To Be Continued...

At first, I was going to title this post as "The End", because as of tomorrow, I officially head home, thus ending my amazing summer as an intern at the Vieques Conservation and Historical Trust.

Even as I type those words, I begin to choke up-- and I am far from embarrassed to admit how difficult it will be to willingly step onto a plane tomorrow morning.

First and foremost, I want to thank Mark, Lirio, Melissa, Xaimara, Eliu, José, the entire VCHT and Wellesley for providing me with this unparalleled opportunity and experience; I could not have been luckier to be surrounded, supported and mentored by such caring and inspiring people. Saying "thank you" does not adequately sum up my gratitude and love for everything they have provided me with. I have made dear friends that I hope to have for life, and I have learned and grown more in these 10 weeks than I ever have in any other period of my life.

As a final farewell to the island, I went kayaking at Puerto Mosquito, the bioluminescent bay, last night to say goodbye and take in the phenomenal beauty of this place. As I smoothly glided along the glowing surface of the bay, the magic and beauty of Vieques hit me again in the most profound way as I meditated upon my imminent departure.

Sun Bay Beach

I have caught the Vieques fever, and I have a feeling that I've caught it for life-- I have never lived or visited a place where every single day I feel joy due to the sheer and simple beauty of both the people and the environment surrounding me. I have so thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of my stay here (even the tough, dirty and stressful parts). Whether it was having goofy/crazy car rides to and from the biobay with Melissa and Mark on Monday's, snorkeling and sailing with the Manta summer programs, painfully butchering and practicing my spanish skills with the friends I've made, driving to the fruit market every week with José, delving head first into research on composting and the chemistry of the biobay, cleaning up iguana and fish poop, experiencing the terror and excitement of catching my lionfish, dancing merengue at Patronales... every single experience means so much to me and will always remind me of the best summer of my entire life.

This internship through the Trust has taught me more than I can sum up, both academically and in the sense of my personal life and growth. I came to Vieques with an open mind, excited to delve into an academic realm that varied from my ideal career path in organic chemistry; however, my summer here has inspired me to take reevaluate my career goals as I now hope to explore environmental chemistry in an attempt to someday be a scientist who can work to preserve, promote and explore in an environment as intriguing and magnificent as Vieques.

I want to end on one final note and reiterate how blessed and fortunate I feel to have been given this opportunity. I cannot say "thank you" enough times -- it just won't cut it in the terms of how I feel. As I said earlier, I almost named this post "The End", but over my dead body will this be the end of my relationship with Vieques; a small part of my heart will always remain on this island, and I wholeheartedly intend to return.

Isla Nena (and everyone who is a part of it), thank you for the most wonderful summer of my life.

Denial

So, I am in complete denial.

How is it August 6th? How is summer almost over? How is it possible that it's almost time for me to head home? How am I going to survive in a place that doesn't have the Caribbean Sea, mangos, wild horses and passionfruit?

Instead of actually answering or even thinking about the reality behind these questions, I'm going to pretend they don't exist.

I have been all over the place this past week or so as I'm tweaking and making edits on my final video project -- I decided to add a few more clips/trademark Trust videos-- and I've also begun doing a mini-research project on the chemistry behind the reaction of luciferin and luciferase in the biobay.

Pepe the Octopus

The chemistry project has gotten me super excited as I'm able to apply some of my chemistry background to something as awesome as the bioluminescent bay. The even COOLER part of this mini-research project is that I'm finding that the studies on the mechanisms behind bioluminescence have been relatively unexamined by the scientific world, so hopefully someday I can come back here to begin studying and researching this topic!

In other exciting news, Mark literally stumbled upon a baby octopus at the beach! We named him Pepe, and he's the newest member of the Marine Life Exhibit at the Trust.

As always, time is flying by here much more quickly than I would like or could've ever imagined. I am still not ready to leave this place, especially since I have a lot of things to wrap up before my time is through here!

Me and Melissa goofing around...

Winding Down

Holy Moly.

Our second week of Mantastic was absolutely awesome, but it left me exhausted and in need for a nice, long, relaxing day at Sun Bay!

As I mentioned, our second session of the Mantastic camp was just as fun and just as action packed as the previous week! We had great weather and a few beautiful days on the water for snorkeling, fishing and Eco-Nautical day, made it to the biobay and prepared a successful presentation for the parents on the last day of program. I can't believe our summer programs have wrapped up; now it's time for all of us here at the Trust to start a few improvement projects to keep everything looking spic, span, fresh and exciting.

I love this bumper sticker.
Definitely sums up how I feel here -- relaxed!

I have been busy completing a DVD project for Mark, compiling some super cool videos that he's taken over the years (my personal favorites include a video of a short eared owl and a clip of swimming with a hawksbill turtle!) On top of that, I've been researching the impact of plastic bags on the environment, specifically ocean life, along with trying to get the local community and our summer programs involved in a composting initiative.

So, saying that I have been all over the place would be an understatement, but I LOVE feeling so productive and seeing some of my project being completed and my goals being reached.

Normally, I like to end my posts by reflecting upon how much time has passed here and how much time I have left, but my time here is quickly drawing to a close, so I don't want to get nostalgic yet! I am  not even close to feeling ready for this summer to end (where did it go anyway!?) because I'm absolutely in love with la Isla Nena.

A Mantastic Week

Holy moly. I feel like I start every post talking about how quickly each week has passed, but this week especially flew by because I got to spend most of my time working with the fantastic Mantastic summer program!

The Mantastic program serves to bring participants from areas outside of Vieques in order to introduce them to the beauty of the island and the magnificence of the Puerto Mosquito, the bioluminescent bay, through hands-on and interactive activities and experiences.

On Monday, we went for a beautiful hike along the local river, or rio. We caught (and even ATE) freshwater shrimp, swam in a waterfall and learned about taking time to put on our nature goggles to actually appreciate the beauty that surrounds us in our hectic daily lives.

A picture of our puffer fish--he's huge!

Tuesday we had a fun filled day of snorkeling and fishing at the local sugar cane pier. It was a beautiful day, but sadly no one caught any fish using our fishing equipment. We did manage to capture a completely crazy looking puffer fish while snorkeling. We ended our day by doing an underwater cleanup, collecting an enormous amount of litter from the ocean floor along the Malecón.

Wednesday, the Mantastic group was graciously invited to the Hacienda Tamarindo for an evening barbecue and pool party, followed by a spectacular night at the bioluminescent bay; the bay itself is always an incredible and unbelievable experience, but the stars and night sky added a whole new element of beauty and depth to the night-- I have never seen the night sky so full of stars in my entire life.

Thursday, we had a somewhat overcast day for our Eco-Nautical Day. Nonetheless, the weather didn't stop our participants from having a blast learning about sailing, snorkeling, kayaking, paddle-boarding and jet skiing.

And today, is sadly our last day with this group! We have a small tour of the island planned for this morning and then a final presentation for the parents to share our exciting week with them!

One of our fantastic leaders made an awesome slideshow, highlighting parts of our week-- feel free to take a look.

So another whirlwind weeks draws to a close, and next week a new group of Mantastic participants will arrive for another exciting week-- I cannot wait!

Patronales y Padres

And yet another week completely zooms by at the Trust!

Our Manta summer program wrapped up last week as the kids had an overnight adventure on the main island and presented their final project on Friday. We had an awesome time with our Manta kids and are looking forward to Mantastic, which begins next week!

I have been busy with all of my usual tasks; Monday Mark, Melissa and I installed a weather station at Sun Bay to begin collecting weather data along with our weekly visit to do research at Puerto Mosquito.   Then, on Tuesday, my darling parents came to visit me for a full week here! So far, we have eaten lots of tasty food at the local restaurants and have visited some of the most amazing beaches in the National Wildlife Refuge here -- it has been awesome!

Me and José after our crazy 8k!

Then to top off all the fun I have been having with my work and family, this past Wednesday kicked off the local summer celebration called "Patronales, which is a tradition of celebrating a town's patron saint. The plaza of Isabel II has been completely packed with delicious food carts, fun rides and a stage that features a wide variety of musical performers. I have attended several nights thus far and have had a blast-- I have tried a local betting game involving miniature-wooden racing horses, tasted a local liqueur made from quenpa fruit that is called bili and ate lots of delicious food.

This afternoon, I participated in the 2012 Masué 8k run. It was probably one of the hottest running experiences of my entire life. The race kicked off at 5 pm as all of the runners completed a hilly course, complete with excessive sunshine and wonderful spectators who graciously sprayed us all with hoses as we pushed ourselves through the 5 mile course. It was so much fun, despite the heat and exhaustion! It was a fabulous experience to run with the owner of my guest house, José, who had urged me to register in the first place. I managed to get 5th place overall for the female runners, which was a big surprise for me!

So all in all, it has been a totally fun and fast paced week with everything ranging from Manta fun to the great cultural experience of Patronales. As always, I am falling more and more in love with Vieques and am so thankful to be a part of this beautiful place!

Ohhhh We're Half Way There

Wow. 

I can't believe I have reached the halfway point of my internship and my time in Vieques. I have become so comfortable here with my new island life, and I absolutely cannot believe how much I've been learning.

A quick recap of this week: Monday Melissa, Mark and I went to do our usual weekly check of the water quality in the bioluminescent bay for the USGS and EPA study. Then Tuesday through Thursday, I spent most of my time (attempting) to compile and organize some videos that Mark has taken over the years into a DVD, along with some other general house-keeping at the Trust. Friday was Eco-Nautical day for our Manta Summer Program, and as always, it was an amazingly fun day! We paddle-boarded, sailed on the HOBIE boat, kayaked and performed a beach clean-up where we collected 3 huge bags of trash. So all in all, Eco-Nautical day was great as always.

Yesterday, we attempted lion-fish hunting, but returned empty handed. It's always a bummer to come back from a long snorkel with nothing to show for your work, but it's also a good sign that we're not finding loads of lion fish every time we go out snorkeling!

Everything will begin picking up from this point in my internship as I begin to tackle a few big projects here-- I am working on an article about the ease and convenience of composting and am planning on writing another one on the negative impacts of plastic bags. I also am hoping to finish my video project that I had mentioned above; however, I find myself struggling technologically at times!

Reaching the halfway mark of my internship has caused me to sit back and reflect on all of the wonderful things I've learned. My spanish is coming along nicely; there are some days that I feel more confident with my speaking skills than others, but overall it's a good work in progress.  In the marine life exhibit, I have learned more about anemones, tropical fish, sea stars, sea cucumbers, crabs, shrimp and lobsters than I could ever have envisioned. I have seriously enjoyed working and playing with the kids in the summer Manta programs -- they have majorly helped me improve my spanish skills! Being here for 5 weeks makes me feel that I have gotten an idea of what Vieques, and the culture of Vieques, is all about. I love being a part of a program and a community that is looking for ways to preserve and cherish the natural beauty that surrounds them.

5 weeks down, and 5 weeks to go. I look forward to what lies ahead of me, but I want time to move as slowly as possible -- I'm sure I won't be ready to go home when the time comes!

It rained like crazy on Thursday, so the coquis (or local tree frogs) have been super super vocal! They have an amazingly beautiful croak/song. 

Check out this bad boy!

Today at work, we set out to go snorkeling at the nearby sugar cane pier with a few first time snorkelers! It was a gorgeous day, and the water was perfect. We even managed to catch a water snake (that later sneakily escaped our buckets).

However, our "fun-day" of snorkeling quickly turned into an opportunity to catch a lion fish!

My First Lion Fish!

With Mark's coaching and encouragement, I managed to capture this bad-boy (or girl, who knows!) on my own! I definitely was hesitant to take an 8-10 foot dive to go after this guy, but I'm really glad Mark encouraged me to go for it.


For more information on the invasive lion fish, check out this video featuring the Trust's very own Mark Martin talking about the skill of hunting lion fish.

What a super cool and exciting day!

