Advanced Diver Certification

I completed my Advanced Diver certification tonight. The final dive that counted towards it was a night dive. We left this evening around 7:45pm bound for "The Plane" - a dive site we had all been to before. It's a good idea to go to a place you've been to before when doing a night dive, given the "diminished conditions." I wasn't nervous before the dive, or at all during it, but I will admit a bit of anxiety on the boat ride out there. Humans are already completely out our element underwater, but when you add darkness it's quite a different world.

Green Sea Turtle

We all carried underwater flashlights (or "torches" as our British instructors call them) and fastened chemical glowsticks to our tanks. There were 8 of us underwater and that made for quite enough light. Immediately after getting into the water there was a Green Sea Turtle. It gave us the "deer in the headlights" look and just hung around as we descended. It was great to see it for so long because turtles, I've learned, don't stick around once they know you know they are there.

We passed over the wreckage of the plane and continued onward. Oddly enough, everything looks quite a bit more brilliant on a night dive. This is because your light source is in your hand rather than at the surface. Red is filtered out first as light passes down through water so you usually don't see anything that color. But when you shine your flashlight on it, all the colors come back.

Shortly before I reached the half-tank mark, and just before we turned around to return to the boat we came across a second sea turtle. There was a Hawksbill Turtle sleeping under a large overhanging coral block. I didn't realize turtles slept, and didn't know it was sleeping until somebody said so back on the surface. Apparently sea turtles don't have eyelids, so it just sat there open-eyed and motionless a few inches above the bottom. My second lengthy look at a sea turtle tonight! Directly above it was a Lionfish too. It was sitting against the overhang, like the first one I saw, inverted. I'm starting to wonder if maybe I'm looking at them wrong and they are right side up, but I'm pretty sure I saw what I saw. I'll be sure to look extra close next time - well, close enough without getting poked anyway!

Hawksbill Sea Turtle

When we had to leave the turtle because of low air we turned and found a juvenile Nurse Shark had come to investigate us. It was only a couple feet long and quickly retreated when we all put our lights on it. Just before our ascent, we came across a squid. The first squid I've seen. It was pretty small, 6 or 8 inches, but I'm not sure what species is was because it's dark right now and I can't read my ID book right without waking up Jessee. I passed underneath the squid, facing upwards. It too froze while our lights were on it. Then, suddenly, it shot out in one direction, leaving behind a red-ish cloud of ink.

So now I'm officially an Advanced Diver. Or, I carry an Advanced Diver card, anyhow. It might take a few more dives to really be advanced.

Rays and Turtles and Lionfish, Oh My!

I've just returned from an amazing dive! I'm starting to get spoiled with all the things I've seen out here. For example, Jessee and I went for a snorkel earlier today and when people asked how it was, I responded: "ah, okay. We only saw a couple Nurse Sharks and a Sting Ray." Only a couple Nurse Sharks and a Sting Ray?! Well, when you have a dive like I just had, it's easier to understand why that's just mediocre around here.

First thing, as we were mooring up at the buoy, an Eagle Ray jumped out of the water at least 2 meters in the air. And I missed it! All I saw was the splash and heard the others ooooh and aaaah. (I did, however, see a different one jump earlier today from a long distance). That was the only thing I missed though. The first half of the dive was relatively uneventful. But then we came to the ledge of the wall, a sort of underwater cliff where it drops off to thousands of feet deep. It's totally blue over the edge, and you can see nothing past a couple hundred feet or so (the water is really clear here). As we were following the edge of the wall an Eagle Ray started coming out of the deep. It was coming straight at us. They're not dangerous, but it was a little unnerving how directly it was heading towards us. When it was about ten feet away it veered to the right and started heading away again. I'm not sure if it was the same one that jumped, but it's possible.

Just a few minutes later we came around a corner in an area with a sandy bottom and saw a small Nurse Shark sitting under an overhanging rock. Nurse Sharks spend most of their time motionless on the sea floor. One of the people I was diving with went up to it and touched its fin a couple times. I was tempted to try it myself because Nurse Sharks are pretty timid and definitely not aggressive. But I'm glad I didn't after hearing horror stories about their vice-like jaws. Apparently they have a very strong grip, and they won't let you go.

Just seconds after that we came across a Lionfish. I would have been content just watching it for a while, but Tim (another one of the Lionfish hunters) had brought along a sharpened rod specifically for that purpose. He jabbed at it a couple times, and it backed into a reef. He was able to stir it out and get several more jabs at it when Anke tapped on her tank to get our attention. All of us had our attention focused so intently on the Lionfish we hadn't even noticed a Hawksbill Turtle had taken an interest in us! When I turned around it was about 5 feet from me!!! What an experience! It was just gliding along and checking us out. When it realized that we had noticed it, it started to head away from us. It wasn't watching where it was going though because it collided with a buoy line and got it's fin hooked on it. It took several strokes and made no progress. It didn't look as though it was distressed, and I think it would have eventually freed itself, but Anke swam over and helped it get loose. I understand, now, how easily turtles can get tangled in nets and discarded fishing line.

