Dr. P’s Resort

Dr. P’s Resort

We had a brief break in between when the recap ended and when Dr. David Reznick came to visit in which we had to spend most of the time working. I took this ooportunity to travel to Tobago for 2 nights. I went with my friends Lev, Jack, and Max which was a great group to travel with. We got up very early one morning and took a taxi to Port of Spain where we took the 2 hour ferry to Scarborough, the biggest city on Tobago. Form here we hitched a bus to the town of Charlottesville. We had been advised to go to this town cause it is a sleepy little fishing town on the north end of the island away from the southern hub-bub where most of the tourist resorts are.

We got off the boat and where approached by a young man who said that his uncle had a guesthouse where we could stay. Having no other accommodations yet, we decided to check the place out. He called his uncle who came down the hill to meet us.

While we waited the young man guided us to a woman’s house. She served us a delicious meal of plantains, goat, and rice which we ate on the dock, watching the slow movement of the town.

Dr. P is a stately older man with a steady gaze and calm demeanor. He walked us up the hill and told us about his island: how it was different than Trinidad and how it had changed over the years. We turned off the main road and followed him along a little path, passing a small faded, white sigh with red lettering “Dr. P’s Resort”. As we passed a beautiful pink house he remarked that it was the house he was born in. We continued a little further, passing his current house to our little white house. It was a beautiful little two-bedroom house with a kitchen and bathroom and a porch overlooking the bay dotted with fishing boats. He showed us the ins and outs and after telling us it would cost 150 TT a night, which split 4 ways is US$ a night, we decided it was the place for us.

We walked down to the town and along the beach for a while talking with a couple fisherman as we went. They were used to tourists meandering through their town and offered to take us out in their boat fishing the next day. After more wandering and relaxing on the beach, we settled in a little bar at the end where a couple of locals were playing pool. They offered us the next game and we payed the 50 US cents to the bar tender. As usual I was the only woman in the place, but traveling with 3 men kept the fisherman at bay, asking each of them if they wer my boyfriend. Eventual one man offered to let me play pool on his team against his two friends. He said that he would help me and teach me a few things. On his first turn he didn’t make anything and the other guy put in a stripe or two. No one really knew what to do when, on my turn, I cleared all but one of our solids. It was a good night.

The next morning we arranged with Dr. P’s nephew, Kyson, to go out on his friends boat and go snorkeling. It was great snorkeling, the coral was very healthy and there were many fish to see. And I Love the ocean. Being biologist nerds, we all staying in the water for over an hour. I think Kyson and his friend thought we were a little crazy. When they finally pulled us out we drove around a bit to see the other coves in the bay then back to the dock. His friend had been fishing that morning and we got some tuna for dinner a long with some veggies from another one of Dr. P’s family members.

We walked over to pirates bay for another snorkel and saw the most beautiful sun set. We watched a little local soccer game in town and had another beer a local bar. Then we went back to our little cute house and cooked up our dinner.

The next morning we had to get up early and reverse the whole trip to make it back home in time to start working again with David. I would love to go back to Dr. P’s resort again.

The ants go marching one by one

I was squatting on the edge of the stream, peering into a pool for a tan flash when I see a frog hopping along the bank and into the water, then another came by, and then a big beetle too. I thought this curious and as I look up to see what’s around me Max tells me to watch out for the ants. I look to my right and about a meter or two away the ground is moving. I quickly hop to a rock in the middle of the water and we watch as a group of army ants marches along the bank. With amazing efficiency they cover every inch. There are scout ants the move ahead of the front line and up the stalks and branches of every plant along the way. Then there is the main mass of marchers that cover the ground from the bank back as far as I could see and is about 3 meters deep. These cover and break apart everything in their path, taking cues from the scouts. We saw them take apart bigger bugs but they can manage frogs all the way up to mice!!!! Then, there are the following trails that clean up what the mass has scavenged and take it back to wherever. Everything in their path was fleeing into the water or the air trying to get out of their way as they marched a path through the jungle. Very Cool!

