by Elaine Shen

Then and Now

This is a mandatory blog post for the Wagoner Foreign Study Fellowship. I am supposed to write a letter offering advice to my former self before I left for my trip. I also wrote this two weeks ago.

Dear past Elaine,

The worst and best is yet to come. I know you have been daydreaming about this trip and experience for a very long time, but don’t expect it to be as magical as your study abroad trip last time you were here. That was a program designed especially for university students to learn, and this time around, doing science in Panama will not feel so personalized Unfortunately, you will not be super integrated into the culture of Panama unless you spend a lot of personal energy trying to create that kind of connection. You will engage in some conversations with the locals, but you’ll crave reading a book on the cultural history of Panama. Most days, you’re going to feel as if you’re only valued for the manual labor you are able to contribute. You’ll feel like no one cares about how you feel and only about how you perform. You won’t be able to take days off without feeling uncomfortable since everyone is left to pick up your slack, and you’ll end up with a pit of extreme guilt sitting in your stomach.

You are going to cry a lot because you want everything to be perfect. Everything is going to intimidate you, even though they are very basic skills that other people in your field find extremely straightforward and easy. You’re gonna mess up (very early on, in fact). You will spend time thinking about how incompetent you are in a field you’ve been wanting to do your entire life. You’ll even doubt if you want a career in marine science, or if it was all one big daydream you’ve just managed to keep up your whole life.

You are going to understand so much more what it means to be a scientist- both physically and mentally. Both are important, but you are going to find that the mental strength will be hard to develop. Please, stop taking everything so personally. Your project and data are yours, but some of it is out of your control as to whether or not it will work. You could do everything perfectly and come up with no results. If you fail, it will be okay. But you know that your drive will get you through most of the harder times. Once you stop caring about what other people think about you, even if they are in a position of power, you will be so much happier. There is only so much you can do to change the results of your project up to a certain point, and the same thing happens with peoples’ perceptions of you.

Practice gratitude often, but also stop feeling like you are constantly an inconvenience to people. Recognize that your mentors agreed to help you, and asking questions and doing things slowly are all a part of the process. Do not boss people around, but reasonably expect people to take some of their time to help you. Remember to thank them, and help them later when they need it. The environment that labs create can be harsh and feel unreasonably ruthless, but you just need to be the bigger person, always smile, and remember what a great opportunity this is for you. Treat everyone with not just respect, but kindness. You’re also going to be surprised at how willing your co-workers are to listen to your fears, problems, and ideas. You’ll never call them co-workers because they will all become great friends who have shared a very unique summer with you.

All in all, don’t sweat the small stuff, even when it feels like too much sometimes. Rise to the occasion, you know you can! YOU WILL MEET YOUR GOALS BECAUSE ETHEY ARE REALISTIC BECAUSE YOU CAN DO IT!!

Cheers,

Future Elaine

 

 

by Elaine Shen

Reflection on Integration

This is a mandatory blog post for the Wagoner Foreign Study Fellowship…and was written two weeks ago.

Because the Smithsonian is an American institution, I was mainly surrounded by Americans and not Panamanians. I lived in a bit of a “science bubble,” which may not necessarily be Panamanian culture, but still something that required me to adjust accordingly. I experienced culture shock of a different kind, one that was more directly related to the field I want to go into after graduation.

Working in science, especially in the field, requires grit, endurance, and determination. A day in the field usually means a physically intensive 9-hour day in the ocean or on land, collecting samples and taking measurements of the ecosystem. You pass out as soon as you finish eating dinner, unable to do much of anything else due to exhaustion. You also have to prepare to wake up early in the morning to put on your swimsuit that is still wet from the day before.

In my experience, science takes no breaks – samples can be sensitive and require proper treatment, regardless of what day of the week it is. For the first two months of my summer, I worked six days a week every week in order to collect everything that was needed to be analyzed later in the molecular lab. I thought things would calm down after these long days in the field, but the molecular lab was not any different. There is no strict 9-5 work schedule, because DNA is sensitive and most protocols I started required I finish them all the way through before leaving. I constantly needed to be productive and working or else I would not get done at a reasonable hour. In the molecular lab, I worked 12-hour days about half the time, but mostly got both Saturdays and Sundays off.