The Lionfish Hunter
(http://current.com/items/90029540_lionfish-public-serice-announcement-for-the-turks-and-caicos-islands.htm)

I didn't find out until we got to the surface, but it turns out that the buoy line was covered in some species of Hydroid - the family of organisms including fire coral that have stinging cells. Anke got a bad sting on her arm. But she was happy to have freed the turtle.

Pederson Cleaner Shrimp

There was so much going on in those few minutes it was hard to take it all in. In fact, by the time we had turned our attention back from the turtle the Lionfish had made its escape. I'm not sure how badly it was injured (if at all). We were starting to get low on air so we located the boat and got ready to ascend. On the way, however, I saw another new species, and was able to identify it when I got back to the room: a Pederson Cleaner Shrimp. It's a little blue-ish/purple-ish shrimp, about 1 inch long. This is the sort of thing you'd never see snorkeling, they're just too small. The ID book says that they're unafraid and will climb onto an extended hand and attempt to clean it. Too bad I didn't know at the time, I would have tried it.

Exciting, and not

I had a very different day yesterday than Brett did. No hunting for me! In fact, I didn't go in the water at all, but I did have an extremely eventful day nonetheless! One exciting project I got started working on was planning an event to offer swimming lessons to the women in the community here...

We already offer lessons to children on Saturday afternoons, but the majority of the takers are boys between the ages of 5 and 15. We have often heard from the younger girls here that they don't like to swim with the boys, who can get rowdy and physical, and who tend to monopolize the attention of the swim teachers. Also, last week some of the mothers who came to drop off their sons mentioned in passing that they might like to learn how to swim too. They described that almost none of the women here know how to swim, and that many of them have never even been in the water!

It's really hard to believe that anyone could have avoided going in the water, considering that South Caicos is such a small island, but it really does seem to be the case. Several of the local men are involved in the fishing industry and are therefore familiar with the ocean and comfortable in the water. The women, however, are so busy in their homes, taking care of children, cooking, cleaning, and sometimes working at a local shop, bar, or at the clinic. Several of the women are teachers too, but as we've learned through working with the primary school and high school here, the schools' curricula do not incorporate lessons on the marine environment, and oftentimes the teachers do not know much about what lives in the ocean surrounding them or how the ecosystem here functions. All of these factors seems to contribute to women being wary of and intimidated by the ocean. So, we're giving this "Ladies Only Swim Lessons!" thing a try.

It's sometimes difficult to know which cultural norms we (non-locals) should just try to understand and accept without interfering, and which cultural norms its okay to question or influence in some way, which inevitably happens to some extent with every cross-cultural encounter. I'm trying to take my cues from the local women themselves though. While they seem unsure about how to become more at ease in the water and uninformed about the aspects of the marine environment that we at SFS spend so much of our time studying and exploring, the women and girls here also seem extremely curious and adventurous in spirit, even if quietly so.

My hope is that learning to swim may be a source of empowerment for these women, and could encourage them to feel a greater sense of independence and connection to their natural surroundings. I also hope to find out more about the women themselves through this project, and about their particular interests and aspirations (both in and out of the water). It's been a little difficult for me to make personal, individual connections with other women so far, mostly because it is the men who are most visible and accessible in town and at restaurants/bars, stores, and community events other than those centered around children. So, we'll see what new opportunities for education, friendship, and fun this ambitious project presents!

That's the exciting news from yesterday. Less exciting was the fact that I got a flat tire in our SFS pickup truck on the way out to High Point to play volleyball. We had to get picked up in the van by Tim, the site manager, who dropped us off at the court and went back to the truck to plug the tire while we played. Then he came back to pick us up after volleyball and drove the truck back to SFS while I drove everyone else back in the van. The plug lasted the trip back, but it does needs to be replaced. Fortunately, Tim kind of saw this coming and had already ordered 5 new tires which will arrive in the shipment on next week's boat, so at least that story has a good ending. (Thanks, Tim!)

The least exciting thing that happened yesterday, which I'm afraid will not have a happy ending, was that I dropped my cell phone off the dock and into the ocean when I went down to greet some of the students after their snorkeling trip. Here it is drying out, but I don't have high hopes that it will work again even once its dry. :(

On the Hunt

This afternoon I joined one of the faculty on a Lionfish hunt. The Lionfish is a species of fish not native to the Atlantic and Caribbean, but nonetheless has been thriving. They have no natural predators because of their highly poisonous spines, but also (according to an article I read online) potential predators don't seem to recognize them as food because of their odd appearance. This also, apparently, allows them to swim right up to their unsuspecting prey and gobble them up (though I'm skeptical that other fish wouldn't learn to be wary of them, in the same way that Hogfish in areas where spearfishing is allowed are very wary of divers, but aren't bothered by them in areas where it's restricted).