“Educate a women and you educate a nation, Educate a man and you educate an individual.” –Andy Cupid, an older Rasta guy on the street of Arima.

“Educate a women and you educate a nation, Educate a man and you educate an individual.” –Andy Cupid, an older Rasta guy on the street of Arima. One day Zoe, Meredith, Jack and I were walking through the market getting our fruits and vegetables when we pass a stand where they sell plants. There are 5 or 6 older rasta guys sitting around having a couple beers and liming. One notices us walking by and pulls us over. Although we insist that we are running errands, which is not an acceptable excuse in Trinny Time, there is always a little time for a lime. He is wearing funky sun glasses that I associate with the 70’s and has dreads down to his waist that are wrapped up in his hat. He whispers, “hush” and waits for a beat of silence as we lean in close… then begins, “There’s a natural mystic flowing through the air” he sings. All his friends laugh and we smile as he said "I'm a capturer, soul adventurer.” Everyone bobs along and listens as he does his own rendition. He has a great voice for a guy singing on the streets of Arima and is really into entertaining. He then asks us our favorite bob Marley song and Meredith offers soul rebel. After a lively rendition of a great tune he thanks us for listening and begins to tell us a little bit more about his philosophy and offers up the gem that if you educate a women you educate a nation, if you educate a man you educate an individual. He explains that this is because we all came from women, that the man may have planted the seed, but the Woman is responsible for raising the nation. He is very spirited and asks each of one of us if we came from a woman, and with each yes reconfirming his point he gets more and more lively and excited. After a bit we explain that we must be on our way, and although they are persistent that we should stay a bit longer we insist, and with a kiss on each hand we are off. We often pass by this stand and I believe we have made some new friends who will want to have many more discussions and sing-alongs.

Liming

Lime [lim] verb (liming)- to hang out; to socialize or relax alone or with others : We just went into town to lime at the park; Where do you lime? noun- a period of time or event when hanging out and socializing occurred : Last night we had a great lime; Are you going to that lime at Jill’s House.

The Guppsters

Felipe the Russian Mexican from Canada Felipe is a PhD student working on guppy parasites. He comes down here for months at a time to work with the fish, but this time he only came for 2 weeks to collect fish to take back with him to study in Canada. He was born in Russian (where his mom is from) and moved to Mexico (where his dad is from) when he was young and stayed there through college. He then went to work on his PhD in Montreal but spends a lot of time in Trinidad. He speaks Russian and Spanish fluently, and English and French very, very well but with a Spanish/Russian accent that you can probably only imagine. He has spent a lot of time here so he knows a lot of people and good places to go. Every time he went into town I would try and go with him to meet his produce guy and such, and get to know the town better. Felipe could also do the Mr. Bean Dance spot on! He left a few days ago but it was really great to have him around and I hope to stay in touch if I ever get into parasites (Nick!?!). Captain Jack the Hunter Gatherer Jack is the tall blond Viking that was supposed to pick me up at the airport. He didn’t but he is still around helping out. It is his 4th month here and next he is heading off to Ecuador to visit some friends from when he was abroad there. We chat about that a lot. He spends most of his time talking about various fruits that are ready to be picked and about to be ripe around the house and at the field sites. He roasts coffee and makes coco from cacao. We always have bananas on hand. When he is not gathering food he is making bowls and jewelry out of coconut shells and various seeds he has collected from the forest. He is very sweet and just wants to live in simpler times, and man he would have been good at it! Reasonable Max the Cook Max is the oldest intern having been out of school for two years. He went to UC Berkley and spent a year in panama doing plant research. He now has a great mustache and worldly manner about him. He is our levelheaded old man who likes to just discuss things and go to bed early. He is the amazing cook who puts a lot of time and energy into his meals, focusing on the little details, adding things like fresh ginger to his orange juice and a hint of red wine to his stir fry. I am learning a lot about the little things that go a long way in cooking, but he gets a little intense about it. He is very smart and witty and says funny, clever things all the time. Meredith the Hoosier Lady Meredith is our only non-west-coaster and she is loud and proud about it. She is a super funny and can make great animal noises, really spot on. She is great for funky dancing, goofy outfits, and discussions of Indianan corn. This is her 3rd month, so she knows the whole process well, and she will be here till December. We get along really well and I’m glad she will be around my whole time here. Zoe the Scrippsie!!! Zoe is a sweetheart. She is very easy going, is always making things simple, and has a really refreshing honesty to her. It is really nice to have someone around who knows the same people, the same professors, and the same places and references from school. It creates a nice transitional space where we can just talk about the good old days as it were. Especially with school starting up again and thinking about not being there, its great to have someone to talk to and feel connected to. Also, we have are very scrippsie moments, and she is always there to make me feel better. Even though the group is great, there are always things people say that would not fly at the Claremonts or things that happen in town that we have a different awareness of than the others, and we can understand each others frustration with a situation. She will only be here the first month and I will miss her when she is gone. Will the Boss… Not really Will is the Field Manager so he is technically my boss but he is only 25 and prefers not to be seen as a figure of authority. He does keep things moving and in stickier situations, especially in the field, he really knows what he is doing, but the rest of the time he is really relaxed and fun to hang out with. He is very much that shy, nerdy kid from elementary school who wore dinosaur t-shirts but all grown up now. All you need is Lev Lev is the most difficult person to describe I would say. He is really into marshal arts, especially the ideological side of things. He does poi, which is the spiny firey balls that you see street performers doing sometimes, and he is teaching me with tennis balls on a string. He is very thoughtful about the things around him and loves just talking to people. He is also makes very funny faces and often says things that are really off the wall but hilarious. So that’s the group. Also, Amelia you will like to know that none of us are first children in birth order, and we are mostly last kids and an only child. Although, I shared your theory and we don’t believe it; some of us have very crazy older siblings. I will keep you filled in with turn over and such but I imagine the laid back dynamic and nerdy outdoorsy vibe will remain.

