

This is a queen angelfish. We saw one of these today at Admiral's Reef. It's scientific name is: Holacanthus ciliaris

This is the Southern Stingray. We've seen a bunch of these just chillin on the ground. They are usually covered in sand so it's hard to see them at first. The other day we saw one that was probably 6 feet across, it was huge. Their scientific name is: Dasyatis americana.

This is the squirrelfish, and yes, it's as ugly in person as it is in this picture. They are also very shy so we usually just see them as they are darting in between coral. This picture shows them as being small but they are probably about 10 inches long. The scientific name for these guys is: Holocentrus adscensionis.

This is the stoplight parrotfish in its terminal phase. When it is in it's initial phase (what mature females look like) it kind of resembles indian corn. It is brown with red, white, brown, and yellow spots on it. It is called the stoplight parrotfish because of the yellow dot right behind its gills and it's a parrotfish because it's front teeth on both the top and bottom are fused into what looks like a beak. The scientific name for this one is: Spirisoma viride.

I am running out of ideas to write about in my blog so let me know what you guys want to know about. And Julie, I will address your questions in my next blog, lol. Take care everyone!!

-Michelle

First research project

So yesterday we started our conch assessment lab/project thing. This consists of us going into and out of the conch preserve and laying down a 30 m stretch of measuring tape. Then, one person looks at and records the substrate (whether it's sand, seagrass, or something else) while two people swim within 1.5 m of the tape and look for conch. If we find a live one, we put it on the tape to measure where it was, the length and we use calipers to measure the lip size. We do this 3 times (transects) in each area and each group did 3 areas in the reserve and 3 areas outside the reserve. When we write the lab up, we have to talk about whether we found more conch in the reserve or outside of it, why we think that is happening and stuff like that. Our group found many more conch outside the reserve and very few in the reserve which is not a good sign.

Last night I found out which research project I am on. I am doing an inventory of species in Bell Sound, a place where they are building several resorts. They currently have plans to dredge the area to make beaches and possibly an area for a cruise ship. It is our job to get a good idea of what's in the area and figure out what role everything plays. If we do a good enough job, we may be able to get the contractors to change or at least revise their plan (that's our goal).

I almost forgot probably the most important thing that I've done since I've been here........laundry!!!! I did my laundry yesterday for the first time. Three of us put a little bit of water in two buckets (one with soap, one without) and we washed our clothes in the soapy one and rinsed them in the other bucket, then hung our clothes to dry. Other than the fact that my clothes severely need fabric softener, they turned out pretty well.....I won't smell like a foot for a whole week!! I don't know if our method of doing laundry was legal (we used freshwater instead of saltwater) but having clothes that aren't gritty was a priority for me.

Other than those two things, nothing too exciting is going on. Take care everyone!

-michelle

I'm getting very tan

This is us at Trench Town. We were playing Indian poker.

This is our classroom. I didn't have any other exciting pictures to put up this time.

Hola,

Sorry I haven't written in awhile, I've been slacking. Friday was a pretty fun day. We pretty much had classes all day but then we went on a night snorkel. We left around 8 to go snorkeling. Everyone had an underwater flashlight and all of the instructors had glow sticks. We saw a baby nurse shark, some HUGE porcupine fish and some people saw a little octopus but I didn't since I can't free dive. Oh, we also went to the fish processing plant on Friday to see the workers skin conch. Unfortunately it was a slow day so we only saw 1 worker removing the scales from some fish. She did it with a thing that looked like a vegetable peeler.

Yesterday we had site clean up in the morning as well as meetings. For clean up I was on pier duty so I had to scrub the ladder and help pick up litter. We just had a student meeting to discuss how everything is going and what not, then the staff came in and we told them what we came up with. In the afternoon we had an optional snorkel. I didn't go because we have like 80 fish id's to learn by next Monday, so I got started on that. I was supposed to go to the wellness center again for community outreach so I took my freshwater shower before that so I would smell all nice. After I showered, I found out I had gotten switched to be on games with the kids that weren't in swimming lessons (yay). So I ended up playing dodgeball and sweating my butt off so my freshwater shower was totally wasted this week. I did, however, learn how to play dominoes. Turns out I'm very good at it because no one can predict what I'm going to do. I also learned a new card game from one of the local kids, it doesn't really have a name, and no one really knows the rules, but I played it and won a round. For dinner we had the conch that we knocked on Thursday in conch salad. It was very good. They boiled the conch, then chilled it and served it with chopped peppers, onions, tomatoes, and some sort of dressing. The conch itself tastes a lot like imitation crab meat.