Needless to say, the largest culture shock I experienced while in Panama was the culture of overworking. Everyone, not just my group, was subject to long and highly productive work days. The pressure of finishing projects as quickly as possible comes less from a single person or boss and more from the competitive nature of funding that is ever increasing in the science field. In order to start one project, in order to get more money, in order to have employment, you have to finish what you already have on hand – and what you have on hand better be good, because it’s probably a stepping stone to what happens next.

These reasons, external to me and who I worked with, are why I’ve come to terms with how stressed out and anxious I was as a product of this summer. There were sources of stress that I could not see or control that were affecting my daily life – but no one is to blame. The best I could do was remain optimistic, positive, helpful, and generous with my time. I also continued to express my gratitude for other peoples’ help – most of the time, I felt like I was inconveniencing people, and the least I could do was give a sincere thank you. It’s hard to remember to be gracious and acknowledge people for the work they do in this type of environment, because it’s expected of you to overwork and not complain about it. As long as my days were, there was always someone (probably my PI) working even more. It took me a long time to really stop taking everything so personally, which helped a lot.

It’s easy to get caught up in all of the downs I had this summer, because there were many. My project intimidated me and challenged me to rise to the occasion. I am so relieved that it is done now and everything worked, and now I feel very grateful for having such a difficult (at times) experience. I genuinely learned so much about so many aspects of marine biology (and I still have so much to learn about data analyses), and I could not have done that if I felt relaxed and detached from my work. I was totally immersed and treated like a real scientist, without much room for error. The worst thing to do in these kind of situations is be anxious and nervous – something I really had to combat in the last month I was here. In an environment that feels very tense, you have to learn to remain calm and relax. Kind of weird that I learned how to zen out at a molecular lab, but even faking that feeling was crucial for some of my last days where every day I was learning and doing a new skill.

The one thing that I have really appreciated having in Panama is independence, but independence is also one thing I have missed from the United States. I’ve gotten independence working on my own project and mainly calling all of my own shots, but I still don’t feel comfortable getting around Panama on my own to explore it. In Houston, I can get into my car and drive to wherever I want to go without having to worry about a language barrier or my personal safety, but I never fully got over those aspects of Panama, unfortunately. Of course, I also miss having my friends and parents close-by. I cannot wait to see them!

by Elaine Shen

TERMINAMO

Happy to announce that my three+ months in Panama has resulted in one tiny tube containing 60 microliters of data!!!! That’s basically one fat drop of liquid containing all of the DNA I sampled in the ocean.

This is literally all I have to show for my work right now.

To visualize the craziness of how far we’ve come with molecular tools and sequencing, I’m including what all it took to get this tiny tube:

1) Collect 144 samples from the ocean every day for three weeks and filter them on the boat for DNA on a small circle of material that gets put into a falcon tube.

Look at all these places I visited! Not included are the boat docks I also sampled at around the main island.

 

4) Dilute your extracts, set up hand-sized (!) PCR plates, and target the part of the DNA sequence you want (I wanted a region of the DNA that characterizes fish/metazoans from each other and not everything else) and add on primers that are unique DNA ID’s for later analysis. Clean up those plates with all of your samples….very gingerly.

4) Combine samples all into one row of another hand-sized PCR plate. Remember to breathe since everything still looks like there’s nothing in it but you know there’s something in it.

 

5) Ligate (add) on adapter (more DNA) sequences to further “multiplex” or differentiate your sequences from one another and….combine everything…everything you’ve worked so hard to not cross-contaminate, into one tube. Adding this photo again to emphasize how freaking tiny this tube and volume of liquid is.

Rejoice if the gel electrophoresis and DNA quantification tell you what you did was correct (this was also done throughout all of the steps mentioned above).

THIS EGGHEAD IS SO HAPPY!!

Working in a molecular lab for the first time ever on my samples was so nerve-wracking! I have never lost trust in myself so much as I have here. Staring into the tiniest amounts of clear liquid, going insane over how meticulous I needed to be in tracking my samples from one tiny well to another, and feeling satisfied with what I have accomplished at the end of each day have all taught me important lessons about my self-perception and confidence. It’s a mental game, one that I went into head-first. Every single thing I did (other than running a gel) was my first go at a protocol I had never done before on my samples…no trial runs. Plus, the days were melting away and I could feel the pressure of my departure date looming upon me. I cannot tell you how many times I stared into small tubes of clear liquid with my heart in my stomach and anxiousness in full swing, when I doubted myself and my ability to pipette correctly and accurately. I’m honestly quite shocked that my samples worked (well!) and that I have DNA worth sequencing.

If you don’t trust your samples and don’t trust yourself, you’ll never get a project done. Believe in your work and your ability to execute it. I’m still not confident in myself or my work (yet), despite the numbers and gels telling me so. But just because I can’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s not there. I guess that can apply to a lot of things.

Anyways I just wanted to express my RELIEF and GRATITUDE that I am done with what I set out to do in Panama. I board my flight home in three days!

by Elaine Shen

City life (aka I’m working on another island and surrounded by rainforest)

I have been devastatingly poor at updating this blog about my time in Panama City. This is my first full-length post about my time in the molecular lab, largely because most days have consisted of pretty much what you think of when you envision a molecular lab. Although, I do work on another island! This one just happens to be connected to the rest of the city via a road.

The right island (where the little vine is poking up) is Naos, where I work! This was taken on top of Ancon Hill, near where I live.

I commute every morning between 7-8 am to Naos Island on the Amador Causeway from Cerro Ancon, the neighborhood that I live in. The Naos Molecular Lab used to be owned by the U.S. military and was used to protect the canal. As such, there are still remnants (like an old bomb shelter I think) next to the aquarium tanks outside.

For the past couple of weeks, I have been taking my water filters, cutting them up, and extracting them for DNA. Ironically, the less control I have over sterilization and contamination between samples, the less stressed out I am about it. In the field while filtering water on a boat, there was no way I could’ve maintained a perfectly sterile environment, so there was no point in stressing out unnecessarily about it. However in the molecular lab, contamination is something that can be corrected for with intense meticulousness. Because of this, I can feel myself going crazy over whether or not a surface is sterile, because it looks the same dirty or DNA-free. This is because my samples wouldn’t just be contaminated with other Caribbean marine organisms (like they would in the field) – other people in the lab are working on samples from terrestrial and marine ecosystems that are definitely not anywhere near Bocas del Toro, which could throw off my data completely.

Posing while setting up my samples for DNA quantification at the end of the day.

So basically, I have been high-risk pipetting away, taking the biodiversity I sampled for and consolidating them into tiny tubes. On Monday, I finally finished extracting all (140+!) of my samples, and this is all I had to show for it – two tiny boxes of even tinier tubes. Now, I’m beginning the process of preparing my samples for sequencing, which involves even tinier tubes and an even smaller margin for error.

Ocean –> 1 liter of water –> thin filter –> tube –> tinier tubes –> DNA –> computer code….my samples just keep on getting smaller and smaller!

On the weekends (which I finally have consistently off!!), I’ve enjoyed hiking around some picturesque rainforests and walking around other really neat places in the city. It’s truly incredible to be surrounded by so much lush green in such a modern city. Animals that I wouldn’t even think of seeing at the Houston Zoo call home places that are as close as outside my window!

Spent my first weekend hiking and sweating to see this view of the city from the Metropolitan Park!

The Panama Canal is right in my backyard! Try and spot all of the modern forms of transportation in this photo!

Got to visit my friend Carlos at Canopy Tower where he works as an awesome guide and bird-whisperer!