Processing: One Fish, Two Fish, Red Mark, Blue Mark

There are 4 jobs to processing: the anesthesiologist, the marker, photos, and data.

1. Two fish at a time get put in a chemical that puts them to sleep. This is a very important job because it dictates the speed of the entire process. They cant be in the liquid too long otherwise they die… and they have to be asleep by the time the next step is ready for them so that person isn’t waiting for them to fall asleep. This person is also in charge of moving around the tanks and making sure every fish ends up where it is supposed to end up. This was my first job. It was previously called the “fish bitch” but the scrippsie in me could not handle that name so I changed it to take after my wonderful sister and it actually stuck!

2. So after the anesthesiologist has knocked the guppy out, it gets passed to the Marker. (By the way, we cant handle the fish by hand because it is too rough on their scales so we must use plastic spoons with holes in them and other tools to move them around) The marker has a microscope and looks at the fish. If it has already been marked they read the mark to the data person. If it has not been caught before they give it a tattoo. The tattoo it a colorful plastic liquid that is injected just under the skin in a streak along its back, two for each fish. I have done this on practice fish but not real fish until I have practiced enough that they are sure I will not kill one of the study fish. And while I have not yet killed a fish, I still need some practice… these are tiny fish.

They also take scales from each fish to be analyzed in the lab to form a family tree of all the guppies caught. And they weigh each fish too.

3. The data person receives and records the information read out by the marker on long lists from the previous month (150 pages) with all the fish that have been tagged, matching recaught fish to old fish and recording new fish. I do not prefer this job. It’s hard for me to listen and remember the tags as I'm flipping through the pages. Silly I know but I get distracted and 2pink7green becomes all kinds of wrong combinations.

4 I like being the photographer. The photographer takes the fish from the scale (often relaying that info to the data person) and lays the hopefully still asleep fish on a white board. With a small paintbrush I align the fish to be straight and flat and then splay its tail fin out flat to see it all. The males are the best cause you get to see all their pretty colors and patterns. Sometimes when it’s the first time a fish has been caught it gets a “sexy picture.” This is when all the fins must be brushed out so you can see them instead of sleek along their body. Back in California someone uses the pictures to measure the fins and other morphological characteristics. Then, I take a picture with a really nice camera and dump them into a tank to recover. Sometime if they don’t wake up immediately you have to bubble them with the bubbles which seems to wake them up faster… I call it tickling them!

