Students Enjoy Annual Marine Science Trip

Members of this year’s marine science class traveled to the Cayman Islands over the long winter weekend, accompanied by their teacher Rod Gerdsen and faculty member Dale Phelps. Rod reports: Activities on Grand Cayman included a snorkeling tour of Stingray City, a world-renowned location for hundreds of stingrays that gather to be fed by tourist boats; the largest of these monsters measured four feet across! Nearby, we snorkeled on a pristine reef and had a visit from a friendly five-foot moray eel. The group was also able to video some of the excitement. We then went on a tour of the Cayman Turtle Farm where green sea turtles are raised for local island food; we were lucky enough to hold not only the young hatchlings but also the older ones weighing 100 pounds or more. After leaving the turtles, we stopped off in “Hell” for a quick visit. Hell is a small town on the northwest corner of the island with an unusual field of spiky limestone rocks; it may, indeed, be what Hell really looks like. There’s nothing like saying, “We’ve been to Hell and back!” A new addition to this annual excursion was a kayaking trip through the local mangroves, a 100-acre area of the inner sound that acts as a nursery to juvenile fish and invertebrates. Some of the highlights there included thousands of “upside-down” jellyfish and three-foot iguanas. Students stayed at a hotel on the famous Seven-Mile Beach, allowing them direct access to some of the world’s best coral reefs and unlimited snorkeling. They were able to examine the reefs and learn about the island’s marine conservation efforts and how the government plans to conserve these dwindling resources.

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Updated 2/8/2010

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