So...I realize it's been more than a week since I posted last. I have not had internet for a while, but it is also a little bit my fault for being lazy.
A lot of stuff has happened, and all the time on the island seems to melt together. I hardly notice the passing of hours in the day, and they quickly fade into nights I do not wish to sleep through. And all of a sudden our time is almost up.
Some time last week (my memory of time is a little fuzzy) we went for a snorkel on the reef and the southern-most part of the island. The fish were absolutely amazing. My favorite was the juvenile yellow-tailed damselfish. It was a deep blue with (what else?) a yellow tail. All over it were bright blue dots that looked much like little sapphires bejeweling the small fish. There were all sorts of coral, from boulder to fan to brain. I was struck by the absolute explosion of color. Yellows, greens, blues, oranges. It was beautiful. I saw angelfish with white and black stripes, and huge fish with blue and brown scales. I saw lionfish and trunkfish. And although it looked as nothing was happening at the surface, closer inspection revealed holes in the coral that teemed with life. There were lots of sting rays, many of them buried in the sand, and a Spotted Eagle Ray swam past, very much making me feel like I was swimming through Finding Nemo.
We also went on a similar snorkel out to see sharks. We went out to Triangle Rock, and watched as the tour guide fed Reef Sharks and Blacktip Sharks. I saw a lot of the same fish, including a cute one that had teeth sticking out and fins on top and bottom that moved front to back, not back and forth.
We had a couple more stomach eversions, and found a shark with suspicious chicken or rib looking bones in its stomach. This was bizarre, because as you can imagine, that isn't normally on the lemon shark's usual menu.
Monday was a long day in the lab. The funny thing is, I hardly noticed the time passing at all. I had to create a table of shark length by clasper length. If you don't know what claspers are, let me enlighten you. They are the male reproductive organs of the shark. They are just little attachements below the pelvic fins on the shark. Over time, they grow and calcify--as the shark matures. We were plotting this data, one, because no one in the lab had done it before, and two, because it would help show the maturing of a shark, and we assume the female shark would mature at about the same rate.
Yesterday, we were out on a search for the Manta Rays that were rumored around somewhere. After a bit of fruitless searching, we were tooling around the beach, just walking around collecting shells and sea glass. All of a sudden, we hear someone shout "Demian!" and there is a boat, with one of the shark lab guys in it. And you know what he was doing? Chasing down a Manta Ray. This might sound silly, but I had no idea they were harmless. We climbed up in the boat, amazed at our luck. Sean (the shark lab guy) was catching footage of the ray, and happened to see us. He pulled up the boat right alongside the ray a couple of times and let us jump in and snorkel with the ray. The first couple of times, I didn't really get too close, because this creature was amazingly fast, and in the shallows, felt there was nowhere to escape except getting away from us. The third time however, by some odd chance of fate, I ended up swimming out a little deeper with him. For what was probably 2 minutes, but felt like half an hour, the ray slowed down to a glide and let me swim alongside him. The ray was huge, and probably had a bigger wingspan than I did. He was jet black, and swam with his mouth wide open, flapping his large wings. Little silver fish swam in his mouth, and a long, skinny silver fish under his belly. All of a sudden he was gone, and I was left breathless. It was a once in a lifetime experience.
Now that I have internet, the time is becoming more elusive, and all the more real. I can feel the days slipping past and the real world catches up with me, and island time slips away, like a parallel universe. The white sand, the blue water, the humidity and warm weather, all the fish...I'm going to miss it. I'm going to miss the days as they escape me.
I have postcards to write but not send, and write in our REU blog, which you should check out if you want to see what we all have been doing! http://reubimini.blogspot.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment