Academic Update
This summer’s students have settled in very quickly and begun learning about the marine environment, Marine Protected Areas (MPA), and marine species identification.

The summer course focuses on MPAs and the role they play in current marine conservation management practice. Over the first week, the students snorkeled regularly and dove at various sites within the two local MPAs. During these sessions, students have learned to identify several key species from mangrove, seagrass bed, and coral reef habitats, learning their role in the tropical marine ecosystem. This field-based learning has been backed up with a series of lectures on the concept of MPAs, from both an ecological and an economical point of view, and students have considered their role in the context of habitat management and tourism.

The staff and students have engaged with the local community with a variety of outreach programs. Local children visited our center and took part in swimming lessons, as well arts and crafts. One team successfully cleaned a beautiful coastal site at the local Long Cay Sanctuary, removing a substantial amount of washed up garbage. In addition, we have been continuing our successful invasive tree removal program.

It has been a fun and busy first week with plenty more planned for the rest of the semester.
-Dr. Ben Holt, Resident Lecturer in Tropical Marine Ecology

This past week and a half has been a blast, but gone by so quickly. Saturday was probably the most eventful day by far. I was able to go on two SCUBA dives and participate in the community outreach program. The day started out with diving at “The Arch” where we were down roughly 45 feet and swam under a very narrow archway. The highlight of the dive was seeing a stingray lurking in the sand. This guy was huge with a wingspan well over eight feet long. Later on, we found some invasive pine trees that are found throughout the island and are a nuisance because of all the leaves they shed. It felt great to chop down some invasive species. For the second dive, we went to “The Plane,” where there had been a crash-landing of a plane some time ago. We saw many amazing species down there at about 60 feet, including sea turtles and pufferfish. The staff here is knowledgeable about all coral and reef fish species but are also great to just hang out with and play ping-pong if you need some time to relax.
-Frank Kolencik, Clemson University

This has been an unbelievable experience so far. Snorkeling every day, either as a class trip or just on my own down by the dock has been great. Since I’ve been here, I’ve gone on four dives! Annie is certifying six of us to be Adventure Divers, which allows us to go down to 100 ft. and do night dives and wreck dives. For our certification, we had to do a Navigation Dive, during which we demonstrated the ability to use a compass to find our way underwater, as well as using natural landmarks to navigate in case a compass is either not available or not working for a dive. The second dive was even cooler; we went to The Grotto, which has a huge drop-off on the edge of the reef. It was amazing; the water was a much deeper blue next to the drop-off, which is basically the sheer edge of a cliff. There were lots of corals, fish, and even a huge Caribbean spiny lobster! Once again, we saw barracuda, angelfish, damselfish, grunts, juvenile groupers, a lionfish and even a shark! The shark was hanging around the anchor line but as soon as we all started to descend it swam away. They’re really very shy creatures and prefer to keep their distance. We’ve seen a number of sharks snorkeling, but it was cool to see one at a dive site finally. I’m excited for the next trip out on the water!
-Holly Bacon, Kenyon College

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