Adventures Abroad: No thoughts tonight

I was going to write a little bit on cross cultural communication, but I'm feeling its probably better just to do a quick update tonight since its been a couple long and somewhat frustrating days, so my thoughts aren't even collected enough to write something coherent.

Anyway, on Tuesday, we had a pretty full day of class; two lectures in the morning starting at 9, a town hall debate (role playing) based on marine protected areas, lunch, then back to the research station for a dive to measure rugosity (reef complexity). Myself and the other snorkelers went to Coco beach, which is about a 5 minute drive away from Hamlet, to do our measurements in the intertidal area. Measuring rugosity involves using a transect to measure a certain distance, then laying down a weighted chain across the benthic surface of that measured distance to find the length of the seafloor at that point. The ratio of the two measurements gives an idea of the complexity of the reef--values of upwards of 2 or 3 are ideal for reefs, while the area around Bonaire currently sits at about 1.2. It was actually a lot more difficult than we thought it would be. Not only was the wave action near the shore pretty strong, moving the weighted chain we were laying down, but there were fire coral and rocks everywhere, making moving around difficult for fear of being stung or cutting ourselves on rocks. I actually banged my leg up pretty badly that day because I was not watching where I was going and kicked the edge of a rock while swimming. Good thing I didn't rub up against some fire coral though, apparently those things hurt. We finished our rugosity measurements early, so we got to go for a little snorkel afterwards, which was pretty cool. The shallow areas around Coco Beach actually had a lot of different species to see--mostly juveniles, but a lot of corals growing on manmade concrete structures and small invertebrates hanging out around these abandoned structures. After snorkeling, we went back to Hamlet to dry off and have some dinner. The scuba divers went to the north part of the island to go watch the bioluminescent ostracods, while us snorkelers just hung around the house. I ended up relaxing and doing some homework, but mostly just had the night to myself to relax and reflect about my experiences thus far. It was really nice to have a quiet night.

(Snorkeling with the crew at Coco Beach)

(Jessica playing in one of the tide pools)

(Abandoned concrete structures jut out from this beach)

(A nice view)

(More concrete)

Today, we has class at 8:30 but both my roommate and I overslept and didn't end up making it to class until 9. Somehow I fell asleep last night without setting my alarm, so that was unfortunate. Oh well...anyway, we had class until 10:30, after which we had a dive to find examples of symbiosis and competition on the reef. We were snorkeling close to the research station today, at yellow sub but our team leader found a really nice reef to watch for our assignment. Most of the snorkel was honestly just poking my head around to see things up close--I didn't do much of the assignment until the very end when we were almost getting out of the water. At least it got done...the marine world is really cool to watch though. It's a whole different world out there. We came back to Hamlet for lunch, and I spent most of our free afternoon catching up on all of the assignments I am slowly falling behind on. It's actually kind of stressful--right now we have a group project, two additional projects, and a short paper due all within the next week. And we're also heading to Curacao for three days next week, so those are out of the question with regards to doing work. Ah well, we only have one more lecture left so I guess it's worth it. We're basically done with the educational portion of our trip--only this lecture, project, and final exam to go! After dinner, we attended a public lecture about sea turtle conservation, which was really interesting. It was a basic overview of the different types of sea turtles, their modes of replication, and the importance of conservation efforts for these species which was perhaps the most intriguing for me (the rest I was somewhat familiar with). Many human activities, especially continuing development of coastal areas, is quite detrimental to sea turtles because they can no longer find appropriate areas in which to nest, thus causing a large decline in population numbers. On top of that, sea turtles hide their nests once their eggs are laid, thus making it hard to find; because of this, many people inadvertently destroy the sea turtle eggs on the beach because of normal activities (driving, partying, etc) right in the nesting area. It's definitely unfortunate to think about the immense impact we humans have on nature and its normal processes. After the lecture, I came home and talked with some friends for a while before getting ready for bed and writing this post.