Corals and Castles

Today we spent the majority of the day writing a six page paper on one of the three experiments we've done so far. I picked the least complicated one we've done and managed to finish around 2:00 while everyone else was freaking out until 6 or later. My roommate finished around four so she and I went into town on the bus. We put on our pretty dresses and started walking to the bus stop. We got a little lost which must have been obvious because some guy in a truck stopped and asked if we were looking for the bus stop. Most of the shops were closed but we found a ship that they charge people to play on.

Then we passed some old cannons that wanted you to know that you must swim at your own risk,

We found some stocks that are apparently there for your entertainment. I think this is where the cruise ships let off.

We were walking around town and I found an old abandoned building. It had a two story fireplace on both sides.

Further up the street we found part of the national trust, an "unfinished church"

It was pretty neat. While we were in town I managed to buy a rum cake and a bottle of Bermuda rum. We caught a bus back to BIOS in time for dinner. After we ate Ashley wanted to go down to the cement beach to look for a sea hare since she missed the first one. Everything worked out well and I found another one for her. It was sitting out of the water which is very unusual. It's not the same one we found the other day because it was much smaller.

We also took some pictures in our cute dresses while the sun was setting.

After dinner we learned about coral reef fish and their behavior. Tomorrow we're doing a reef fish study. It should be an interesting day. After all the work was complete we went to the Passing Wind and had a few drinks before bed. I taught some of the Brits how to play Cricket (darts) and we all had a good time. What a great trip so far!

Sunshine and Seagrass

Today we went to the seagrass beds to do some more studies.

We looked at the seagrass density in two different bays, Well Bay and Long Bay.

Well Bay was really sheltered and Long Bay had a lot more wave action so we thought we'd see more sea grass in Well bay. We would swim out from a particular spot on the beach to a depth of 1.5 m and then put our quadrat on the bottom and count blades of sea grass... There were a few more blades of grass than jellies this time.

There weren't too many animals swimming around in this area. At the end of the day part of our group swam out and found a reef with parrotfish and sea fans but I was already dry so I'm holding out for the real reef on Thursday. I did find several jellies and ctenophores (pronounced tee-no-fours).

As we were leaving I saw something shiny on the ground. I guess it was a piece of oil. Sometimes it gets dumped with the bilge water and as it floats around it hardens up. It's illegal to collect anything in Bermuda but we decided this was trash not treasure.

We've been so fortunate. Today was beautiful. We had rain at about 3am but nothing since then. There were big clouds on the horizon but they skirted the island. I think everyone actually got some sun today. Sweatshirts came off and everyone showed a little skin. It was quite exciting. Tonight we are working on our data from the lab today. Tomorrow we are spending all day writing up a paper on either mangroves, plankton, or sea grass. If we get it done early we may be able to go play in Bermuda a little. We'll see. So now it's time to look at the data a bit and see if what we found today was significant or not. Maybe we can do this in the sun ;-)

Fun with Plankton

Today has been the prettiest day yet. It rained for a few minutes this morning but was sunny and slightly breezy for the rest of the day. Today we looked at plankton. We had samples of plankton from three different places around the island. Our goal was to look through the samples to determine the number of species in there and the number of individuals per species. It was quite a trip. It's really difficult to count tiny animals when you don't really know what they are and they keep moving around when the water gets bumped. We made it work though. During our lunch break we all sat on the edge of the dock and enjoyed the sun. We tried to feed some bread to the fish swimming by but they didn't want any. I took a nap on the dock later during our afternoon break. It was quite amazing. In our samples I found a crazy creature called a whip shrimp. Here's a picture through the microscope. It wasn't very good. But I saw his eyes staring back at me and was a bit startled.

When we were done counting and playing with the statistics, the boys in my group decided they wanted to go swimming. The first guy dove in and came up sputtering but the water took away his breath so he couldn't tell the others it was too cold to get in. Needless to say they didn't stay in long.

After the boys got out I found a sea hare.

It's related to snails, slugs, clams, etc. I picked it up and passed it around for everyone to touch. When they're scared they ink purple and it smells like roses.

My hands were dyed purple for the rest of the evening. It's about the size of a small football. So now we're back in the lab getting ready to look at some more stats and plan for our sea grass expedition tomorrow.

Also, after I posted last night we went to the Passing Wind, the bar on campus here. It was quite a trip. The locals put a goat in the pub and locked the door expecting us to freak out. Minela took pictures instead. I'll try to get a copy of it soon! We also taught our English counterparts some drinking games. Apparently their teachers told them not to get the American's drunk... but they didn't warn them about us! Time for more plankton!

Mangroves and Caves

Today we started our first research project. Our group was studying mangroves today. One of the creatures that lives in the mangrove pond that we were visiting is the Cassiopeia, or upside down jelly.

We were counting how many jellies were hanging out at different depths of the pond. So we would lay a rope on the bottom, our transect. Then we would stop every time the water got half a meter deep and count how many jellies were in a half meter by half meter quadrat (square).

