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!