From the top of Canopy Tower, Carlos set up a spotting scope to see this adorable three-toed sloth out and about.

Check out this poisonous golden orb spider feasting on a cicada! The females make intricate golden webs that can sometimes trap small birds and bats! Insane!

Even though I spent some time previously doing touristy things here almost exactly a year ago during my time studying abroad (anniversary is coming up soon!), there is always more to see. I visited Panama Viejo, the ruins of what once was Panama City in the 16th century. It’s incredible to think that a settlement of 5,000 people grew to be what the city is today – now skyscrapers tower over in the background of this World Heritage Site.

Panama Viejo was founded in 1519 and existed for 152 years before it was destroyed by pirates in 1671.

This exposed staircase from the tower was the coolest sight by far!

Some other favorite moments of mine have been buying fresh fruits and veggies at the open air market (Mercado de Abastos) across the highway from me and visiting my friend Coll in Gamboa, where the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute conducts a lot of rainforest studies. We biked around most of the town down to Pipeline Road, which is world-famous for birding. Unfortunately, I didn’t see many birds since I am a poor biker and focused mainly on trying to not fall face first into the muddy, uneven road. Regardless of my skills, it was still a super fun day!

When you go off-roading on a 12-year old bike, the mud stains are inevitable.

On top of a bat and stingless bee-ridden lighthouse after a day of bike riding!

It’s been nice to live in the moment, but unfortunately that means slacking on other responsibilities that are fast-approaching (including the beginning of my senior year)! Truly, for the vast majority of my time here, I have been waking up early, working 9-12 hours in lab, cooking, and sleeping.

The countdown has begun though…9 days until I return back to the United States!

by Elaine Shen

Beach town to big city – Observing public spaces

This is a mandatory blog post for the Wagoner Foreign Study Fellowship.

As mentioned in my previous blog post, I spent some time in Bocas del Toro to myself, walking around the main street of the town and quietly people-watching. It was an overcast Saturday afternoon, and I sat down at the public park to eat a sandwich and watch the locals and tourists around me enjoy a day off.

Check out my last post for a picture of the park. Here’s one of the benches, next to the awesome root structure of an old tree!

While parents sat down on one of the many benches relax in the shade of tall tropical trees, small gangs of children played pretend with each other and ran around the playground nearby. People from all over the world were perusing the wares of indigenous vendors for a unique souvenir to bring back home. Haggling isn’t necessarily explicit here, but definitely possible. The streets were empty enough to walk in the middle of them, which gives a view of one side of town to the other.

A view of the colorful town on Isla Colon from the plane!

Here, Latin American time is more apparent. Life moves slowly and the general attitude of people is relaxed and friendly. Everyone knows each other here, which makes the small town feel even cozier. For example, I talked to Randolf, a Bocatorreno (Bocas local), about how the trash problem, small business greed, and development has changed on the island  during his lifetime. People are easy to approach here, and everyone promotes each others’ businesses with stickers and word of mouth. The presence of the ocean must contribute to this somehow – whether people spend their time surfing or driving around people in boat taxis, people float about their daily activities and do not stress about being on time or staying productive.

However, in Panama City, things are different. Although I’m only an hour-long flight away from Bocas, the hustle and bustle of a large city takes over Latin American time. Traffic is persistent and aggressive, and people are always rushing from one place to another. The Panama Canal is always a looming presence, since the city lines the water and you can see large shipping boats constantly waiting their time to pass through. Industry and commerce occupy the downtown area, along with swanky large hotels.

Big highways for a big city.

I spend a good amount of my time working in a lab, so I don’t get a chance to observe a daily Panamanian’s life all that often. One thing that is apparent is the huge income inequality here – the glass high-rises don’t describe a huge proportion of the population. I’m still hesitant to walk alone on busy streets in some of the neighborhoods around me, but I can tell that between one street and another, there are totally different avenues of life taking place in a densely packed area.

