I have been an avid diver for about a year and fell in love
with it from the beginning. I’ve done numerous dives along coral reefs and
wrecks but I was looking for something more than just being a tourist of the
sea. Then I got the opportunity to go to the Keys as a member of the Childress
lab for spring break, which completely changed the way I look at diving.
To start from the beginning of the week, a group of six
students from the Childress lab accompanied our graduate assistant, Kylie
Smith, to Athens, GA to present at the SEEC conference. This was great
experience to see the incredible research that other undergraduate and graduate
students were doing. We got to see a very impactful keynote speaker who
presented on her overlap of forest conservation and social justice. This
inspired our lab to work on community outreach with our lab studies. We also
got to present posters of our own research to graduate students. This weekend
was a lot of fun for our lab group because we got to bond and become close in a
way we weren’t able to before. We even delivered all of the unserved food from
the conference’s lunch to a nearby homeless shelter. This was an enriching
experience for us that brought all of us close to each other.
As the two day conference came to a close, I hopped in a
giant truck and drove down to the Florida Keys with two other students and
Kylie. It was a twelve hour drive full of singing, laughing and great
conversation. The drive was a perfect way to kick off the week in the Keys and
we were all so excited to get there. We began our mornings early and acted together
to get the boat loaded and ready for the day’s work. We did reef condition reports and parrotfish behavior
analyses. This took my love for diving to a completely new level because, for
the first time, I was diving for a purpose. I wasn’t just going underwater to
look at pretty fish anymore – I was doing productive research for marine
ecology. It was a hard day’s work as we visited multiple sites in one day. I
spent half my time under water doing condition reports on our transplanted
coral as well as following parrot fish around to observe their behavior. The
rest of the day was spent on the boat loading and preparing gear, and assessing
the water quality. The work was long and could be challenging at times but we
kept good attitudes the entire time, laughing and joking around all day long.
Most of the time, the work did not actually feel like work. It was just fun to
be with such a great group of people in a beautiful place, researching
something I am passionate about.
We had five days to complete our research but the three of
us undergraduate students decided we wanted to get it done in three days so we
could have time to play in the Keys. Kylie did not think this would be possible
but we worked very hard and put in extra hours on the boat on the second and third
day and shockingly we were able to finish by our goal! Our last two days in the
Keys were incredible and I will never forget them. We spent our first free day
doing some fun dives where we saw an incredible amount of turtles, nurse
sharks, and even a sea horse! These dives were the highlight of the trip for me
and we even got to spear some lion fish, which are horribly invasive to the
reef. On our last day we went to Key West and had a great time site seeing,
particularly watching all of the crazy street performers at the Sunset
Festival! While in Key West, we sat down over dessert and reflected on the
amazing week we had. None of us wanted to leave and we got to share our favorite
part of the week. We all agreed it was difficult to choose only one event!
I think the best part of the week in the Keys was that the
four of us did everything as a team. We grocery shopped together, cooked
together, and spent all of our free time together. This allowed us to bond very
quickly and, even though it was a long and intense week, we never complained or
got sick of one another. This week taught me a lot about team work because we
made all of our decisions for the good of the group. We were brought together
by our love for diving and our passion for marine conservation but we
established friendships that go far beyond that.
The view from our spring break house as the sun began to set.
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