My Awesome Research Trip to the Virgin Islands

My amazing professor/advisor/mentor, Dr. Bologna, has given me and his other students so many wonderful opportunities to get out and do research. My favorite, and probably the favorite of many others, is the 10 day stay on the beautiful island of St. John.

We departed on January 3rd- most of the group left from Newark Airport, but I was leaving from JFK because the tickets had been cheaper. So for the first leg of our journey, I was travelling alone. This was the first time I was travelling so far from home on my own. It was exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time. I was especially nervous because only 9 days prior, someone had tried to blow up a plane with an underwear bomb. Being that the incident had just occurred, I figured security would be extra tight.

Air travel has always bothered me a little bit, even before 9/11; I was always worried the plane would crash, and I have a slight fear of heights.I reassured myself that with the number of planes flying everyday, that the percentage of incidents occurring is extremely low. Despite a small fear of heights, I love looking out of the window. I love looking at the clouds, and I took about 100 pictures of just pretty cloud formations.

The flight went mostly smoothly- there was only some slight turbulence. It felt like a bumpy car ride. But when you are 40,000 feet off the ground.... it's different. As we descended I could make out some sea grass beds and and the waves on the water. Lower and lower we crept, until I could really see the waves well, and I felt like we were going to land on the water we were so low. Then, all of a sudden, the runway came into view underneath me and a split second later we touched down onto the island of St. Thomas.

I met up with my group at the airport and we all piled into a large open air tour bus and drove across the island of St. Thomas... on the left side of the road. Even though the U.S. Virgin
Islands are a territory of the United States, they drive on the left side of the road; if I remember correctly the islands were once held by the British.

This took getting used to.

Our drive across St. John.  Notice the sharp turns.

We took the ferry out of Red Hook Bay in St. Thomas over to Cruz Bay in St. John. Finally! St. John! But our travel wasn't over yet... we still had to drive to camp. On the way we saw numerous houses still decorated for Christmas, which was weird, given the palm trees and ambient air temperature around 80 degrees.
Our loyal bus driver, Hamilton, picked us up, and drove us along the steep wind-y road to our camp. When I say steep and wind-y, I mean really steep and hairpin turns. Sometimes there were steep hairpin turns. It was quite nerve-wracking.  The sun was setting as we drove across the convoluted way to camp (see the picture above). We finally arrived at the Virgin Islands Environmental Resource Station (VIERS) after dark. It was so noisy, with all of the bugs and frogs making noise, but it was so beautiful. We went down to the dock for a swim in the ocean. It was amazing to float on my back in the warm water, looking at the stars- which were brilliant, by the way.

The night sky was amazing! Photo by Mike Schmid.

In the morning I got my first good look around, and I fell in love. Nestled among the trees are a ring of screened in cabins for lodging, a mess hall and open air showers. There are critters all over the place- most noticeable are the numerous hermit crabs walking around all over the place (one morning I found a hermit crab in my shoe that I had laid out overnight to dry). There are also a lot of anoles sneaking about.

Hermit crab at VIERS.

Anole at VIERS.

We went down to the dock to start  off the day with a lesson on snorkeling. I had never gone snorkeling before, although I had gone scuba diving once in someone's pool. I had trouble learning to breathe through my mouth instead of my nose, and what I ended up doing for awhile was inhaling through my mouth and exhaling through my nose, which wasn't too good because over time my mask filled with water. I grew up having swimming lessons, so that was no issue for me. Within a few minutes, I was one of the 4 or 5 students out in the open water. I love how much easier wearing fins makes it to swim.

View from the dock.

We got right into starting our research; that was the reason we were there, after all. We had a few projects lined up- assessing sea urchin size and density, investigating the relationships between sea urchins and a few other creatures that hide among the sea urchin's spines, and testing mysid shrimp to see whether or not they respond to the "scent" of a fish. This work involved a LOT of snorkeling. We would be in the water for 2-3 hours at a time.  The first few days we were there, the waves were really rough, so after getting out of the water, we all had a phantom feeling of still being tossed around by the waves, much like how you still feel like you're moving after getting off a treadmill.

But I wasn't complaining about all of the swimming. The water was the perfect temperature, and I loved being submerged into the ecosystem. One time while snorkeling I found myself in the middle of a huge school  of tiny fish. It was so amazing. They swam around me for a few minutes before moving on. Another time I had a tiny fish swimming along side me for a few minutes, I imagine for the same reasons that remoras swim along side of sharks- for protection and scraps of food. This little fish was quite clearly following me, it was so cute!

We took a day off to go out hiking to explore the Pre-Columbian petroglyphs (rock carvings) at a nearby waterfall. I unfortunately became stricken with blisters early on in the hike, so it was a bit of a challenge to get there. I had to wear flip flops on the way back, my feet hurt so much! I ended up with a pair of nasty blisters on both of my heels.We also took another day off to go sailing. We went to two locations and went snorkeling, but my blistered feet only let me go snorkeling at one location.

The petroglyphs are right above the water line.

The day before we left, January 12, the earthquake in Haiti occurred just before we sat down for dinner. I was 500 miles away from the epicenter, but I heard the ground rumbling and the camp director actually felt the shaking while he was standing on the steps of his office.

St. John is a wonderful island, and I would highly recommend staying there. In my opinion, it is much nicer than St. Thomas, because St. John is so much less built up. In fact, almost 2/3 of the island is protected as a national park! There are a number of hiking trails, ruins to explore, and plenty of places to snorkel! There is even an underwater snorkeling trail!