The sun shines on your face while you look upon the beautiful crystal-clear waters of the Caribbean Sea; pleased by the harmonious sound of the crushing waves on the far horizon, your soul feels flooded with peace. But suddenly, as if all the havoc in the world has gathered upon you, a loud screams “What the bloody hell are you playing at?! CATCH THAT CRAP,” reminding you that you are not on a vacation trip, but on a specimen recollection mission on Linton Island.

     The students in Biology II, with Dr. Ernesto Quintero, departed on a collection trip to Linton Island in search of species endemic to the area that would be useful for the animal diversity lab.

     The trip developed without any major problems. Here we share a few pictures of the trip and as well as a brief summary of events.


The arrival:

     Professor Quintero, Arquimedes, Maria, Aaron, and myself (Carlos), waiting for the boat that would take us to Linton Island (in the background).


Finally:

     After waiting for a couple of minutes the boat arrived and the team started loading the baggage. By this time the sun was quite friendly.


I see sleepy people:

     Ok, to go on this trip the team had to wake up early because the rendezvous was at 7:30 a.m., and as you can see on the faces of the students, we had not slept enough (including myself).


Gruesome revelations:

     After arriving at Linton’s harbor the team encountered murky waters and almost none of the specimens that we were looking for. However, the collection continued, with the help of snorkelling gear. The team collected sea cucumbers, algae and a couple of crabs, which as we found out are no easy catch because they are very fast swimmers and deliver quite a nasty bite, as professor Quintero personally experienced.

     Here professor Quintero found an exceptionally large sea cucumber, which released its intestines just seconds before I took this picture, giving Maria a close view of its extreme defense mechanisms. By this time the sun had become mean.


     Two students left in a state of shock by the intestine show…and professor Quintero swimming to put back the sea cucumber.

Catch and release


     Not all specimens collected were brought back to be dissected. Animals like that brave intestine throwing sea cucumber and other animals too beautiful to be dissected were released back into their environment.


     The collection is restricted to a few individuals to avoid having a negative impact on the population.

     After patrolling the beach side for a couple of hours (taking heavy amounts of sun) and not finding any of the desired species, Professor Quintero decided that the crew should go to other areas in search of different specimens.

     The next visit was to a salt water pool in between some mangroves. This would be been a great place to collect species because mangrove sunken roots function as baby care sites for a lot of species. But by the time we got there strong waves were pushing water into the area, creating a strong current that lifted the sediments from the bottom, making visibility very difficult.

     One last try was made around the harbour where we first took the boat. This decision was a total jackpot because we could see this coral reef with many different species including some we were looking for and some we were not. Our finds included the dangerous fire coral and some other species we could not identify.

     In a nutshell, the trip was a success even though for the first four hours we had not found any of the species we wanted and by the end of this time we all had mild cases of sunburn. I really enjoyed this trip because it was the second time in my life I used snorkelling gear and I saw with my own eyes animals that I had only seen in TV and in books. The trip also gave my class a 3-D feeling because I was not only studying from a book, a TV show or cold, dead specimens. For a while I saw the animals in their natural habitat and the way they interacted with it, which was a very enriching experience.

A day’s work


     Back to the lab, where we cleaned and sorted the specimens collected. By this time I had a very bad sunburn on my back and I thought to myself "I should've been a farmer like my father wanted".

This was one of the species we were looking for; sea urchins collected in Linton harbour.



This was the bonus catch of the day: a Trumpet shell.




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