Friday, October 19, 2007

Scuba Diving and New Volunteers

When in Rome... do as the Romans do. It's hard living on a tropical island for so long and not scuba diving. Learning in the ocean sure beats a swimming pool! The snorekling is also nice (hint, hint- you might want to visit?) I saw a huge brain coral the other day! It was wider than me and about 2 or 3 feet long. Today I went on two dives and saw 3 huge sting rays, 3 moray eels, a conch, tons of fan coral, brain coral, a barracuda, and tons of fish. The dive instructor showed me how to touch the large sting ray between the eyes and pet it. They're very docile creatures and stayed still while I pet them. Sonja is a very patient instructor and she's a lot of fun to dive with. She is able to identify and point out a lot of the wildlife.

The volunteers arrived this past week. It's been a slow week getting everyone settled in, but I've been getting to know the new volunteers and they're all really nice. They're from Britain, Scotland, and France. I've been practicing my French with the French woman. My French is horrible because I haven't spoken it since high school. I'm picking up some phrases here and there.

Work in the Botanical Garden is going well. I put in an order for the plants in the Fruit Garden on Friday. We have to spend the money in the grant that we received by December 31st. So hopefully this week we can clear out the Corallita (it will most likely grow back in 3 days) and then plant some of the fruit trees when they come in. Usually things take a while to come in when ordered, so there's no guarantee that these plants will come within the next two weeks. Also, hopefully next week someone is going to come out and look at the children's garden. It is covered in Corallita and very sloped. We're hiring a bulldozer to level it into three large level areas. Once the area is leveled we'll be able to seed it with grass which will hopefully out compete the Corallita. So there's a lot going on and my job is currently keeping me very busy. I'm also going to be writing a press release for STENAPA about the grant money and how we're spending it. So it's promising to be a busy week.

Monday, October 8, 2007

Money!

Money!:

Well the money just came in on Friday for the grants for both the Children's Garden and the Fruit Garden. I now have my work cut out for me because these are both projects that I will be working on for the next 5 months. The tasks are mildly daunting considering the land needs to be leveled in the children's garden and both areas are completely overgrown by corallita. The ranger for the garden, Carlton is leaving on Friday to leave me by myself to run the garden for three weeks. I'm excited and up to the challenge of running the garden and the maintenance with the volunteers while he's gone, but also realize it's a huge task. things are constantly breaking and I'm not quite sure how to fix everything. The electricity at the garden runs on solar panels, so when the power goes out the backup generator has to be turned on. I'm going to learn about that tomorrow! I've already learned how to start the lawnmower, weedwackers, etc. This may sound very basic, but these are very different types of machinery than I'm used to. For example the weedwackers here have two plastic wires coming out that whirl at high speed. When you want more line, you just wack the weedwacker on a rock and more comes out- voila! Weedwacking here requires the proper safety equipment. Shinguards, like for soccer and safety goggles. Now, if only there were something to protect my nose! Today, a small pebble shot up my nose while weedwacking! It was awful, but I was able to get it out alright- no worries.

I went for a lengthy snorkel this weekend, which was awesome! I saw 5 squid, a puffer fish, tons of coral, blue-headed wrasse, urchins (my personal favorite), and a spiny sea star. It was a blast! The area that I was snorkeling on is actually the old sea wall for the city. It isn't too deep, but the fact that it's completely underwater should tell the island of Statia something. Also, when out in the water, you can look back at the shoreline and see the ruins of old buildings. It doesn't look ugly in any way, because it's just stone walls that are jutting into the sea. These used to be warehouses run by the Dutch.

On Sunday, I went to Zeelandia Beach, which is the most beautiful beach on Statia. On the side there are many rocks that run out over the sea and also come down from the mountain. I went bouldering with some coworkers and it was great! I got up pretty high for myself and then just watched the people on the beach. There were only about 5 people on the beach, which is typical for Zeelandia. It's always very quiet on the beach, which makes it an awesome place to hang out.

I was also going to go fishing Statia style on Sunday, which means you just fish off the reel instead of using a fishing rod, but alas our truck picked up a nasty nail from the dump and we spent at least an hour fixing it. But it was fun nonetheless and it was great getting dirty and figuring out where to put the jack on a big truck. I'm used to smaller cars and it's so much easier!

Monday, October 1, 2007

Shipwreck Party!

Shipwreck Party! We had a shipwreck party up at the Botanical Gardens on Saturday. It was a lot of fun- we had a barbecue first and then invited people to come up later. The idea was that you were shipwrecked without any clothes, so a lot of people made costumes out of calabash shells and leaves, etc. The interns decided to crash the party and dress as the pirates that shipwrecked the ship! Unfortunately the party was kind of slow and it mostly ended up being STENAPA people because a lot of people's cars can't make it up the road to the Botanical Gardens.

Turtles: (again)
Two times this past week we got the call for turtle hatchlings. Arturo (the turtle guy) called the Botan phone and told us there were hatchlings on Monday night. A volunteer came into the pavillion and shouted: "Turtle!" which made me wake up right away and jump straight out of my hammock. Whenever there is a turtle, you are allowed to drive at "turtle speed" which basically means as fast as you can go down the Botan road. So here we were all excited because this particular nest was long overdue to hatch. We got down to Zeelandia beach (approximately 8 minutes later) and saw 5 baby turtle hatchlings. It was awesome! They always head toward the brightest part on the beach, which are usually the waves. If there are lights behind the beach (which they are at Zeelandia) the turtles will usually head away from the ocean. You can lead them with your flashlight down to the beach if they're having trouble.
The following night we were also called about the turtle hatchlings, but thankfully it was a bit earlier and we were all awake. We went down to the beach but unfortunately, there was only one baby turtle. The turtle survival rate to adulthood is 1/1000, so realistically none of the 5 turtles that hatched will probably survive. Thankfully, there was another unmarked nest that they found today that had 121 hatchlings that came out all at once. They usually come out all at once because there is safety in numbers. Thankfully after that turtle patrol was canceled. It's actually really boring to walk along the beach at night from 9PM-3AM. There have only been about 4 nesting turtles this season so there hasn't been too much action. Hopefully the conservation program that they're doing with the turtles (making sure they're nests won't get washed away once laid, tagging, and tracking the mature female turtles) will help and will eventually increase the numbers. The locals have harvested the turtles for a very long time so the numbers are painfully low. The first night I arrived we tagged a turtle and you can check out it's path at www.seaturtle.org The turtle's name is Track- named by a school-child that won a contest!