Mangroves off Belize (Belize)

Member Name: Thechicken

Product:	Belize
Date:	22/11/00 (457 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Stunning location for scientific research

Disadvantages: crocodiles, snakes, stinnging hydroids, rusty knives ....

We arrived at Dallas airport to find
that our plane to Belize was broken - good job they
found out before we took off! - anyway due to our late
departure it was too late to get the transport down to
Dangriga so we had a night stop over in Belize City -
I was surprised at how good the city looked - only
slightly affected by the recent hurricane (a couple of
roads had turned to rubble), but apart from that it
was on a par with some parts of southern Spain - or
Istanbul, only much less people and taxis!!! We were
entertained that evening by a guy who was playing a
marimba continuously in the restaurant - he had made
it by hand, I
eventually got to play a bit of a duet with him the
next morning outside
the hotel whilst we were both waiting for our
transport to arrive. I took
a taxi to the airport - and stopped to pick up a
bottle of rum (One Barrel) and then I travelled by
plane to Dangriga alone due to the fact that the
cargo transporters in Los Angeles had labelled our
boxes HAZMAT and they were still in Dallas!!
My colleague had to wait an extra night in Belize City to
wait for them - after numerous phone calls to customs
at Dallas and Los Angeles - fortunately everything
worked out ok and the boxes did arrive
that day. The plane ride to Dangriga was pretty good
- an 8 seater plane (including pilot), we flew quite
low so got to see some of the countryside
before the rain and clouds set in. The airport in
Dangriga consisted of two tiny wooden huts - the
runway looked like part of the beach, but, the
landing was smooth enough and it was within walking
distance of the hotel - and the bar. I was met at the
bar by two of the scientists that were travelling to
Carrie Bow Caye - they turned up with beers in hand - including one for me
(friends for life now!!!!)..... The weather was
turning nasty - big black skies in the
distance, but,
we decided to get on the 20 odd foot long boat to
travel 14
miles to the island. It was a pretty fast trip (1
hour), and the boat was Belizian made, so it was
perfect for skipping over the waves - very
stable!!!! Carrie Bow Caye itself is about 1 acre in
size with palm trees, falling coconuts, and a few fire
ants (I never found any though thank goodness!). It
was about 38 strides wide and 120 strides long. The
accommodation was built on stilts and ours was actually
over the sea. the toilets were built out on a pier.
The labs were pretty big, but, basic - when all our
gear arrived we found that the flouometer and
spectrophotometer didn't work because the power supply
wasn't strong enough to light the bulbs bright
enough!! (well that was my explanation). Lots of
equipment that had been sent previously did not turn
up - plus all the gases that had been ordered to run
the GC's and evacuate the glove bags did not arrive -
even though we had been assured that they were on the
dock waiting to go out to the island!!!!!! All our
meals were cooked for us by the resident chef. They
mainly consisted of coconut rice and beans, salad,
johnnie cakes (bread), tortillas, papayas, bananas,
pineapple, oranges and some gorgeous cakes,
needlesstosay my diet went slightly to pot!!!
The first day we headed out to Twin Cayes - about a
15-20 min boat ride
away from Carrie Bow Caye. (a guy from
England) had already
been on the island for 1 week building board walks, so
he gave us the
official tour around some of the experimental tree
sites and another scientist
taught me everything she knew about the mangrove
systems. On the way back
we stopped at Boa Flats to look for Boa Constrictors -
there were 3 out
basking in the sun, they were fairly small, about 4
feet long, and had all
just eaten becau
se they had a huge bulge in the middle
of their bodies!
They blended in perfectly with the trees, it took me a
while to find where
they were!!! We then headed out for a fishing trip
and caught absolutely
nothing except a bit of algae, but, saw a few dolphins
and lots of fish
jumping out of the water...

