Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Off to Belize...

This will be my last post for a while because I won't have a computer on the beautiful tropical island where I'll be (ahem) working for a week. Carrie Bow Caye is a tiny patch of sand on the Belize barrier reef. The only structure on the island is a marine research station run by the Smithsonian.

Photobucket (Picture from http://www.naturalpatriot.org/)

I went to Carrie Bow Caye one time in grad school to help my advisor collect some eusocial snapping shrimp for an evolutionary study. It was pretty neat. This time I'm tagging along with a Smithsonian research group studying a type of blue green algae that has been taking over coral reefs. I'm also doing some preliminary scouting and sampling for my own project, which is monitoring the health and animal diversity of seagrass beds in no-fishing areas.

The only thing that sucks is that it's ALWAYS windy in Belize and I won't be able to windsurf.

Photobucket (Picture from http://picasaweb.google.com/jatarri14/Belize2008#5181454553287046770)

Oh, well. I got a nice session after work today during a break between rainstorms. It was 15-20 knots and I was riding a 5.8 meter squared sail that I love. At the end the sun busted out and cast dramatic pink light on the restless sea. That was a dose of stoke to last a long time.

4 comments:

Paul Richardson said...

What???? You can't ship a rig to Belize?? There's got to be a little time for some R&R... How about you just put ME in your suitcase instead?

Hope you have a good, productive trip!!!

JP

Anonymous said...

Dude, I'm jealous! But not so much -- we are leaving for Barbados on Tuesday. Looking forward to hearing how your work there goes. Give a ring when you return.

Anonymous said...

nice pictures!

James Douglass said...

Paul- Wish you could have been there. It was pretty neat taking Virnstein samples in 20 feet of crystal clear water. Almost no mesograzers, though, weirdly enough.

Emmett- I got your phone message. Sounds like our tropical trips overlapped, but I'll get in touch with you as soon asap with the news.

Anonymous- Yep, it looks just like that. Some of the people in my group took a lot of pictures so I'll try to repost or link to them in the next couple days.