Lionfish

Lionfish can now be found from the Caribbean to North Carolina. What has ecologists worried is that DNA testing shows that the untold thousands (millions?) of invasive Lionfish that exist in Atlantic waters appear to be descended from just 6 or 7 original females, which means they are multiplying extremely quickly. One theory is that 6 of the original fish came from an aquarium in Biscayne Bay, Florida that was toppled over during Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Others speculate that they could have been released from the aquariums of exotic fish owners who could no longer keep them.

When we went out looking for the Lionfish here, I hadn't done any of the research above, so I didn't have any information on which to form a stance on their eradication. And I hadn't taken any time to consider what my involvement in killing these fish would be. I was just going along to observe, learn about the problem, and enjoy the snorkel. Almost immediately after arriving at the location where a Lionfish had been sighted, I found myself staring one down with a net in my hand.

We first stopped at the near-end of Long Cay, near the Shark Alley buoy, to check a spot where there had been a sighting several days ago. Because this wasn't actually our destination, Ben (the faculty member leading the hunt) didn't moor the boat. He just had us jump in to check quickly before moving on. Right away, however, I spotted one. It was under a small ledge about 10 feet down, and was actually inverted sitting motionless against the reef above it. I called out to the others and told them to come over. The students aren't allowed to be directly involved in catching them because of the risk associated with handling such a poisonous fish. And Ben couldn't leave the boat without it being moored, so the next thing I knew, they were handing me the net and expecting me to catch it. So much for any ethical concerns I might have had, they were counting on me.


The objective was simple; dive down, scoop it up, and return to the boat. I was under the impression that the "scooping" would relatively simple. Lionfish aren't exactly afraid of anything because nothing really messes with them. I had been told that they don't really try to get away, so I swam down directly at it. This, it turns out, is not the best approach. First of all, I was dramatically slowed by the drag created by the net (which is more like a thick shopping bag than an actual net). And second, it turns out that even Lionfish are a little fearful of human snorkelers coming at them and sticking nets in their faces. It immediately swam down to about double the depth and backed in under an over hanging reef. I was a bit surprised by how quickly it moved; they don't exactly look arrow dynamic. I came up for air and then made a second attempt. And a third attempt. And a fourth. Now it was hopeless. I'm not a very good breath-hold diver, and it was backing farther and farther into the reef. I told Ben he'd need to go moor the boat and swim over if there was any chance of getting it. He can hold his breath for at least double what I can, but he had no luck either. It was this Lionfish's lucky day.

What made today's hunt so enjoyable, wasn't as much our attempts at netting a Lionfish, but rather the snorkeling we did looking for them. On the way back to the boat after the first failed attempt, we came across three Eagle Rays. They were swimming right at me, all in unison. I don't think they saw us at first because after a few seconds of that they hesitated and turned slightly to the left to avoid us. They weren't going that fast and we were able to follow them for quite a while (until we were almost out in the shipping channel!).

We used a GPS unit to find the second location where there was a Lionfish sighting. The others found it after a short while, but Ben was unsuccessful at netting that one too. I never even saw it. It had backed far back into the reef by the time I even realized they were going for one. We spent another 45 minutes or so snorkeling around looking for others, but found none. We did, however, find 5 Nurse Sharks (one of them quite large), encounter another Eagle Ray, and catch a glimpse of two small sea turtles from a distance. I was also able to identify another fish: the Spotfin Butterflyfish. And I was shown another large sea snail - the King Helmet Snail. We were having such a good time out there that we were late getting back. The divers were waiting for us and (a bit irritated) when we got back. I had to scramble to get my dive gear because I was supposed to be going with them.

Spotfin Butterflyfish

This was the group's second dive that counts towards our Advanced Diver certifications. We were headed to The Airplane, where we'd be practing our "wreck diving" skills. Our task was to draw out a map of the crash site. There's not much left of the plane other than the wings and some random scraps of metal. Apart from that, my goal was to practice buoyancy control and air consumption (slower steadier breathing). I did much better at both those things, but I think I need to drop another weight from my weight belt. I started with 12 lbs, I used 9 lbs today, and I'm going to try 8 lbs next. Once I get that balanced properly, buoyancy control should be much easier.

Right after the descent I spotted an octopus. It sped across the sandy bottom right in front of us, and ducked into a hole in the reef. It was the first one I've seen, and I'm not sure what species it was yet, but it was very cool to see. I was also able to identify two more fishes: the Longsnout Butterflyfish, and a Rock Beauty. We also saw a Spotted Moray Eel, not the first I've seen (though I think this is the first time I've mentioned it).

Longsnout Butterflyfish

Rock Beauty

Spotted Moray

Back in the Water

Like Jessee mentioned, the stormy weather has passed. Going two days without getting into the water whatsoever is quite a long time here. But I think I made up for it today. I went out on two fish ID snorkel sessions and a dive just before dinner. Jessee joined me on one of the snorkels too.

The students go out on regular species identification trips and this week their focus is on fish. Fish are much more interesting to me than the various algae and even corals. I went along with the group for some of it, but mostly I was attempting to ID fish on my own using a waterproof guide book. We snorkeled at two locations - Admiral's Aquarium and Shark Alley - and I dove at "The Bell."