A typical day after that consisted of breakfast at
7am, data processing and
organising, making sample bags etc before heading out
to Twin Cayes at
about 930am. We usually made it back for lunch at
12pm, then headed out to
the island till about 530pm. Watched the sunset
whilst drinking beer on
the dock, eating dinner at 7pm then sorting samples,
filtering, measuring
alkalinity, pH, salinity etc etc till, on average,
11pm each night.......
Hard work, but, more than compensated for by the
amazing view out of the
lab windows - we were about 100 feet from the coral
reef! The sea was all
sorts of amazing colours and on the last few days of
the trip we had a
close to full moon, which with clear skies looked just
amazing!
The mangroves themselves were pretty amazing - fairly
different
environments on the island, the major species was the
red mangrove, which
has roots that are above ground and are mainly found
around the fringe of
the island, making it almost impossible to penetrate
them... The black
mangrove was the second most abundant species and is
usually found in areas
with greater salinity, the whites cope least well with
these conditions and
are fairly sporadic throughout the island. There were
areas were the red
mangroves were 5m high down to about 2 feet high, the
ground ranged from
fairly firm peat to big compost piles that if you
stepped on you sank up to
your chests!! I jumped out of the boat once into the
water - which was
about a foot deep, only to fall all
the way down to my
neck with only my
head and little finger sticking out, My colleagues found this extremely
amusing, they had been busy dragging the boat towards
the trees because
they already knew of this phenomenon at this
particular spot!... there
were inland lakes, ponds and channels - some ankle
deep, others up to your
chests - and the worst thing about these was the
stinging hydroids, upside
down jelly fish (I seemed to be the group radar for
the hydroids and
jellies!! Mosquitoes and midges never really bothered
me, but, if I came
within 20 m of the hydroids they'd start to sting my
legs - pretty painful
too!!!) and on the east island the prospect of a
bloomin crocodile swimming
by!!! Fortunately I did not go out on the trip when
the group encountered
the croc, it started thrashing about in the waters
just by them and made a
horrible groaning sound - the last statino of the day
was abandoned after
that for some strange reason....
On bonfire day/night me and a fellow Brit made a guy, out of a
wooden frame, coconut
for its head, shells for its eyes, coral for the
teeth, coconut fur for its
hair a t-shirt and pair of undies for its clothes and
palm tree fronds for
his hands. We then headed out to the mangroves were
we taught the yanks "remember, remember........" etc etc - things
were going well....

We stopped at a "fringe site" (ie, just by the waters
edge) to get some
samples of leaves, twigs, mud, water etc etc - I had
just taken a core from
the surface of the peat and was chopping off the
bottom to make it 5 cm
long. I then decided that it would be a really good
idea if I also
chopped straight into my little finger of my left hand
with the now rusty,
serrated knife!!!!!!!! - I cut it about 1.5cm x 1cm,
and probably down to
the bottom laye
r of skin, so quite few mm deep - a
fairly sensible idea in
the middle of the mangroves and an hour from the
nearest mainland I
thought. we had to chop off the sleeve of someones shirt - which was the
only clean bit of cloth available and two of us waited
on the roots of the
mangroves (with the lizards and crabs - thank god it
wasn't croc country)
until the others rescued me with the boat!!!
there was quite a bit of
dirt in the cut, so I was trying to decide whether to
risk leaving it and
getting it infected, or to risk going to the hospital
in Dangriga and
having a doctor work at it with a possibly dirty
needle - then, Mandy came
to the rescue. She had done 4 years of pre-med, so
she got out the
dissection kit and performed minor surgery on the
dinner table for about 40
minutes - pretty darn painful, but, all the bits of
dirt came out and it is
now healing really well....... Unfortunately this
meant that I could no
longer go out to the mangroves and perform any really
useful duties (as in
sampling), but, I did serve as a good note taker and
sample carrier for the
next few days!!!! That night all was sort of
forgotten as we drank rum by
the bonfire and saw guy fawkes go up in flames!
No other really major incidents occurred - except for
someone nearly stepping on
a shark in knee deep water,, fortunately it was a
nurse shark, I stayed on
the boat and managed to get a really good shot of it
with my camera - not
quite as big as I told everyone it was (it came within
about 3 feet of the
boat), but it was still about 5 feet long.......
So we all left the island last Sunday afternoon - I
went for a snorkel on
the coral reef just before we headed off - my finger
was sort of healed
enough to risk getting it wet - the colours of the
fish were amazing -
although unfortunately the cora
l isn't as healthy as it
used to be....
We stayed for the night in the hotel at Dangriga and
on the Monday morning
we piled into the 10 seater plane to go to Belize City
The plane flew
higher this time, but,
there was no rain and only a few clouds, suddenly I
felt us jerk up and to
the left and I wondered what the hell it was that the
pilot was doing, then
two people - who were on the right hand side of
the plane both
turned round in shock - apparently we had just been on
a head on collision
course with a plane coming in the opposite direction -
we missed each other
by about 30 m!!! - thank god I didn't see it, I don't'
think I'd ever want
to fly again!!!!!!! We eventually landed safety in
Belize City - and
headed out to the town for an hour or so to visit the
craft shops and grab
some lunch. I got back to LA late on Monday night!
So, apart from the stinging hydroids, jellyfish,
finger incident,
crocodiles (I heard a baby one yelping - bad news for
us the next time we
visit when it'll be a bit older!!!!!!!), mosquitoes,
midges, and near
plane disaster, I had a pretty fantastic time!!!!

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