Today was our day off so after brunch a bunch of us went to the beach to swim, tan, and just hang out. It was a lot of fun and now I am ridiculously tan. When we got back, I found out a few of the girls here played volleyball in high school so we played volleyball for a little bit. We are starting to run out of food so we are all hoping the big ship with all of the food comes soon.

Well, that's about it for here, nothing too exciting. I hope everything is going well back in the states.

-Michelle

My first test

Just to give everyone an idea of how hot it is. The last line of this apparatus tells the temperature. This was taken around noon time.

This is a skink. It's the little lizard that we see everywhere. This is the kind that was in our room on like the 3rd day. They can change their color

This was at Ballers. Scott is the guy, the girl in the back is Britta and the girl in pink is Evelyn, the birthday girl

This is still at Ballers. The girl on the left is Danielle, the guy in blue is Steve, the girl in white is Rachel, Britta is in the green and Mitch is in red.

This is at Ballers again. Katie is in red, Juston is in orange, Gabe is the guy in red, Ashley is the girl in the back, Danielle is the one with her tongue out and Rachel is in white.

Hola,

So yesterday I had my first id test in the water. We ended up going to two places; around our pier and then to Moxybush Cay. For the test our TA swam around and we followed him with our underwater slates and pencils. When he pointed something out, we had to write the scientific name, spelled correctly, and we also had to write a higher taxonomic group. I got a 99% because I spelled two things wrong. I also had to give a presentation on seagrass for my resource management class and we all had to write a paper about our first impressions of the culture on the island for my environmental policy class. After dinner we all played a game of human checkers. I was on the black team. Because we have so many people here, we had 15 people from each team start out on the board. Two additional people from each team were the "strategists" while another person from each team was a time keeper (that's what I did). Our team ended up losing after an hour long battle.....it was madness. Oh, and the catch was, if you got kinged, you had to carry someone on your back to show it.

Yesterday was Evelyn's (one of my roommates) birthday so after all of the days activities, we went out to two bars. The first was Trench Town which is basically a hole in the wall and the second was Ballers' which is a dance club kind of thing. It was so hot in Ballers that most of us ended up chilling outside for a lot of the time.

Today we had the highly anticipated "conch lab" where we knock a conch (get it out of its shell) then kill it and skin it. My conch was a male, I forgot to name it though. In order to break through the shell, you have to use the back of a hammer in between the 2nd and 3rd row of spikes. Once you make the hole, you grab onto the perculum, which is what they use as a defense, to prevent them from curling up entirely into their shell. After you have a hold of them, you stick a knife into the hole you made to cut the tendon that hooks them to the shell. Once the tendon is cut, you pull the entire thing out. After it was out, we recorded whether it was a boy or a girl then we dismembered it by cutting off the section with all of its organs. There is a part of it (basically the pancreas) that some people eat because they think its an aphrodisiac. It's basically a long slimy tube filled with neon greenish yellow stuff (digestive enzymes). I chose not to eat mine, but some people ate it. They said it tasted like salt. John, our teacher, said some people also eat the verge (or male apparatus, if you know what I mean) for the same reason. Only Scott was brave enough to eat it. He said it didn't really taste like anything. After you cut off the organs, then you have to cut off the eyes and foot, then skin it. We are going to eat them on Sunday.

This is my beautiful queen conch (Stromus gigas) before I killed it.

This is me making the hole in my shell. No, all of that juice on the pier is not from me, that was from people before me. I should have taken a picture of the conch out of its shell, but I forgot.

It doesn't look like Ingrid came anywhere close to us, so it's still really hot and humid. It has been raining a little bit every night though which is good. Today was only supposed to be 85 but considering the fact that it was 82 at 7:30 this morning, I think the weather people are liars.

Well, that's about it for now. I hope all of you are doing well.

I'm running out of creative titles

This is my room. There is a bathroom and closet to the left. My bed is clearly the one with the zebra sheets.

This is the girls wing. There are 20 girls and we are split up into 5 rooms. This building is on the west side of the compound.

This is what I see everyday when I walk out of my room. Just thought I'd put it up here to make you all jealous ;-)

This is the main compound. The building with the highest roof is where we eat. Room to the right of that is the bar (it isn't in use, don't worry) where a lot of people do their homework. The main phone is there as well. The classroom is the room behind the bar. The little white shed in front is the snorkel shed, it's where we keep all of our snorkel gear. The pool is where we teach swimming lessons.

These are the cannons by the pool. I have no clue why they are there, but they remind me of pirates, and you know me with pirates....so I had to take a picture.


