Chad's Blog

Today is the 3rd day. A brief recap starts with a very pleasant flight. Actually it felt like no time at all since I got to talk to Nate and Alyssa the whole way here. At the airport in Saint Croix there was a rum stand with free shots.... Nate took two.... The first thing I really noticed was how outgoing Buzz's son Jonathan. He seemed like my best friend before I even talked to him. I love how Buzz has instilled this kind of trusting nature in his son to allow him to explore the world. When we got to the cottages bye the sea (where buzz and some others would be staying) we walked 20 feet from his room and went snorkling. The first day pretty much consisted of all of us getting to know each other a bit better, some beers/rum, and lots of snorkling. The water is beatiful and I must say, all the people here are great, without exception. That night we went to a pizza place/bar which was very good. We played fuzball and I got to bond with the youngsters. They're all so brilliant in their unique ways. It was a tought transition for me to wake up early but not too bad since I was quite tired by 11pm which is very uncharacteristic of me. Our place that we're staying at called the sandy point refuge is really nice all things considered. It's very heavily fortified with barb wire, fences, cages on windows/doors, multiple locks and a flight of stairs. Mike, the man in charge of the wildlife sanctuary is an extremely nice man and I beleive it was him that allowed us to stay at the place for free. The view from our room is gorgeous. We are about a half mile? from the ocean but can see it from our second story porch. This is where I eat my breakfast in the morning around 6:45. The first night there I did not sleep well. I was running on short sleep already but had a killer headache for no good reason. Eventually I passed out with just a few hours left in the night. The second day was the first day of mongoose research. We set up the traps at locations along the dirt road which goes through the refuge. This time of year no cars are allowed down there without a permit because of the sea turtle nesting grounds at the end of the road. Setting up traps was not difficult at all although it was hot. I learned how to set up the traps and put the chicken feet bait on hooks in them. That day we went to the market for fresh fruit. I tried pretty much everything but honestly don't remember many of the names. The one I liked the best was probably the mango or the star fruit. While there though all I could think about was catching a fish in the water. I thought of perhaps using a fishing line that I dangle while snorkling or maybe getting some gloves to catch the lobster. Just then I saw a guy selling harpoon guns in the parking lot and I was all over it. I also bought some gloves to catch lobsters and a lobster nuise which I later learned is borderline illegal (perhaps fully illegal). Mike is going to check into it for me but he did tell me that it might just be illegal to catch lobster when they're in their holes. He also said this was what he heard awhile ago and that they don't enforce it. He's supposed to get back to me Monday. Matt and I went out to spear some fish although I really didn't think I was going to get anything. However, my second shot hit a fish in the face and went through it's body. It was pretty small which made it a tough shot, but also made it difficult for the spear to stick into. I swam down and grabbed it extremely excited about the catch. Matt was laughing pretty hard when he saw how much littler it was above the water. Under water everything looks much bigger because of the magnifying effect. I have now speared 5 fish, 3 of which I've brought to shore. I don't think buzz likes the fact that I kill the fish that he likes to look at so I'm probably going to start spearing only larger fish. Since this it has been mostly business as usual. Lots of fun and lots of learning cool stuff. I've watched buzz inectistate (sp) 13 mongoose so far I believe. I have been filling in a chart which has several categories including the tracking device number of the mongoose, the weight, whether or not it has fleas, whether or not it has fecal material, the age of the mongoose which is based on the sharpness of the teeth and the color of the eyes. 0 is for a juvinile with very sharp teeth and brownish eyes and the scales goes up to 3 where the mongoose has redish irises and blunt teeth or sometimes many missing teeth due to wear and tear. Occasionally we have trapped some mongoose that have been trapped before which is exciting. Buzz and his colleague Steve have been designing a harnass to fit on the mongoose so they can put a tracking device on them. So far every design they've made execpt one have been slipped by the mongoose. Many of them are slipped while the mongoose is still somewhat drugged up. I find it amazing that the mongoose are such efficient contortionists. My job has been to have buzz squeeze the fecal material from the mongoose into bags in which presumably I'll analyze under a microscope. This would mean I'd need to learn what plant and animal material that the mongoose might eat look like under a microscope. I'd have to look at up to 100 slides buzz was saying in order to have a good idea of what all the different