And that’s it! Very little thought goes into the whole process but we switch music picks and chat and goof the whole time. And things get really goofy when you have been processing for many hours straight. I have been laughing so hard.

The Recap

Six o’clock in the morning the itouch sings its song and I roll out of bed and suit up: orioles hat with two bandanas around my neck, one covering the back of my neck and the other around the front, a tank top tucked into my hiked up field pants, with a button up long sleeve over it all (this protects against what we call “plumber crack bites”). Then its tall wool socks and my boots with intense metal cleats, and over the boots and pants are gaiters. Gaiters are ankle to knee Kevlar sleeves that protect against snakebites, apparently an intern has never tested it but they claim they work. And that’s the outfit!

Then breakfast (cereal and soy milk) and packing. We each have a big backpacking pack that is old and smelly. We fill it with 5 gallon buckets, funnels, dip nets and empty water bottles, a combination of 2 liter, 1 liter, and ½ liter. We also have our dry bags with a lunch (peanut butter/jelly sandwich and crackers) and headlamps.

We set out in a beat up truck for about 30 minutes. We drive from the Arima Valley to the Guanapo river valley, just to the east, along a very windy, bumpy road. Then we hike.

Depending on which of the 4 rivers we are going to it’s a 20-60 minutes hike. The shortest one is to Taylor and it is just down the hill through the jungle. The longest, Upper Lalaja, takes us down the hill and up through the stream for another 30-40 minutes, and through the stream means trudging up through the river, climbing up waterfalls over boulders and under fallen trees. The gaiters fill with water and it squished through your boots. The uncomfortable, poorly fitting packs get much heavier when wet and the only brief break is when they are floated on your back because we are wading up to our waists. Haven’t seen much big wildlife yet on the hikes but plenty of frogs, insects, and bird singing. Beautiful hikes really.

Once we get to the reach that we will be fishing we empty our packs and get in teams of two and take to the stream. It’s rocky with jungle along the sides. We rock hop up and down so as not to disturb the fish or the benthos, and with two butterfly nets each and buckets we squat and watch, and when there is a flash we corral the fish into our nets and plop them in buckets, males and females separated so as not to induce unnatural mating...

There is lunch time but we pretty much fish from 8ish to when the stream is empty of guppies or 430 ish when we have to leave so we can get to the truck by dark (and then we go finish the next day). The crouching is tough on the knees and back, and it can be very frustrating to chase the same stupid little fish around a pool for 20 minutes until you loose it under a rock for good, but all in all being out there is very enjoyable. It’s beautiful and quiet and very meditative. When it rains you get wet but with a rain jacket it’s not cold and we take a little break from fishing because you can’t see and hang out. The people are fun and interesting and after very few days of spending every second of every day together, you get pretty close, and end up talking about the silliest stuff to pass the time.

After we bottle up all the fish from the buckets (about 600-1100 depending on the day and stream) we pack our bags and hike out. The weight of the now full water bottles gets distributed among the packs and we begin the assent. This is the toughest part but now that I know the way it’s not that far. The metal cleats are a savior, you could not walk through these streams with the packs without falling on your face every two seconds without them.

At the truck, its boots off ASAP to avoid any fungus, or “the rot”, and picking of various fruits around the road (limes, oranges, mango, coconuts, bananas). We then head home soaked, sweaty and tired, bumping through the potholes, avoiding stray dogs sleeping in the roads, and honking as we go around corners to avoid collisions with oncoming trinny drivers.

Once home, we put all the bottles in tanks, still separating fish by sex and the section of the stream where they were caught ending up in 70-some tanks. These are square petsmart tanks of varying size with very colorful tops. Each gets a bubbly stone and the proper label to keep it all straight. For those of you who were a part of my attempts to keep one fish alive this school year, you can better appreciate my awe with so many fish staying alive right outside my window in the lab (also our porch). There are of course some fallen soldiers but we label and preserve them to send back to the states with the next traveler.

