Happy Thanksgiving!

This is where our boat pulled into Ambergris Cay. As you can tell, it's a relatively small boat and the sun was still rising when we got there.

This was today's field trip group. This area was a historical site. It has an old cistern, but I don't have a picture of it.

This was looking out from the area that the pic above this was taken. I just thought this was a really cool pic with the sun coming through the clouds and everything.

This is what sewage looks like. Too bad it's not a scratch and sniff pic....

This is the beach we went to right before lunch.

Here's the whole gang on the beach. There were some amazing waves.

This is the view from the awesome restaurant we went to.

This is what we saw the whole boat ride home. This part is shallower so there weren't as many waves, but there were white caps for most of the way......it was an awesome roller coaster.

Hey Everyone,

I hope all of you are having a wonderful turkey day!! Today I got to go to Ambergris Cay. We took a boat that left at 5:30 this morning. It is the boat that takes workers everyday from South to go to Ambergris for the day, then it comes back at 4:30. We got to Ambergris a little after 6 this morning and were met by the daughter of the owner of the Island. Her name was Lindsey and she's a naturalist. We also met the other naturalist on the island, TJ, who actually went to SFS on South Caicos (the same program I'm on now). They took us on a tour of the island showing us the power plant, the water purifying center, the sewage treatment center, all of the major development areas, a beach and a really nice restaurant. The power for the island is generated by 2 generators. Only one runs at a time and every 48 hours the generators switch automatically. They have a desalinization plant for the water and they use reverse osmosis to purify it. We also got to see a "state of the art" sewage treatment plant that uses membranes to filter the sludge instead of just letting it settle. Turns out sewage smells really bad.

They have created a few lagoons by blasting apart the rock with dynamite. I was not too happy to hear about this. They did, however, survey the areas before they blasted them away so they could replant all of the vegetation that was on the destroyed part. Ambergris is home to the very rare Rock Iguana, some of which used to live on the areas they blasted. To save the iguanas, the naturalists collected all of the iguanas they could find and kept them for 2 days before re-releasing them. They also showed us an area that they are going to clear to make a marina. They are going to use the same blasting technique used for the lagoons to make the marina and then take all of that rock to fill in part of the island. They say they are "only losing a few reefs" and that they will "transplant the reefs" but I don't know how successful that is. They are making an effort to replant things by adding mangroves and seagrass, so that's good at least.

After the tour of the island, we got to go to an AWESOME beach. There were huge waves that people were body surfing on. I chose to lay out and get a tan since I'm in a full length wet suit everyday, I don't get much sun anymore. After the beach they took us to an amazing restaurant. They had a bar but we weren't allowed to order anything with alcohol, so we all got pina coladas and strawberry daiquiris. We were served a gourmet meal with real waiters. They put our napkins in our laps, poured our drinks and everything. The seats had cushions on them which was pretty awesome. None of us wanted to leave. After our meal, we barely made the boat in time to get back, but we did, don't worry. Turns out some people can't eat and then get on a bumpy boat ride. No one actually puked, but some were hanging their heads over the side. I chose to look at the boat ride as a roller coaster, so Courtney and I rode the whole way back with our hands up.....it was pretty amazing. We got back around 2 this afternoon.

Yesterday we did a record number of transects in record time. We left at 8:45 and got back at 4:30, taking like an hour lunch break, but we got 7 full transects for each team in. In the morning we were only planning on getting 4 done per team, but we got 5 instead. In the afternoon we did a transect in 15 minutes which was monumental. The first day it took us a full hour to do one transect. On the way to the last two transects, A baby (2 foot) lemon shark came within like 4 feet of me which was really cool. I can handle the babies, it's the ones that are as big as me that get me. So we counted up how much swimming we do in one day for these transects, and came up with a rough estimate of 3500 m which is roughly 2 miles. Anyone want to race when I get back?

Last night for activity night we had Casino Night. We had paper money all with different pictures of the staff on it which was pretty cool. We all started out with $2,000 and could play a variety of games; craps, blackjack, texas hold em, poker, or keno. There was also a "lucky/unlucky card" draw thing where you could either win or lose money. I played all of the games except for poker and texas hold em since I don't know how to play either. I ended up having $3990 at the end of the night and was in 9th place with earnings. The top 16 earners got prizes. The first six winners got to choose between a shark fishing trip, doing a load of laundry, and going wake boarding. The next 10 winners either got a treat (chocolate or ice cream) or a freshwater shower. I chose the shower.

Because of the holiday and our field trip this morning, Catherine gave us the afternoon off which was sooo nice. We don't really get to enjoy it though because we have a paper due tomorrow. I'll take writing a paper over more transects any day though, so I'm happy. I hope all of you are doing well and have a happy Thanksgiving!!

Love,
Michelle