Hey everyone,

We are finally all starting to get into the rhythm of things here now. A typical day now consists of breakfast at 7, meeting at 7:45, 3 classes in the morning (each an hour and 10 minutes long) starting at 8, then lunch at noon, then either a waterfront activity (scuba diving if you're certified or snorkeling for people like me) or an id session in the water with a TA, then dinner at 6:30. Every other night we have some sort of planned activity at 8 such as a game or a speaker.

Yesterday I had my 3 classes then we went to do our id session on Moxybush island again. This time I really knew my stuff for the algae, plants, worms and echinoderms, I still need to work on fish. At the beginning of the id session we saw a HUGE donkey dung sea cumber, and yes they are named that because they look just like donkey dung. While we were tooling around I was about to put my hand down when a large crab (I don't know what kind, it had blue on it though) shuffled out in attack position. When I get home you can ask for an imitation, it is quite funny. After a minute or so he buried himself back into the sand, out of sight. On our way back to the boat we saw a giant barracuda. It was probably 3 feet long, I was quite intimidated.

Today we had 3 classes again, then after lunch we had a waterfront session. It wasn't nearly as choppy this time so no one puked. I was in a group with my friends Britta and Christina. While we were on the east side of the reef looking at cool fish, everyone else in our group (10 other people) saw 6 nurse sharks feeding. By the time Kyle, the TA, came over and told us, they were all gone. We did, however, end up seeing a huge sting ray just chillin on the bottom. When we were in the boat on the way back, we saw an eagle ray jump out of the water.

It's only a little over a week in and already everyone's clothes are starting to get gross. I have one towel that I don't even want to touch because it seems so grimy. I started using my febreeze the second day I was here. Most people are starting to use their febreeze as perfume. But since we all smell and look gross, none of us really care.

Just an FYI, there is a tropical storm passing to the northeast of us. It is tropical Ingrid. I think that is why it stormed most of the day yesterday and is supposed to storm on and off all week. We are just getting the edge of it, so don't worry, we won't blow away.

Take care!

My first day off

This is a pic when we were eating. The girl in the back is Laura, one of my roommates, the guy is Nick, and the girl in front is Naomi.

These are some of the guys. Juston is on the left, then Gabe, the guy in red is Devon, one of the interns and the girl is Catherine, the instructor from Belgium.

Going from left to right: Britta (from Alaska), Liz, Christina, Laura, and the one that got cut off is Courtney (from IL). This was after roasting marshmallows.

Hola,

Yesterday we went on our first "just for fun" snorkel. The sea was really wavey though and 3 people on my boat ended up puking. I did not puke, but I am going to look into finding some sea sickness pills. I still feel like i'm on a boat. Although it was choppy, I saw a ton of cool fish. I saw a few giant parrotfish and some other cool looking ones (I don't know what kind they were though). I tried to take some pics with my underwater camera so hopefully those turn out. I still haven't seen any sharks or turtles yet though.

After snorkeling we did community outreach. Our choices were: teach kids how to swim, play games with kids, help with an educational video, make a sign for the airport, make a sign for the cruise ship dock, or go to the old people's home. I chose to go to the old people's home since I don't like kids and since I have no artistic talents what-so-ever. The lady we got wasn't too happy to see us, she didn't talk much and when she did, I couldn't hear a word she said. The only parts I made out were that she's lived on Middle Caicos as well as South Caicos, she can't read, and she likes to go to church. A couple of the other people in our group got to talk with 2 other ladies which were really cool. Both of the other ladies were happy to talk and joke about things. One even started singing for them.

Once we got back from community outreach, we packed up to go camping on the beach. When we got to Long Beach, we put up our tents (turns out I'm horrible at it) and then had some burgers. Steve, the director of SFS in S. Caicos told us a creepy ghost story, then we roasted marshmallows. We all ended up going to bed by 11 'cuz we were all dead tired. Some people slept right on the beach while others, including myself, slept in the tent 'cuz it was really windy. At about 2 in the morning a big thunderstorm rolled in and lasted for about an hour. Some of the instructors didn't put their tents up so they ended up running back to the trucks and sleeping in there. Most other kids ran for the tents, but one guy braved the elements and stayed on the beach. This morning most of us were up by sunrise and we left around 7:00 to get back to the center.

Today is our day off so all we have to do is study and eat. Most people are going to take their freshwater shower but I haven't decided if I'm going to do that yet.

First friday in South Caicos

The big island in the picture is Dove Cay. The rocks to the left of the island are called HDL for Huey Duey and Louis.