One of my favorite places that I have gone so far is the Mercado de Abastos, or Wholesale Food Market. Here, informal stands of produce are displayed in an open air market and you get to walk through a maze of freshly picked produce. The more you buy, the cheaper the food is, making for great group-cooking potential. Some farmers are more vocal with their products, while others try and stay cool with a soda and just stare at you. I purchased two ripe avocados carefully selected for me by the shop owner for $1 each. I also purchased a small bag of “mamonchinos,” or rambutan, for a dollar and enjoyed the sour-sweet taste of this hairy and colorful fruit back at my dorm.

One of the many colorful tropical fruit stands at the Mercado de Abastos.

Mamonchino, or rambutan, is definitely another unusual looking tropical fruit. It’s related to the lychee!

A fusion of the city and Bocas happened when I was in Casco Viejo, an incredibly touristy part of Panama City that I spend a lot of time in for its coffee shops and architecture. I happened across a man’s stand that sold some hand-made jewelry and in particular, a shark tooth necklace that caught my eye. His jewelry resembled that of someone I knew in Bocas named Pablo, who handcrafted jewelry from stones and things he collected from all over. I looked up to see someone wearing Bocas del Toro shirt and immediately started talking to him about Pablo, doing marine biology in Bocas, and more. He introduced himself as Tote and told me that he was actually best friends with Pablo (“como uno hermano”) and that his mom’s name is Elena, which is my name in Spanish! His brother is also the one responsible for all the “Sweet Love Bocas” tagging all over the main part of town.

Tote putting the finishing touches on my necklace!

The world became so small all of a sudden. Here in front of me was someone who was born and raised in Bocas del Toro, who knew exactly what I was talking about when I said that Bocas people were some of the friendliest people in Panama. He said the city-dwellers are always focused on profit and money, while Bocas people were more about having a good time and spreading “good energy.”

Another vendor nearby who was from the city came to disagree with him a bit, saying that profit-hungry city people was a huge generalization/stereotype. Regardless, they gave each other a friendly fist-bump and continued to participate in the tourist-jewelry hustle together. I left with a shark tooth necklace from Tote and a little crystal he gifted me for the serendipitous meeting we had.

Panama has a huge natural biodiversity and cultural diversity as well. Between urban and rural, coastal and agricultural, you can see the people become products of their environment (and vice-versa, of course). While admittedly, I am not as comfortable spending time alone in a foreign country unless I feel totally safe (which is usually in more tourist-y, English-heavy areas), the Panamanian spirit is still quite contagious and very different from that of the United States. But more on that in another post!

by Elaine Shen

A day alone in Bocas Town

Here is one of my very delayed posts about a day I had to myself in Bocas del Toro, Panama.

I found myself one Sunday wanting to go on a Big Walk all throughout town to do some random musings and quietly observe the Sunday hum-drum of tourists and locals.

The main street of Isla Colon on a typical cloudy day.

I knew my first stop had to be the cemetery. I drove by it so many times wondering how people here honor those who have passed. Some of the tombs were colored by tiles and fake flowers, since fresh ones are hard to find. Nature was  definitely present, with overgrowing plants and crashing waves right next to this peaceful last resting spot. I remember being surprised by how many foreign names were present in this cemetery, captains and businessmen from all over side-by-side with their local counterparts.

The front of the municipal cemetery.

A “cross” section of the cemetery.

Tiled tombs.

I also walked by this awesome sight:

Found on a deserted beach on a lonely cement piece!

“Sweet Love Bocas” is the mantra of Bocas del Toro, and you can see this graffiti all over town done by artist Fulo Coqueño.