Queen Triggerfish

It's been a while since we've been able to go to Shark Alley, which is my preferred snorkel spot. The current can be strong there, and since the center had been using the wrong tide chart, we kept going there at the wrong time. Every time, we had to leave and go to Admiral's Aquarium. I did some searching and was able to find a tide chart that (so far) seems to be giving us better information.

Four-eyed Butterflyfish

Admiral's Aquarium is a "patch reef," which is exactly what it sounds like, patches of reef instead of a contiguous reef system. It's considerably more shallow and farther from the open ocean (which means calmer waters). It's a really nice place. The water is super clear and there's an incredible number of fishes.* The afternoon snorkel, at Shark Alley (which is proper reef), was eventful and a lot of fun (even if we didn't see any large animals besides a Nurse Shark). Shark Alley is quite a bit deeper and closer to the open ocean. The waves are still pretty big, and you can tell that everything has been churned up in the last few days. When you cross over the reef to the deeper parts there was a noticeable drop in water temperature. It was quite refreshing to be in the cooler water as it is probably around 88°F (or higher) elsewhere.

Black Durgon

Jessee and I were able to ID loads of fish. Here's the list of all the ones we can recall (be sure to check our updated Species List on the sidebar for more information on these fish):

• Peacock Flounder
  
• Banded Butterflyfish
  
• Four-eyed Butterflyfish
  
• Queen Angelfish
  
• French Angelfish
  
• Blue Tang
  
• Bar Jack
  
• Great Barracuda
  
• Yellowtail Damselfish
  
• Nassau Grouper
  
• Tiger Grouper
  
• Stoplight Parrotfish
  
• Spanish Hogfish
  
• Hogfish
  
• Bluehead
  
• Trumpetfish
  
• Honeycomb Cowfish
  
• Black Durgon
  
• Queen Triggerfish
  
• Nurse Shark
  

At Admiral's this morning I watched a Hogfish shift colors before my eyes. It is one of many fish that can vary the intensity of its colors. The one I saw today was fluctuating from light to dark every 10 or 15 seconds. When its spines were extended, it had darkly colored spots that were highly contrasted from the lighter body, and when its spines were lowered, it quickly changed to low contrast - almost completely white. It didn't seem alarmed and didn't seem bothered by me, so I'm not sure what the purpose was.

Juvenile Yellowtail Damselfish

The dive this evening was just before dinner. I went out with a couple of the staff, and I'm surprised they even wanted to. They had been in the water twice as long as I had been (they took two groups each to Admiral's and Shark Alley), and I had already been in the water for at least two and half hours. The dive site is named for the "bell" that is resting on the seafloor. It's probably not a bell at all, but nobody is really sure what it is. It's a large conical metal object that could fit at least a couple people inside. I guessed it might be an old "diving bell" that people used to use before SCUBA, but I was just pulling that out of nowhere. It certainly doesn't resemble a bell that might have gone on a ship. We didn't see any large animals on this dive, but it's really an entirely different experience to see fish from an angle other than above and to not have to return to the surface for air every few seconds.

Queen Angelfish

This evening we're planning to meet up with some of the staff in town to celebrate one of the interns' birthday. We're going to "Rooster" which is a place that has a pool table. The table is quite lopsided and the balls often roll towards one corner, but if you play with that in mind, it can still be fun.


* I learned several days ago in a lecture that the plural word "fish" refers to several individuals of one species of fish and the word "fishes" is used to indicate that there are several fish of multiple species.

Hodge Podge Blo(d)g(e)

The windy weather has now passed and we're back to our bright and breezy norm. The sun is out again and everyone is back in the water! At the moment, they're actually all having an underwater fish ID session with the faculty member who lectures on Tropical Marine Ecology. Brett went along but I'm waiting here to take a few more students to the clinic in a little while. In the meantime though, I thought I'd post a few of the photos I've taken over the past week or two but just haven't gotten around to sharing yet. This might be sort of a hodge podge of a blog.

I never mentioned that when I flew to Provo the last time to pick up the students for this session, I had to take a cab into town to do a few errands for the center. I've found that getting a taxi from the airport is easy, but getting one to pick you up somewhere else in town and drive you back to the airport is extremely difficult! I had called 2 different taxi companies and been waiting for about 45 minutes outside the hardware store after finishing my errands before one actually showed up. And it turned out not to be one from either of the companies I called, but rather a taxi that was dropping someone else off at the store. I hailed him down though, and asked him if he would drive me back to the airport. He agreed to, but said that he had to pick up a group from one of the resorts of the other side of Provo first. I agreed to ride along (mostly because I was worried I might never get another chance at a ride back and would miss the students' arrival), but it turned out to be a really interesting trip.

The resort we went to was the famous Beaches, where folks spend between 8 and 10 thousand dollars a night (!) to stay. It's all inclusive and very glitzy. I don't foresee ever staying there myself, so it was kind of fun to drive around and imagine what the lives of the people who stay there must be like. The taxi driver couldn't remember the suite number of the group he was called to pick up, so we ended up stopping in at each of the three sections (Italian, French, and English) to ask. Turns out, the group had gotten into a different cab to get to the airport and so we had to make the trip back there by ourselves. The driver was more than a little ticked that he had spent a good hour, and probably a quarter tank of gas, driving around looking for them, but he also said that kind of thing is typical. Could be why none of the taxis I called were in a hurry to come pick me up!