Eco-Nautical Adventures

And another week has just zoomed by! We've been so busy at the Trust with so many different things.

Eco-Nautical Day Fun

Last Friday, Mark, Melissa and I went to Mosquito pier on the Atlantic side of Vieques to help with the local fishing tournament for the kids! The tournament started at four and lasted until at least seven that evening, with great success! Some of the coolest catches of the day included several moray eels and a huge chapin, or cow fish. The tournament was a complete whirlwind, but what a fun and fabulous event!

The rest of the weekend and beginning of the following week included some routine maintenance for our marine life exhibit, including the addition of a huge venomous scorpion fish, which is in the same family as the invasive lion fish that we find regularly in PR, and a few spiny Caribbean lobsters.

Paddle-Boarding

But Wednesday was definitely the highlight of the past week -- it was the Eco-Nautical Day for our Manta Summer Program . The Manta staff, along with some very kind and generous local adventure experts, spent the day teaching the Manta kids about sustainable and eco-friendly water sports and activities.

The kids learned about snorkeling, sailing, kayaking, paddle boarding (my personal favorite!) along with touring a beautiful sailboat that utilizes solar power along with wind to power the boat! Eco-Nautical day is, of course, completely fun-packed from start to finish, but I think it's such a perfect way of incorporating so many important lessons into one adventurous day. I love seeing the kids learning about and appreciating the beauty and uniqueness that Vieques has to offer in it's stunning beaches, while also reminding the kids that we, as humans, can impact the environment in both positive and negative ways!

It was a gorgeous day for the Manta Eco-Nautical Day

Tomorrow, Mark, Melissa and I will head out to Mosquito Pier to snorkel and restock the Marine Life exhibit (I have my fingers crossed to hopefully see a Manatee!) And next week, our Mantastic Camp starts! I am absolutely falling more and more in love with Vieques every day; I am always busy -- I am meeting new people, practicing my spanish (which still is pitifully elementary in my opinion), swimming in the ocean as much as possible and soaking up the beautiful Puerto Rican sunshine! All in all, I am so thankful to be here and loving every moment!

A Manta friend helping me clean the aquarium tanks after Eco-Nautical Day!

Settling in and Speeding By...

As my third week is coming quickly to an end, I've realized that I can't believe how quickly time flies here in Vieques!

Over the past week or so, I have been busy with all sorts of new activities, adventures and experiences including my first foray into snorkeling in the Atlantic to capture creatures for our marine life exhibit along with finally visiting the bioluminescent bay (Puerto Mosquito) at night. On the note of "Puerto Mosquito", I am sadly finding that my Wisconsinite blood is just as appealing to Puerto Rican mosquitos as it is to the vicious Wisconsin mosquitos that chow on my blood at home.

Playa Grande

In my free time, I have biked and hiked my way to two stunning beaches just outside of Esperanza-- Playa Grande and Playa Negra. Both beaches were uniquely stunning! Playa Grande was beautifully rugged and picturesque, and Playa Negra, although much smaller than Playa Grande, involved a gorgeous half-mile hike in to the secluded beach.

Playa Negra

On a more exciting and significant note, the next round of our "Manta" Summer Programs kicked off this past week at the Trust. It's been a ton of fun getting to work, play and learn with this fabulous group of kids! They have been busy learning about the impact of recycling by visiting the local garbage dump here, swimming in the ocean in order to learn more about marine life and have been actively starting a composting program at the Trust by raking up leaves and creating a compost container. Their compost initiative has inspired me (along with my mom's personal green initiative -- she composts year round for her summer vegetable garden); consequently, I'm hoping to start a compost campaign for the local community to help educate about the ease and benefits gained by the simple act of recycling organic materials.

But hands down, the most fantastic and awe inspiring experience of my internship thus far was seeing the bioluminescent bay on Tuesday night. Around 8 pm, Mark, Melissa (my fellow intern) and I loaded onto a school bus tour and made our way down the rough, bumpy road to Puerto Mosquito; we joined a biobay tour group in order to collect a specimen sample of the dinoflagellate, which is the organism that is responsible for the fluorescent nature of the bay. As a chemist, I found it fascinating that the fluorescence of these single cell organisms occurs due to an interaction of a protein and an enzyme. When the organism is moved or disturbed, the combination of the protein and enzyme helps facilitate a chemical reaction causing the teensy-tiny dinoflagellate to glow!