We had everything set up randomly like good scientists but I guess all the jellies were chilling on other parts of the pond. They sit upside down because they have photosynthetic algae that lives in their tentacles. By sitting upside down, the algae gets more sunlight. It also means these jellies are more likely to be in shallow water because they get more sunshine that way. While we were swimming around checking out the pond, I found a swimming sea slug.

 He was hard to focus on. So I took a video of him. I'll see if I can upload it. I actually saw three of these guys. Including one chilling on the bottom.

We got out after the first set of transects and had our bagged lunch. The Brits were all very excited about taking a brown bag lunch. They thought it was pretty amusing. We've had lots of discussions on cereals you can only find in America, like Oreo-o's. They say you can get lucky charms in the super fancy department stores over there. Crazy. We did a second set of transects on the other side of the pond. When my group finished, I got out because I was shivering. I laid in the sun to warm up for a bit. When everyone else got out we went on a bit of a hike and found a cave. I happened to have a flashlight in my backpack (once a girl scout, always a girl scout) and we went through and came out on the other side it was pretty neat.

 It looked like some people had been camping in the cave. And lots of pieces have been broken off. The whole island is limestone so that's what all of this is. The rest of the group didn't come into the cave with us and found a cave with a lake in it. I'm sorta sad I missed it but we had to rush back to the bus. We went to pick up the other group at the sea grass beds and where they were hanging out was much prettier than where we were. But we'll be there on Monday when it's supposed to be less windy and a little warmer.

Now we're showing and getting clean before we go play with our data and see what we end up with. What a great trip so far!

Bermuda Day 2

Today has been a very interesting day. After a wonderful breakfast (the food is amazing for a research facility), we got an introduction to BIOS. They gave us some background such as the fact that it was established in 1903 by a guy from NYU and a guy from Harvard as a summer program. The NSF helps to fund the $12 million budget but the 12-15 scientists who work here have to find grants to pay their salary. We also got the downlow on Bermuda itself, such as the fact that 250,000 people visit the island every year and about 70,000 people live on this ~20 mile chain of islands. It was interesting to hear about how the island was formed and some of their more modern issues like septic systems on a porous island (meaning there are certain places you really shouldn't go swimming) or the fact that if they got cut off from the rest of the world they would only last a week. They've done some good things like getting tracer additives added to oil tankers so oil spills/leaks/dumps can be traced back to the ship they came from. They've done some strange things too, like fill in their wetlands with domestic trash to cut down on yellow fever outbreaks.

After our introduction to the island we got a tour of the labs on campus. It was amazing to learn about the research they're doing here. We saw a lab where they study carbon dioxide in the water to monitor ocean acidification. They've been monitoring one of their stations for more than 50 years. They know more about this one little piece of ocean than anyone knows about anywhere else in the world's oceans. So they're looking for signs of ocean acidification. They talked about how many people are trying to say we need to use iron to seed the plankton and use it as a carbon sink. The scientists here are proving that the carbon dioxide doesn't sink. It just gets recycled into the biomass at the surface of the ocean... in other words, it's a terrible idea.

Then we talked to an American woman who had been studying the genetic causes of cancer in humans but ended up here working on aging in sea urchins.She looks at three different types of urchins, the common purple urchin that lives 2-3 years, the purple urchin that lives about 50 years, and the red urchin that can live to be 200 years old. These animals are well studied because they are an important fishery (sushi) and so we know a lot about them to be a baseline. They are studying the muscles in the urchins and have found that the common purple ones show signs of aging just like a human, the purple ones spends lots of energy to repair the muscle tissue to prevent again and mutation of genes (which causes cancer), but the red urchins decrease the amount of damage that occurs all together. They are exposing the cells to cancer levels that would kill a human being and the urchin is showing no signs of damage at all. Amazing.

There are other labs studying the nutrients in the ocean. For example the lack of nitrogen and phosphorus in the water here is what makes it soooo blue.

They're studying the bacteria in the water, they had to find special dye to even discover them. The bacteria in the ocean are so small they keep deleting parts of their DNA that they don't use. The ocean is very stable over time so they don't change much and they don't need them. They study sediment and plankton but not fish. Bermuda is also home to Reinsurance. It's the companies that insure the insurance companies. So BIOS has developed the Risk Prediction Initiative. They study hurricanes, water temperatures and windsheers to predict where hurricanes are going. Their models are better than the NWS and they are looking to start a PHD program to train someone to learn the models. Currently it takes 5 people, some scientists, business people, risk analyzers, etc. Their choice candidate would be a businessman with a passion for nature... so if you know anyone....

Another lab is studying corals and how ocean acidification will affect them. For their first experiment they just put in straight acid which, no surprise here, destroyed the corals. So they decided to do it with different levels of carbon dioxide (which is what's happening) and the corals looked fine, but they were brittle and hollow which leaves them vulnerable to predation and hurricanes. Bermuda depends on it's reefs for protection so this is very important knowledge. The final lab we looked at was an area where they are studying algae to make biodiesel which is much more effective and energy efficient that ethanol made from corn/soybeans/etc. They actually use the same old fashioned recipe to make soap (lye etc) and add methanol to make great biodiesel.