In other news, the spread of the stomach bug here has slowed, but I wouldn't say it's entirely under control yet. A few of the staff members have been stricken too, but Brett and I are still in the clear. Keep your fingers crossed!

Several of us played a game of frisbee a few days ago, which was really fun. We got a great game going, and there are even a few students here this session who play competitively for their universities so it was a slightly higher level of play than usual. It was so windy though that almost every throw carried the disk way up into the air and landed it outside of the playing field, which meant it took forever to actually score a point, but we had a great time playing anyway. The only real downside was that I bit the dust going for a catch and scrapped up my knee. A fall like that on grass wouldn't have mattered much, but on the sandy/rocky/glass and donkey poop littered dirt turf we play on here, it hurt!

As Brett mentioned, he hasn't gotten to dive nearly as much as he would have liked to in the past few days, so he's been practicing his diving skills indoors instead. In the photo below, he's mastering the maneuver of extracting his dive knife from its case on his BCD and reinserting it again.

One more thing... pictured below is the world's largest hermit crab! I haven't gotten around to adding him to the species list yet, but I'll try to do that soon. (There are so many interesting creatures here, it's really hard to keep up with!)

Rough Weather

We've been having some wind. It's been quite cool because of it, but it has disrupted some of our plans. Today all of the waterfront activities were canceled because the water was much too rough. I missed out on a dive because of it. Today was supposed to be the first dive that would count towards my "advanced diver" SCUBA certification. I'm signed up to take the course with several of the students. We had our first classroom meeting for it after breakfast this morning. I'm also going to be taking the rescue diver course with a few of the staff. It's really fortunate to have a dive instructor working here.

Speaking of rough weather, it's officially hurricane season. I've subscribed to the National Hurricane Center's RSS feed to get frequent updates on tropical storm activity. Updates come about 4 times daily, and you can subscribe using this URL: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/gtwo.xml. There's nothing serious yet, but there's a disturbance that formed in the Lesser Antilles that is has a very slight potential of developing.


I just checked now, and a second disturbance has formed over the Northern Bahamas. It too has a very low probability of forming into a more organized and powerful storm though. It's pretty exciting to keep track of these storms. I wouldn't even mind getting a mild hurricane while we're here. I just hope we don't get anything like Hurricane Ike (a strong category 4 storm), which hit here and did a good deal of damage last season.

Because the waterfront activities were canceled we needed to entertain ourselves somehow, and we found a way that was arguably just as good as diving; we watched the new Harry Potter movie! I'm very excited they've decided to do the the final movie in two installments (even if their motivation is to wring every penny out of us fans).

By the way, it turns out that the "bird of prey" we saw the other day was an American Kestrel.

Our Day Off

The past few days here have been really busy and even hectic. There is some kind of a stomach virus going around, as well as several other ailments, and so I've been making regular trips to the clinic with students. The engine of our highest capacity boat also seized up, and one of the 2 SFS vehicles is out of commission too. Plus, we still don't have a filter for the pool so our community outreach activities have been somewhat limited. (Some of our younger swimmers from the community who show up on Saturdays for lessons don't feel comfortable in the ocean yet, so yesterday they stopped in only to say hello and see if the pool had been filled yet, but then left after they saw that it hadn't.)

Cookout at Long Beach

Last night about half the group camped at Long Beach. Brett and I and one other staff member stayed the night too and drove back early this morning. And today, being Sunday, is our day off! It doesn't end up feeling like much of a day off if you stick around the center though, so Brett and I decided to go for a walk. First we explored the salinas and visited the "boiling hole," which is a natural underground passageway to the ocean that was used to fill the salinas. The salinas would flood when the tide came in, and they'd block it off when the tide started to go back out. When the water that was trapped inside evaporated, the salt could be raked up.

The Salinas

The "Boiling Hole"

Rusty Old Machinery

It's dry out there.

There were so many interestesting birds around the boiling hole. Here are a few that we thought we could identify: flamingos, little blue heron, snowy egret, plover, killdeer, green heron, tricolored heron, least tern, black-necked stilt (noisy!!), and some kind of bird of prey too. A falcon, maybe?

Flamingos

Reddish Egret

Snowy Egret (or the "white phase" of a Reddish Egret)

Green Heron

Then we made our way to a few run-down, abandoned houses. The large house probably belonged to one of the salt barons, and the smaller ones adjacent to it, we guessed, were for their servants. Though (as is obvious in the pictures) they are in serious disrepair, they're quite nice, and with enough work could be restored.