Of course, I made my way to some of the tourist-y stands to check out molas. Molas are a form of traditional textile art made by the Guna, an indigenous group of Panama. These pieces are made by a reverse appliqué technique where pieces of cloth are sewn into panels with complex and multiple layers that are removed to create intricate designs. Before, the mola used to refer to their traditional dress, but after contact with missionaries, they began to transfer their designs on fabric. This article notes that the textile form was “an art of reaction, a hybrid art stemming from contact and conflict with whites” because the Guna were either forced or wanted to imitate Western clothing. Now, you can find Guna women selling hundreds of molas on the street, each carefully woven (if not sneakily machine stitched) and thought out. Some animals are apparently more symbolic than others in traditional Guna culture, but I was not able to distinguish this during my time there.

These are smaller molas that caught my eye, but they can get much larger (think: tapestry-sized). Those take months upon months to make, while these take much shorter.

After grabbing a sandwich, getting the local’s discount at a boutique on a sarong, and enjoying the company of the town’s park, I did a little bit of grocery shopping. One thing that might strike you as unusual at first is the number of grocery stores here…and the fact that they are all owned by Chinese people. In fact, it is common to just refer to grocery stores as “Chinos” here for that reason. Oftentimes, I will speak to the cashiers and owners in Chinese just to ask them how their days are going. The origin for Chinese people in Panama can be traced back to the 1850s when Chinese laborers helped construct the Panama Canal Railway and later, the Panama Canal.

Views from my park bench! Behind this tree is the hostel I stayed in the last time I was in Bocas working on a low-budget marine project.

One of many Chinese-owned grocery shops in Bocas (and the rest of Panama).

On my way back to the station trying to catch a taxi, I also got a glimpse of a local artist painting on her front yard. How painter-esque!

Her home was also covered in lovely paintings of wildlife 🙂

I also serendipitously met up with Juan, a waiter from a burger place that I knew from visiting there so often in two months. We got a beer at a local hotel happy hour and ended up talking for two hours about science and human existence. Kind of weird, kind of okay…

And that’s how I ended my solo adventure in Bocas, the last adventure I will have there for now.

by Elaine Shen

VIDEO: Bocas del Toro 2017

I filmed a little here and there while out and about in Bocas del Toro, Panama and wanted to share a glimpse of what life has been like for the past two months. If this is your first time clicking on my blog, I hope you take the time to read over my other posts! The ocean is a beautiful place, and trying to understand it takes a lot of hard work and effort! Thankfully, it’s a lot easier to change every day consumption habits to help conserve these environments for generations to come.

Enjoy!

by Elaine Shen

Bocas blues

Yesterday marked the last day I will be in Bocas del Toro working at this field station. Boy has it been a crazy two months!

Different gradients of blue and green in the warm sun made for a beautiful sampling day!

 

Gonna miss this field station, even if it’s over a caiman and mosquito-ridden pond!

Two days ago, I took my final water samples at a few different sites around the bay. As I was swimming through the water, I was greeted by two (!) large stingrays and feeling nostalgic already.

Not to sound dramatic, but these past two months have been the most difficult I’ve ever had in my entire life. Although I have been dreaming of doing marine biology research at a real institution and laboratory for a while, the day-to-day realities of being in the field and working long, stressful hours definitely took a mental and physical toll on me. I’ve spent an above-average amount of time crying here.

With few exceptions, I have worked 6-day weeks for anywhere in-between 8-16 hours every day. These past two weeks where I was finishing sampling for my project, I spent a lot of time in lab alone sterilizing my equipment for the next day and staring at geckos eating insects that were attracted to the lab lights late at night.  One night, I was so tired from the field that I passed out at 7:00 pm and woke up at 4:30 in the morning to clean and prepare for that day’s sampling in the field. However exhausting, I still felt incredibly motivated to move forward with my project because it was mine (if that makes sense). If I didn’t spend those extra hours, no one was there to provide a safety net. This sense of independence was hard earned, but worth it.

Long nights sterilizing equipment were long.

One thing I’ve learned is that no matter how interesting the research is, people matter. My highs and lows were less about the actual data I was collecting, but how people made me feel about core aspects of my personality, intelligence, and work ethic. Fortunately, I had a great cohort of friends to lift my spirits when things were going south, and for them I am so thankful (truly).