As we glided smoothly across the dark water, my jaw dropped as as I watched the glowing wake of our boat drifting behind us -- I absolutely could not believe how beautiful and ethereal the bay looked; words and descriptions do not give adequate justice to the inexplicable beauty and wildness of the whole experience. Watching the water glow and glimmer, I was reminded of the Disney movie "Peter Pan", where Tinkerbell, a small fairy, zips and flies around leaving a trail of glimmering pixie dust in her wake.

Pyrodinium bahamense are the micro-organisms responsible for the
fluorescence of the biobay in Vieques.

Even though I am a chemistry major who has a limited background in biology, I have never experienced anything in nature that has rivaled or influenced me quite as much as my night on the biobay; the whole evening makes me want to delve deeper into natural biology where I can hopefully apply my background knowledge of chemistry! Before I get overly sentimental and even more long winded about my experience, I will sum everything up by saying that the bioluminescent bay is definitely one of the most magnificent experiences that our world has to offer.

Such an amazing past week, and the best part is there are many more adventures to come! With our upcoming fishing tournament, more snorkeling to restock the marine life exhibit and more Manta activities and explorations, I am up looking forward to the upcoming days ahead!

-Abby

The Beginning!

Hello and welcome to my summer blog!

My name is Abby, and I am a 20 year old Wellesley College student who is interning at the Vieques Conservation and Historical Trust for 10 weeks over this summer! I absolutely cannot believe how quickly my first week and a half here have absolutely flown by.


This spring, when I first discovered that I would have the opportunity to intern at the Trust for the summer, I was... well let's just say that "being beyond excited" didn't quite sum up my enthusiasm. In the midst of my semester, I began imagining what my summer would look like. I soon realized that I really had no idea and no way of knowing how I would like and adjust to such a new environment, but I set two goals for myself: I knew that wanted to do something that pushed me outside of my comfort zone, and I wanted to learn as much as possible.

Before I knew it, I had finished my sophomore year as a chemistry major, had spent several weeks at home in Wisconsin relaxing and was on a teensy little puddle jumper plane from San Juan to Vieques; as we flew over the Caribbean Sea, I had to keep pinching myself in order to remember that this, indeed, was real life, and I was actually about to spend 10 weeks in this amazingly beautiful place where both dogs, chickens and horses calmly and casually roam the streets.

It's always sunny and always gorgeous-- I love all of the sailboats!

Needless to say, I literally hit the ground running, both literally and metaphorically (nearly passing out from the heat on my first few runs here-- my internal "Wisconsin heater" is still transitioning to an AC unit).

Within my first week, I met all of the fabulous staff at the Trust who have been extremely patient and kind as I 1) practice my spanish and 2) learn the ropes of my job, went to see the fantastic bioluminescent bay and learned how to monitor the water quality for a USGS and EPA scientific study, got to be a part of the Mini-Manta Summer Program, working with the kids as we explored the bay and a local river,  and have explored all the nooks and crannies of Esperanza, both above and below the gorgeous sea! I have experienced the glory that is Belly-Buttons Thursday night Mexican night (there was so much food there it made my starving-college-student-stomach sing), and have found that mangos and papayas here are most likely the two most delicious fruits I have ever eaten in my entire 20 years of being.

Between snorkeling to catch fish for our aquarium at the Trust and swimming, sailing, kayaking and snorkeling with the Mini-Manta kids on "Eco-nautical day", I've been busy and loving my new niche in Vieques; I am learning endlessly about everything ranging from how to clean and maintain an aquarium to remembering my elementary high school spanish (¡Yo hablo un poquito de español, pero no mucho!)

So far, my adventure has started off in the best way I could have ever hoped for, and I am so genuinely excited for the weeks that are ahead of me!

One of the first pictures I took, looking down the Malecon (the main street).