Abandoned House

Finally, we walked down a small ridge and out to coast on the east side of the island for a refreshing dip. The walk back seemed much longer and hotter than the walk there, and we were so hot and thirsty by the time we got back, even despite the fact that we got a little rainshower on the way. I jumped in the water again as soon as we reached the center. Brett's method of cooling off, however, is to lie on his back either in our room or on the back porch and stick the little electric fan we have under his clothes. Sometimes he even falls asleep like that. Maybe next time I'll try to get a photo for the blog! For now though, we've got to rest up for another busy week to come.

Hawksbill Turtle

Jessee and I tagged along with one of the snorkeling ID sessions yesterday and managed to get a great look at a Hawksbill Turtle.


If you can't see the above video go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doro74TypwA

Species List

I've added another "gadget" to the sidebar of the blog: our Caicos Species List. This is, by no means, an exhaustive list of the species we've seen. Nor is it even an exhaustive list of the species we can currently identify. It is just a listing of particularly impressive species that we've seen, identified, and learned some interesting facts about. So far there are only three species on it: the Caribbean Reef Shark, the Flamingo Tongue, and the Eagle Ray. We will periodically add to the list, so be sure to check it from time to time.

Eagle Rays!

I've just had my first Eagle Ray sighting! Three of them, in fact. They are magnificent creatures. Will and Jan (the two TCI interns) and I went out for a short snorkel just to look for them (sadly, Jessee was busy with the students). The Eagle Rays often spend time around Shark Alley, and Jan goes over there almost daily looking for them for her research. I saw two at first swimming side-by-side and tried to get the others' attention (it's rather difficult to do that when one's head is underwater). Afraid that I was going to miss my first opportunity to see them up close, I turned and chased after them on my own. Moments later, a third Ray joined the first two. I followed them quite a while and got a bit of (very shaky) footage.

You'll see in the video that they are very graceful and, despite how it might look, they're moving really fast. I couldn't really keep up with them. Luckily they weren't going straight away from me, but rather, were circling around a large arc, so I was able to keep a distant eye on them. They're pretty docile, so I would have liked to have been a lot closer. Because of the distance they were at, the video is quite blue, and because of how hard I had to kick to keep up with them, it's very shaky. If you can't tell, these particular Eagle Rays have a wingspan of about 4 feet.


Eagle Rays
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIq3aJvoeJs)

After following them for several minutes, I noticed a barracuda getting agitated that I was in it's territory. I kept my camera on the Eagle Rays (the best I could) and my eyes on the pesky fish. The second video (below) is when I decided the barracuda had gotten much too close and abandoned my pursuit of the Eagle Rays. The video looks a bit like I'm being attacked, but rest assured, I'm fully intact. Their quite nasty little things (or, rather, quite nasty not-so-little things).


Fleeing a Barracuda
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-fzggeDf-Q)

Eagle Rays are beautiful, as you can see below in the photographs I pulled off of wikipedia. They've got a white underbelly and black back with distinct patterns. Jan is working to identify the population at Shark Alley using these patterns, as they are a bit like human finger prints. There's very little known about Eagle Ray behaviour. One thing that is known, however, is that they are ovoviviparous, which means that they carry their fertilized eggs until they are ready to hatch. Eagle Rays give birth to live young! Unlike mammals, however, the embryo is nourished by the egg yolk instead of the mother. Eagle Ray mothers also don't care for their young. When they are born, the baby Eagle Rays must fair on their own. I can only imagine that their little wings must be all folded up inside the womb.

Pet Lizard

This is Edward, my porch lizard. He guards our room from would-be insect invaders. Here, he is pictured in the midst of halting unauthorized ant activity. He is often found on lookout duty, perched high on our bench.

Cyphoma gibbosum

The Cyphoma gibbosum, or Flamingo Tongue, is a species of Sea Snail. I spotted 8 of them today on a short snorkel around a nearby cove. They are about 1 inch long, and live at a depth of 6 to 45 feet (according to an identification guide). At first I thought they were a type of nudibranch, but as it turns out they have a shell. I had to read about them to find that out though - it's not often wise to touch things under water if you're not entirely certain what they are. The spotted pattern is a fleshy mantle that extends over their back. When retracted, it exposes a white-ish shell. Sort of like a snail in reverse. Only one of the 8 I saw had its mantle retracted.

Source: http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/enlarge/flamingo-tongue-snail.html

They live on and eat soft corals and sea fans, and are preyed upon by a variety of fish. They are one of many animals that, if not checked by predation, can quickly overrun an ecosystem and deplete it of corals.

Work hard, play hard

Today was our last day before the students come for the second summer session here. And we made the most of it! We worked hard and then played hard. This morning we had a staff meeting at 9am to discuss what needed cleaning or fixing or sorting at the center to prep for the students' arrival. Brett and I worked mainly in the staff offices and the student lounge area inventorying first-aid supplies, sorting through last session's lost-and-found, wiping down tables, sweeping, mopping, putting up new door tags, and printing out new copies of our center protocols to go in each of the rooms. We all took a lunch break together and then worked for a few more hours before going for an early evening snorkel.