My lab group for the past two weeks! Will and Janina do fish surveys while I take water samples and filter them on the boat. We are comparing their fish surveys to my environmental DNA samples!

Tough, but ready for laughs and work!

I think most people think that I have been on a glorified vacation, but in reality, I think I need a vacation after this trip. I can’t ignore the sheer beauty of the islands and ocean though – I’ll definitely miss them more when I don’t get to see them every day.

A view of productive coral reefs never gets old.

I know the tone of this blog post was overwhelmingly sad. And don’t get me wrong- there were many high points all throughout (you might read them in the future since I’m so backlogged on blog posts!) I just think these emotions, feelings, and struggles are worth mentioning because they are so often masked by pretty pictures and whimsical assumptions of a tropical escape. If anything, these two months have put me face to face with the rest of my life, and I’ll be honest, sometimes it was a lot all at once. Onwards I go!

by Elaine Shen

I’ve officially been ditched

** This blog post was written last Saturday (July 1st) but never posted….sorry for the delay!!**

This last week of lab before everyone left (except for me) moved quite slowly – we finished up a few more sediment decantations (view below!), mangrove root masses, and seagrass samples. Slowly but surely, the lab got packed up into large boxes and I waved goodbye to the group of people I have been working closely with for the last month.

I got left behind to finish my project, which if you recall, got delayed since I needed to receive some filters from Rice (which I did, thanks BioSciences!)

It’s weird to transition from working with the same group of people every day in a room to working all alone. Today was my first *official* day alone, and working on my water samples by myself is a strange feeling. Although there are other people and labs here working (in fact, I’ve been sitting in the same room as two other girls for a few hours), I am much quieter and reserved. This next week will definitely be challenging because I will have little to no help in processing my samples and sterilizing my equipment for my project.

On a brighter note though, yesterday was perfect! Rosalyn and Amanda stayed behind an extra day to explore more of the area and I joined them to Bastimentos Island, a place I hadn’t been to yet.

“Welcome to Bastimentos, god island home of the holy spirit”

It’s been a while since I’ve been hiking through jungle!

We spent the morning sweating and hiking up to visit Up in the Hill, an organic farm and coffee shop. At one point, we were met with a surprising guest:

SNAKE!!! I’ve rarely seen them alive and slithering about in the wild, so this was both a special and scary moment!

The hike was totally worth it. The farm is a hidden treasure in groves of trees and forest, and we were immediately greeted with the owners’ kids and cats. We took off our shoes and entered the Disney-like, cozy café, surrounded by handmade products and information about chocolate production. Just from looking in the nearby plants, I spotted a red poison dart frog! Since the farm is organic, a lot of rainforest creatures are able to coexist within this plot of land. One of the cats even ran past us with a freshly-caught lizard in its mouth.

Feels even nicer knowing we had to earn this view!

Poison dart frog!! Another pretty rare sighting.

We all decided on ordering a cold cacao drink with fresh coconut milk, which was as delicious as it sounds. Rosalyn described a tropical fruit she once had, only to have the owner swiftly hand us that fruit from a nearby tree. It’s known as custard apple in English, and definitely lives up to its name in terms of taste.

Don’t custard apples look like something you would find on Neopets?

After a quick stop to Coco Hill, a vegan/vegetarian friendly restaurant, we made our way to Red Frog Beach, which required a small hike through a reforested rainforest that is part of the the Bastimentos Island National Park.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing and enjoying the beach. It was so peaceful and fun to jump into the large Caribbean Sea that we almost missed our boat back our main island!

Beautifully warm water and beach, courtesy of the Caribbean.