This is a pic from before I left. Chloe didn't like the snorkel gear.

This is a pic of Miss May's house. She was one of the governor's last wives. As you can tell by the pic, the house is abandoned. We went inside and walked straight into a termite nest, turned around and saw a hornets nest, so we booked it out of there.

Hola amigos,

The weather here is still hot and humid. Yesterday was 92 with like 1000% humidity and it actually rained for like 5 minutes. Today the high is 88. Both yesterday and today we had 3 lectures in the morning and then went snorkeling in the afternoon. We had tropical marine ecology on both days to learn about seagrass ecology. We also had an introduction to environmental policy as well as an intro to natural resource management yesterday. Today we just had tropical marine ecology then we had environmental policy twice. After class in the morning yesterday, we went to East Bay to snorkel. We looked at mangroves, all sorts of fish, and we saw turtle grass as well as shole grass. Today we went snorkeling at Moxybush island. We saw more mangroves and this time we saw a bunch of baby barracuda as well as a huge school of some sort of needlefish (Devin our instructor didn't know the real name of them).

Tonight we will be hearing presentations on the different research projects that are going on here. We get to pick which one we like the best and then that is the research project we get to work on for our directed research project.

I'm all settled in

This is a picture from one of the highest points on the island. The dock in the distance is our dock. We keep our boats there and that's where we take our sea baths. You can't really see our buildings from here though. I'll work on getting a better pic.

This is town and most of the island. you can see the ocean on the other side. The building with the red roof is the new medical facility. The tourist management people required them to build one so that tourists could have a place to go if they get hurt or sick.


this is a picture of long cay. It is the island straight out from our property. We will be doing dives to the left of it in "shark alley"

I finally got all of my luggage yesterday so now I'm all unpacked and settled in. I have met all of my professors, they are from all over: Belgium, Italy, England, Scotland, Argentina and the US. Yesterday we had our swim and snorkel tests. I passed, but it turns out swimming against the current is a true undertaking. I took my first sea bath yesterday, it was surprisingly refreshing until you finally are dry and realize you still smell and your hair feels weird.

Today we had a tour of the island and then ate lunch on a beach and played frisbee in the ocean. While on our tour, we ran into the local one armed thief. His name is Val. He was doing community service when we saw him because he had gotten caught trying to steal out of the treasury safe. We also walked to the Salinas which is an area where water is channeled in and spread out to evaporate. Then people scrape the salt off. That's what it used to be for anyway, now it's kind of abandoned. We saw flamingos there though, so that was fun. We also walked up to an old lighthouse were you could see pretty much the whole island. We could see Ms. May's house, the former governor's house, which is completely abandoned and termite ridden, we saw all of the areas they are developing. They are planning to build several large hotels, but I don't know how they are going to do it since the only freshwater they can get is from rainfall. Before that we had our first lecture, we had one when we got back as well. After our second lecture we went on a sea tour to see all of the coral reefs and then we went snorkeling. I saw TONS of fish, some conch, and a barracuda.

Well I tried to upload some pictures but the internet here is so slow i waited 10 minutes and not a single one showed up. I'll try again later when there aren't so many people on the internet.

-Michelle

I'm HERE!!!!

Hey everyone,

So I arrived at South Caicos today around 5. It took 3 flights, the last of which was a tiny 20 passenger plane. Because of weight restrictions, they couldn't load all of our luggage so I don't have any luggage until tomorrow. The facility is pretty run down, but they made the best of it. We have a rec room with ping pong and darts as well as sand vball and fooseball. We have our own pier with 3 boats. I am in a room with 3 other girls. Everyone seems really nice so far. I have even made a few friends....i'm growing up so fast. Well, that's all I have time for now, we all have to share internet cords.

-michelle

Before I leave

This is just to let everyone know when and where I am going. I am leaving monday, september 10 to go to South Caicos in the Turks and Caicos Islands. I will be there until december 13. While I am there I will be taking classes in tropical marine ecology, principles of resource management, environmental policy and socioeconomic values, and directed research. My address is:

Student name
The School for Field Studies
P.O. Box 007, South Caicos
Turks & Caicos Islands
British West Indies

They say to not send mail for the last month I am there because it won't get to me before I leave.
Here is a map of where I will be: http://worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/namerica/caribb/tc.htm

this link tells about my program. If you feel ambitious, you can navigate around the site and find out about the island and more on what i'm doing in the "field studies guide"
http://www.fieldstudies.org/pages/4258_turks_caicos.cfm

-Michelle