To view the above video, you must be reading this blog post from the website (as opposed to email or a feed reader).
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2vpbWbcAls)

This evening's snorkel was really exciting and gorgeous. I've been working on identifying some of the fishes here, and I'm slowly getting better at it. We saw some goatfish, nassau groupers, cowfish, angelfish, squirrel fish, parrot fish, a trumpet fish (which may have actually been a sharksucker), and a gigantic porcupine fish! Plus, about a gazillion others that I couldn't identify yet. At one point, after looking at a really interesting fish right underneath of us and nodding to each other about how cool it looked, Brett and I picked our heads back up and found a huge caribbean reef shark right in front of us! Brett nearly jumped out of his shorts, but quickly pulled it together starting filming as we began to follow it along the sea floor. (The water was fairly shallow there, between 3 feet and 15 feet, I'd say.) One of the other staffers here who knows a lot about sharks was snorkeling with us, and she later told us she thought the reef shark we saw was pregnant. Reef sharks give live births, whereas some other types of sharks lay eggs. I wouldn't have known the difference, but that was exciting to learn about. We also saw a spotted eagle ray, several sea cucumbers, and a moray eel on this same trip. And... I got my first boat driving lesson! I still can't drive it by myself, but at least now I can practice as long as there's a licensed driver in the boat with me. All in all, we had a blast! As soon as we got back to our room, Brett said, "Yup, I like it here."

Tomorrow bright and early I fly to Providenciales via Grank Turk to pick up the students. They fly in on several different international flights, so I'll pretty much spend the entire day in the airport greeting students, learning their names, and taking photos of them to put of the SFS website before we all fly to South together. Which reminds me... my bio's up on the SFS site now too, if you want to check it out:

http://www.fieldstudies.org/pages/6151_jessica_moyer_student_affairs_manager.cfm

Water-Based Activities

I've been on two dives so far - one yesterday and one this past Thursday. Well technically, three (my dive computer registered a short, 2 minute, dive in shallow water while I was demonstrating that I knew the basic skills: mask clearing, regulator retrieval and purge, and buddy breathing). At the risk of being repetitive, the water is amazing. My computer recorded a water temperature of 84°F on both dives. I didn't even need my wet suit. And visibility must be 200 feet! Even better is that the lack of tourism in the area means that the dive sites are empty and undisturbed. Careless divers can do serious damage to coral.


The first dive was at The Arch, which is a natural coral formation that arches over the sea floor. We even swam through it. It's about 10 feet high, 20 or 30 feet wide, and about 20 feet long. The abundance of marine life is a little hard to believe. There's more coral and fish than I've ever seen (the only one I can identify so far is the Squirrel Fish). I just wish my underwater camera case was good enough to withstand those depths, so I could show you some of them here. We also had a brief Reef Shark siting, and a fantastic look at a Hawksbill Turtle (a "critically endangered" species). The Hawksbill hovered a little above us and swam away as I tried to keep up. It's the first sea turtle I've ever gotten a good look at.

Squirrel Fish

Hawksbill Turtle

Yesterday I dove at a site called Spanish Chain, which is named for the massive (10 ft?) anchor and and chain lodged in the sea floor. I was wondering where the ship full of gold that it was connected to ended up (apparently, there are two known Spanish shipwrecks in the area). Visibility, I was told just before going under, was a bit poor today. Funny, I could see about 100 feet or more. On this dive we got a close look at a Sting Ray (in addition to the 100s of fish I can't yet identify and loads of coral). For about half of the dive we traveled along a "wall," which is an undersea cliff that drops off quite dramatically, I believe, to over 800 feet (which is nothing compared to the east side of the island where it drops off to 8000 feet). All you can see over the edge is a deep blue color. It was a bit less intimidating than I expected though. I've never dove at a wall before, and I always imagined being terrified of whatever large creature might be lurking below. We also swam over the island's telephone cable. It's strange to think people had to physically lay cables under the oceans before the advent of wireless systems. Will (an intern and dive instructor) and Jan (another intern) have been nice enough to take me out on these dives and help refresh my skills.

On Friday, between the two dives, Jessee and I went for a snorkel over to the nearby Dove Cay. It's probably a bit more than 300 meters from South Caicos to the Cay, but not a super difficult. Jessee was worried about me because I'm not the strongest swimmer, but when you have a mask and snorkel it's much easier to stay calm and conserve energy. It doesn't get that deep there either, and the reef makes the deep parts look pretty shallow too. It's amazing how much you can see from the surface; all the same fish and brilliant coral species. We had a huge Barracuda following us for the last bit before the Cay. They're pretty curious fish, I gather. On the way back we saw the biggest (and scariest looking) crab I've ever seen! I didn't want to get anywhere near its claws, which were bigger than my hands. The Cay is just a small rock outcropping, but a nice place for a salty picnic.

You might have noticed I've created a new "gadget" on the sidebar of this blog (unless, of course, you've been reading these posts through email or a feed reader instead of at the website). It's my "dive (b)log." It's good practice to log all of your SCUBA dives, so I've written an application that reads my logbook and publishes my dives on this blog. It's not up yet, but I'll be activating it soon.