I’m gonna miss these guys!!

by Elaine Shen

Too much stuff has happened

In the past 10 days, I have:

  • Climbed through insect-ridden mangroves once more to take their measurements
  • Began working on my environmental DNA project!!!
  • Made a funnel cake (sort-of)
  • Abruptly halted my environmental DNA project because I did something wrong again
  • Turned 21
  • Actually used the kitchen for a proper meal

I feel confident in saying that I have become one with the mangroves. This past week, our group has taken above-ground biomass surveys, root density counts, habitat complexity scores, fish surveys, eDNA surveys, and root lengths. That’s all in addition to the past three weeks of processing the mangrove roots themselves in lab for the living organisms on them. All of these measurements help describe the structure and biodiversity of mangroves so that we can compare differences between sites and ecosystems. It’s crazy to think you can quantify so much in such a small sliver of the Caribbean.

In addition to this, I finally started taking data for my project! I am taking water samples from the ocean at all of our marine sites to see how environmental DNA floating in seawater matches up to the whole organisms we can see when processing mangrove and seagrass samples in the lab. More specifically, I am comparing my environmental DNA water samples to traditional fish surveys. While other scientists are swimming through the water, identifying and counting fish, I am sampling the water to capture the DNA that the fish are shedding. This way, we are all capturing a moment in time in mangroves, seagrasses, and coral when fish (and their DNA) are present. It’s a lot easier and less invasive to take water samples than to spend hours snorkeling through these ecosystems, so hopefully I find that the fish diversity in my water samples is similar to the fish diversity that the other scientists are finding. Plus, it will be interesting to see how fish diversity changes between mangroves, seagrasses, and corals.

First day sampling for my project went smoother than expected!

Because it takes much longer to do a traditional fish survey than it does to sample water, I filter my water samples while in the field on the boat. To filter a water sample for its environmental DNA, I push water through a filter that is fine enough to trap DNA in it, but not the rest of the water. That filter gets frozen until DNA extraction can be done. In order to force water through such a small filter, I use a pump connected to a drill. This whole system was optimized with the Funnel Cake, a vision of Coll’s and mine. We found a broken bucket and sawed off the cracked top. With the bottom of the bucket, we connected together all the parts necessary for water filtering. Now, the whole system fits into something close to the size of a baking pan…thus the name Funnel Cake.

The movement of water in the Funnel Cake is from left to right. First, the water sample is pre-filtered on the plastic tupperware with mesh and goes into the funnel (the cup-like thing with the blue bottom). The blue bottom holds the filter that will catch the eDNA. The waste water will go into the Erelynmeyer flask to the far right. Inbetween is a metal and plastic peristaltic pump that forces water through the filter and moves water through the whole system. It’s powered by a cordless rechargable drill I bring onto the boat.

But then… a small disaster struck. I brought replacement filters to put into the funnels (the cup-like thing on the Funnel Cake), but they were the wrong item. Now, sampling has been briefly halted and I will stay behind at the field station a bit longer to finish. Such is the reality of field work – mistakes may happen, but most are easily remedied. A package from Rice will be in my hands soon and my facial expression will be the same as the one below when another package for me arrived (thanks Correa Lab + BioSciences crew!)

Remember that equipment (filter funnels) I forgot at the beginning of my trip? After a long journey, they finally arrived and marked the beginning of my project sampling! International shipping is super tricky.

Oh also, I turned 21 last Saturday! I had been celebrating the long overdue start to my project by eating delicious food and legally having a few happy hour drinks after long days in the field. On my actual birthday, I helped decant sediment samples and then went out to dinner and dancing. I ate the best fish burger I’ve ever had, along with a fresh fruit smoothie with a splash of rum.

After a long day in the field, we rushed to a happy hour and then bought out a small empanada stand. We couldn’t resist eating while walking!

Thanks Captain Caribe for the delicious dinner!

Joan and I got some cool face paint at the club!

Today, I made pineapple fried rice for the group and an apple birthday cake was made for me by Rosalyn (and others)! Even though a lot has happened this week, it’s nice to know that there is always a supportive group nearby to keep spirits high! 🙂

You know you’re extra when you stuff pineapple fried rice into a martini glass to shape it and add a pineapple leaf garnish on top.

Don’t have half the ingredients for an apple cake? No problem. Just as delicious without!