Then we had lunch which was followed by a trek to go snorkeling. We had to hike a ways along the ocean. It was very windy so we had to find a sheltered spot. The scenery was beautiful even though the wind was wicked.

When we got to the spot everyone had to drop their gear and get suited up. Surprisingly mine wasn't the only hot pink suit like I expected. I'll try to get a picture with her tomorrow.

My dive buddy Kaitlyn got in pretty quickly.

 

There were corals and sponges everywhere. There were also lots and lots of sea cucumbers. They were the biggest ones I've ever seen. We even found this one that was a different color:

Then, after passing a really creepy sunken buoy, I finally saw one of the animals on my life list:

It was an octopus!! I've never seen one in the wild. It was beautiful. I didn't want to get any closer and scare it. Then we snorkeled off and found a second animal on my life long list of animals I want to see! A nudibranch!

I was looking at an anemone and this guy started moving. He's facing downwards. Those are antennae on the bottom and the fluffy parts on the middle are its gills. Beautiful! There's also a fanworm on the lefthand side. These were the two animals on my list of things I wanted to see while I was here and I got them on the first day. So I need to come up with some new ones! I knew those rainbows were good luck! Now if only we can turn off the wind and rain!

After showers we had a class on stat methods. Thank goodness for a whole semester of that already! Then dinner followed by more stats. Then we broke up into two groups to come up with a research project for tomorrow while we're snorkeling. My group is going to the mangroves and studying Cassiopeia, the upside down jellyfish. We spent an hour hashing out our methods before calling it a night. I need to read a scientific article for homework for the class I missed yesterday so I'm getting ready to knock that out so we can play for the rest of the week!! Wow! I've been doing the happy dance all day :-)

Welcome to Bermuda!

Today started bright and early. I got up at 4:30 to meet up with one of the other girls and catch a cab to the airport. Our flights were uneventful (thankfully) even though they were calling for gale force winds in Bermuda. In fact, our flight to Bermuda was so empty I had a whole row to myself. It was very exciting flying over the island as we made our descent. Customs was a breeze and everyone has been so wonderful.

We are working with a group of students from the University of Southampton but they didn't get in until 7:00 tonight. So we had the afternoon to explore the property. We took so many pictures. It rained a couple times and we were lucky enough to see two different double rainbows.

We walked around the labs and found some interesting plants. No wildlife except the cat my roommate, Ashley, found.













We found all sorts of neat things like wild bananas

I found a Fish Vertebra












Lots of Hibiscus pictures after the rain















Limpets in a tidepool










An old swing

















Sea Urchin Tests (shells)











And a palm tree smaller than me











I've taken so many pictures already and we've just gotten here. I'll upload them when I get back so I don't totally kill the wireless here.
The British half of our group arrived as we finished dinner. We're waiting for all the local people who live at the station to return so that they will open the pub on the property. Then we will all get to know each other much better ;-) Tomorrow we have orientation in the morning and then a snorkel workshop in the afternoon. Hopefully we'll have less wind and rain! Either way, it's been a fantastic start to the trip.
Life is good.

MIA

So I went MIA this week... partly because I had a nasty virus and had to wipe my computer. I spent all night reloading everything back on. Thankfully I followed my gut last month and bought an external harddrive to back everything up. So nothing was lost except the virus (Thank goodness).

This week's been full of ups and downs. I realized on Tuesday that my windshield got cracked on Sunday on my way home from Raleigh. A car was throwing up rocks on 40 and so I changed lanes. Apparently it wasn't soon enough. It was a small crack and easily fixed. I spent all morning on Friday waiting for the guy to show up... but it's done and didn't cost me anything. Thank goodness for insurance.

Also on Friday I had a meeting with my old bosses at Surf House. I start back to work when I get back from Bermuda. It's a great cafe/surf shop. All the food is local produce and organic.... and amazing. They were slow starting off so had to let go of all their front of house people but now that's summer's rolling around, they're back in the swing of things. It's a great place to hang out and a lot of fun to work at.

I also got a call this week to schedule an interview at the aquarium on Tuesday. It's to be a Special Activities Instructor. That will involve running summer camps, hosting birthday parties, and leading sleepovers. So keep your fingers crossed.

This weekend's been productive. I spent 6 hours yesterday in the library trying to get projects done before I go away this week. I have a large paper due right when I come back so I wanted it done ahead of time. I'm almost finished. I went to the men's last home game last night and we lost.... we got a technical because the ref felt we dunked too hard and hung from the rim. Then William and Mary took the ball back and dunked even harder. They didn't get called on it so the same guy who got T'd the first time dunked and blatantly hung on the rim to dare the ref to call it again. Next year can only be better.

Today I dove at the aquarium. I finally got to try out my new camera to make sure it's going to work for Bermuda. I made a great choice on this new toy!