Eating Conch

I had my first taste of conch the other day. After the students left the center, all the staff went out for dinner to celebrate a successful session. Since it was my first opportunity to sample local cuisine, I thought it appropriate to order the famous TCI dish.

I found this picture online after I ate it the other night. I'm not sure I would have been so quick to try it with this picture in my mind.

Conch is a large shellfish, sort of like a giant underwater snail, that is a popular food throughout Caribbean nations. I can't say that escargot sounds very appealing to me, but conch is so large and prepared so differently that it doesn't really resemble it. The way I had it was sliced into strips, breaded and fried. It tasted just like fried clams to me. It wasn't bad, but I'm not sorry that I won't be eating it every day.


Conch "fishing" used to be a very popular activity in this area, but it's been greatly reduced by a decline in conch population and the establishment of Marine Protected Areas. The beaches in the area, however, show just how extensive it once was. They are littered with harvested shells; massive piles line the shores of Long Cay. I was told that there are two explanations for why the fishermen took the effort to pile the shells instead of just throwing them back in the water. The first is that the "fishermen" feared that live conch would see the empty shells of dead conch and be frightened off. The second, and more likely, explanation is that the fishermen would mistakenly try to harvest discarded shells.

The method for removing the meat of a conch from it's shell is quite interesting, though I haven't seen it in practice yet. There's a place on the pointed end of the shell, down two spines from the top where the conch gets "knocked" (see the picture below). Basically, a hole is cracked in the shell using a machete (before machetes, they used the point of another conch shell), and the ligament that attaches the animal to the shell is cut with a knife. It can then be pulled out through the opening in the shell with ease. More than 99% of the shells on the beaches have this done to them. If you find one without it, it means that it died of natural causes. If you find one with a round hole, instead of the oblong hole made by a machete, it is possibly very old, from the time before machetes. I've been told that it's illegal to take conch shells out of the country to haven't been "knocked" because they don't want people killing them for souvenirs.


As I understand it, it takes something like 3 to 5 years for them to get to full size and could live to about 30 years. It's possible to catch your own conch if you get a fishing license (which I plan to do when the next season begins), but today most of them are farmed. It sounds like a reasonable (and sustainable) way to utilize conch as a food source, but I wonder about the ecological effects of farming them (I know salmon farming is pretty harmful). There's a large conch farm in Providenciales (I think it's there), which hopefully, I'll get a chance to visit.

Snorkeling

Today started out rough, but it definitely wasn't a total loss. I went out snorkeling for the first time. We went across to the near end of Long Cay to a place called Shark Alley. It's a narrow place between South Caicos and the Cay where the current is stronger and sharks and rays congregate. We didn't see the Eagle Rays we were after, but we did see a Sting Ray, a Nurse Shark, several Barracuda, tons of coral, and loads of tropical fish.


Snorkeling
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVA3Ed1zGMY)

The water was quite rough, and I actually felt a bit seasick after a while. That's never happened to me IN the water before (I've been seasick in the water once, but it was caused when I was still on the boat). I brought my underwater camera, but I didn't use it much. I'm not confident in the integrity of the underwater case, and after the loss of my computer, I wasn't much in the mood to lose another piece of equipment. I did test it out, and it appears to have done okay. You can see a sample above.

Burned Circuits

I started this morning off with a hefty serving of toasted circuits à la jackhammer. What I mean is my computer got fried in a power surge. I turned it on and heard it start up from the other room, but when I returned there was only a "blue screen." I'm blaming it on the jackhammer because that started up in the period when I wasn't standing in front of my computer. Later on I noticed the "third prong" of the jackhammer was broken off, and I'm pretty sure that's what caused the surge. Anyhow, my computer is caput.

It's really frustrating to lose something expensive like that, but it's not new and I just recently backed up my photos and documents, so I didn't lose any important data. Now I have to use Jessee's frustratingly slow computer. I can't even get a new one because there's no way to ship it here. The only way would be to purchase it online and have Jessee carry it back when she returns to Massachusetts at the end of August for her first aid recertification. But for now, I'm just going to have to make do.

Exploring Town

Day 2 on the island:

Today was the last day for students in Summer Session I. Jessee took the group this morning to Provo and she'll return this evening (which means two flights on the rickety island connector plane in one day). I stayed behind and went to the clinic to get a blood test for the visa, and then explored the town.

Some wild horses outside our back porch.

Blood work: Ouch!

The main road on South Caicos. They drive on the left, but the steering wheel is also on the left.

A ruined building left over from the salt industry, probably made worse in hurricane Ike.

The edge of town.

The public marina.

The Center, where we live.

The bay outside our place.

Day 1:

We joined the students on their last visit to Sandy Point on Long Cay (pronounced Long Key). It was low tide, so there wasn't as much swimming as there was wallowing. The water is so incredibly warm! I was thinking the whole time about my last chilly dip in Ross Lake.

The boat ride. Look at that water!

Sandy Point

"Bob," the iguana. I think he should be renamed Iggy. Or, if she's a she, Alana the Iguana.

Home again. We're always a bit sweaty here.