Friday Dec. 9th

Apologies for the late entry - We were away for a little on a 'camping trip', which we will post about later tonight.  The following is from Friday December 9th...  =W=

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Whaddup C-town. Aaron and Allie coming to you live from the shores of the Bahamas. Woke up to a beautiful rainy morning, which unfortunately did not hold off for our three-mile run (chafe city).  We did get to see a d o u b l e rainbow, which was amazing.  Give us another place where you can see a double rainbow at 6:00 in the morning. Breakfast was delicious: stacks of pancakes with grade-A-maple syrup (props to Liam) and bowls of granola. The group boated out a mile and a half off shore, where we searched for a hidden cage for aquaculture research that is able to hold up to 7,000 fish. We got lost. The boat ride was rough, and a lot of us wanted to throw up but eventually we got there.  The water was incredibly blue and seemed to go on for eternity and we got a sense of how small we are in relation to the waters that surround us. At one point, we were swimming above thousandths foot depths of eerie darkness. The CEI team plans to raise Copiah fish next year. They are waiting for the eggs to hatch. Following lunch, Justin, the assistant head of the island school gave us an interesting presentation on the impacts of ecotourism. We learned of the past plans to develop the island and the devastating effects it had on the ecosystem. The class broke up into two groups that read different articles where we then debated about the topics. The Case for Responsible Tourism and Weighed Down by Ethical Baggage were the two articles. We compared and contrasted, ultimately giving us a greater understanding of real world applications of ecotourism. Alex, our intern working with us, then helped us prepare for our down island camping trip, which we will be going on tomorrow. We packed up tents, gear, and food to prepare us for our excursion in the wild. This will be the last blog for a couple of days. Unfortunately, the class got in a bit of trouble by accessing Facebook during our stay, so we lost all of our exploration time. We spent the rest of the afternoon in quiet reading time. Our day ended on a high note however, as we spent the night laughing at YouTube videos and looking through the various pictures accumulated from our trip so far; overall another great day on the island.

We’ll be home soon, though most of us wouldn’t mind a few more days in the warm weather.

Stay classy,

Aaron and Allie