Submitted by Alicia Gonzalez (Washington and Lee)
As the summer is coming to a close and school is quickly approaching, I wanted to share the experience of my first college research through the Keck Geology Consortium Coral research project. Coming into my first year at Washington and Lee, I found out that Professor Lisa Greer was a director of coral research in Belize. As someone who absolutely loves the ocean, I knew this was the perfect research for me. The scariest part was traveling out of the country (which I have only done once before in my life). However, once we arrived in Belize, I was ecstatic. Our group spent the rest of our travel day just swimming in the ocean, we were in the water up till dinner time!
The first step before diving into research was getting scuba-certified. This process was a lot easier than I anticipated. My favorite part was our last dive where we went down 60 ft! Have you ever wanted to fly? Well, diving made me feel like I was soaring. There is a whole world under the water and for a brief amount of time, I was a part of it. I even came face to face with a turtle. All I had to do was reach out my hand and I would have touched it (I was frozen in awe). All the sea creatures were curious to see what we were doing, there was a reef shark that kept following us. A grouper that looked scary at first turned out to be a sweetheart that just wanted to be pet.
Fun fact: My birthday fell on our fun day. We swam with sharks, snorkeled to a patch of living A. cervicornis, and Maggie (the best chef) made me a tres leches cake.
When I first applied to this research, I did not fully grasp that the Acropora Cervicornis had died. As we spent our days collecting samples and working along the transects, I did not have time to simply look at the coral. We had the luxury of meeting Lisa Gardiner, a writer, geoscientist, and educator who introduced us to an enlightening exercise. Taking a few minutes, we closed our eyes underwater and listened. Without the distraction of our fast-paced research, I heard the sound of fish picking at the coral and little animal noises that I could not distinguish. Laying on the ocean floor, I looked all around, pretending I was a fish. What a world, oh how I wish I could be a fish swimming without the need of an oxygen tank. It was at that moment, on the ocean floor, that I stared at the coral. It was a huge pile of coral that was once alive. I felt an overwhelming sense of devastation and desperation. However, visiting Fragments of Hope in Placencia restored my hope in saving the coral! We were gifted the opportunity to see living A. cervicornis and look at the coral nursery.
Lastly, I discovered that I love looking at fish. My goal was to find a new fish after each day, which I would then draw to the best of my ability into my research notebook. Some of my favorites were the flounder (Bothus lunatus), the smooth trunkfish (Lactophrys triqueter), and the spotted scorpionfish (Scorpaena plumier).
I still cannot believe how blessed I was to be a part of this research, I am going to miss my group, who made each day delightful.
