2011

Today we woke up to a torrential rain at 5. Then after attempted to sleep until we actually had to get up at 8. Once we all got up we got all our stuff together and began walking to the taxi pickup spot in the chilling but lighter rain. The taxi then took us ton the marina where we...

Today was the first day of marine biology actually at BVI and I've got only 3 words to say. PAR-A-DISE. Since we arrived so late last night, we could not see the island view, but when i crawled out of bed this morning, I saw a view that I've only seen in National Geographic and hollywood films. Before I...

Today in class we began by finishing up our dogfish shark lab. All that me and Kells had to do was remove the skin on the head of the shark and look at the brain. The cerebellum was about the size of a cashew. Following the clean-up of this lab we began the daily discussion over the two articles....

Today we learned about global warming and the composition of the ocean, as well as the waves and currents. We learned that the increase in temperature by a little bit less than a degree can affect seasonal timing for organisms as well as community interactions like mating. This relates to how the temperature can affect the ecological and marine...

Well as always today was a hard but fun class. It started out just as usual. We went over last nights readings about how some marine life have adapted to living with little oxygen available. We then began our disscussion on currents and tides. We first began by disscussing the chemical side of how the ocean is made up....

Alas, the time has come for the end. After an amazing week at the BVI we're goijg to go home. Today was a nice change of pace; we did some community service for Visar. I was in charge of washing various garments and other things that simply needed to be cleaned. As much as I loved scuba diving it...

Today, we started out, not by discussion, but by going straight into the lab to do what i believe is our last dissection. We got our dogfish shark that we had begun dissecting yesterday, and began removing the skin and skull, bit by bit, from the top of it's head, in order to see the brain. After that, we...

Today was a great day; we spent some time in the classroom and then headed out to the water. Casey provided the guys an interactive lesson on Reef Check (reefcheck.org) and laying transecting lines. Every student will be participating in collecting data for their regional database on coral reef health. Casey got the guys out of...

Today was a really cool day, because we finally got to do what we had been focusing on while we were here in the BVI. We started off by doing a fun dive at the westernmost point of Virgin Gorda. There were a ton of jellyfish swimming around the water, and everyone had fun touching the top, and a...