Then the evening is ours. Showers, beers and cooking. Max is the main man when it comes to cooking. Gourmet!!! He is a foody and loves putting the extra effort in to make a meal amazing. To give you a taste he made homemade pizza dough and made 4 pizzas. One was topped with fried eggplant, stove roasted walnuts and red wine sautéed onions. Amazing. We also have curry lentils, pasta, bean chili, spicy corn soup, grilled tuna, beans and rice. All delicious and people get really into it. Sometimes we go into town and get doubles (as mentioned before I believe, its the local food at the stands on the streets, a fried doughy tortilla thing with chickpeas called channa and salsas on top). There is plenty of spicy here too. We go into town for a beer at a bar or stay at the house and hang out. Good music good food and joking around on the porch pass the time quiet quickly and then it’s relatively early to bed for a long day of processing.

The Whole Process: From the eyes of a guppy

He is swimming along minding his own business in the stream when there is more activity than usual above the ripples. Suddenly, a huge white cloud drops into the water and begins to move towards him. As he tries to swim away another drops in front of him and jerks him up out of the water. He is then tossed around a bit in this white fluff until he is plopped into a huge white bucket. As he looks around he realizes that the other fish around him are all male, flashing their yellow spots green stripes and colorful tails. Where did all the females go? Little does he know the are in the next bucket over. He swims there for a while, as other of his male compadres fall from the sky into the tank.

After a bit, a square green net is submerged and sweeps up all the males and dumps them out. They tumble and spiral down a red funnel and plop into a smaller white tank. Suddenly they feel silkier and healthier, maybe this water has something special in it? This small nalgene-like bottle is then placed back in the stream, and he pears out at what was once his home, wondering is he would ever return…

The bottle then plunges into a dark hole and he is sloshed around vigorously for quite a while. back and forth and round and round, bumping into his compadres.

Then when the motion stops and the water settles a little, he is splashed into a little fish tank. and a little blue stone with bubbles coming out of it is placed inside the tank. They spend the night together, wondering what is coming next!!

In the morning, another net snatches them up and they are put in a small cup and start to feel sleepier and sleepier and find it difficult to swim... Then black!

After a nice nap, he wakes up back in his take with his buddies! but with a sweet new colored tattoo, one pink strip on his back and one green on his tummy! nice!

After another night in the tank, he its scooped up and thrown back in bottle and back into darkness. After another rough ride he find himself staring out of the bottle back into the same swimming hole he came from, all the recognizable features are still there.

So thats the process. More of the neerdy side of things to come for those who are interested.

Fresh off the plane!

I arrived safely in Trinidad with very little trouble. It was an all day event but I finally made it and found my ride.

We drove back to the house where everyone had stayed up to meet me. There was some coming and going of other people but now it is going to be me and two other girls (one scrippsie!!!) and 3 guy who are all interns. Also there is will who is the field manager and Felipe a phd student working on his own project. Everyone is in their twenties and have been doing cool stuff all over the world with all different kinds of animals. There are many different languages too but I'm the only Portuguese unfortunately.

We are living in three bedrooms bunch style with a nice kitchen, sitting area, and porch where spend most of my time. We have had a couple days before the real work starts so we have been getting ready and spending some time relaxing in town.

Town is a pretty cool place. It looks like a lot of places I have been, little store front with bright colored paint and food stands along the way. The food available is pretty standard with some cool new vegetables and fruits I'm trying out. the clothing is mostly sandals jeans and t-shirts of many pastel colors. People are very friendly and forward, asking you where you are from and what your doing. Most have been to the states or have family there. Gonna try and go to a soccer game tonight and out for dinner and drinks.

Then tomorrow we start work!!!! I am excited to start getting dirty. I did a little hiking and fishing but tomorrow we will hike up the stream and collect all the fish in a pond... Sounds a little daunting. And the process them all. More information to come on the actual work. Until then! Hope all is with you all.