material mongoose eat would look like in their feces. This does not include the actual examination of the fecal material. Other cool stuff we've been doing is setting up trail cameras to get video footage of the mongoose near the traps. We've gotten some pretty good videos which I'm assuming will be posted somewhere on the website. Also, Nate has been collecting mice with 37 traps set up around sandy point national wildlife refuge. The first day we didn't catch anything with the oatmeal bait. However, We added peanut butter to the traps and caught 3 the second day and 5 the third day I believe. We're next going to move the traps and find another location to trap mice in at Sandy Point. Yesterday I went kaiking with Patricia with intentions to spear some fish. The water was too deep where we went so I wasn't able to teach her much. Hopefully she can hit a fish at some point before she leaves. Last night we went snorkling. I was quite afraid of the ocean at night but we all went out together with 2 underwater flash lights. It didn't take long before I saw some lobsters which was cool. They're eyes are the only thing that I saw which reflect the light. This made them easier to find than the elusive octopi. I was very excited to see one but it seemed as though everyone was just fooling with me. They kept saying the saw one and pointing him out but I didn't see anything. Nate said he saw one a different time and pointed the light at him but I didn't see this one either. I tried to find one for a long time but saw nothing. However, I did not get stung by the jellyfish. Alyssa got stung 3 times I think and Nate got stung once. Nate whined a lot and Alyssa took it like a man. I'm not sure how much it stings/itchesAlyssa and Matt saw a rock come alive and eat a fish which would have been really cool to watch. We saw the dinoflagelites which create the bioluminescent glow when the water is stirred up. They are a pretty greenish yellow color. I'm really bad at diving down, since I can't hold my breath for very long. Buzz says it's because I'm expending too much energy and that I need to relax and just sink to the bottom. I have not learned to do this very well yet. Soon we're going to see sea turtle eggs hatch. I'm excited for this. I think there's a few kinds of sea turtles which nest here: leatherbacks, green, and something else I don't remember. Recently I've decided that their is a more interesting experiment I can do. I'm not sure if I'll get much in terms of results but it should be relatively fun. I thought of the idea when someone was telling buzz that the mongoose eat the baby sea turtles and buzz explained that so don't birds, dogs and other things. They said that their are tracks around the nesting mounds which to them means that the mongoose dig up the sea turtle eggs. While it's true that the mongoose want to eat the eggs, it is unlikely that they're capable of it. Leatherbacks bury their eggs 36 inches deep. Mongoose might be a foot in lenght tops from what I've seen. I don't see how they could excavate a hole more than 3 times their body length and still be able to push the sand up over the top of the mound. This would put the mongoose incredibly deep underground for its size. It'd kind of be like a person 18 feet in the ground shovling dirt over the edges of the hole. Keep in mind the base of the hole is going to have all the built up dirt from the digging too making it seem even deeper of a hole. Needless to say, I'd like to design an experiment to see how deep mongoose actually do dig for eggs. I believe that they could dig a foot maybe 18 inches, but I'd like to find out by burying chicken eggs or robyn eggs at different intervals along the beach. However, because I am not going to bury a couple hundred eggs in each site, the eggs might not give up enough of a stentch to attrack the mongoose. Instead I plan to use something that mongoose has been known to eat but is also very strong smelling. Dead fish is my plan. Specifically fish heads from our leftovers. Who knows, maybe I'll spear some fish to use for my experiment. I need to get a shovel first and some more fish heads. I'd just like to give an overview of my typical day to finish this blog for the first few days here

6:45 wake up, eat breakfast on the porch
7:15 go close up the mouse traps so the mice don't overheat in the hot daytime sun
8:30 snorkling and bloggying or catching lizards
11:00 check mongoose traps and rebait traps with new fresh chicken feet. replace traps if they're is a mongoose in it
12:30 lunch, a few beers, more snorkling and whatever else
2:30 inectisize mongoose with special k and tag them placing a chip in their back hip. take notes of anything else important
3:30 whatever
5:30 let mongoose go after special k has worn off. this happens where they were trapped to avoid any more variables to mongoose behavior then is necessary. the mouse traps are reset and filled with peanut butter too. more mongoose are also collected at this time.
7:00 drinks and dinner, night snorkling, bar, or going out
11:00 go back to refuge for sleep

So far the trip has been very worth it in all aspects. I love the people here which helps a lot

Today was business as usual with a few exceptions. After getting done with our morning work Most of us went down to see what kind of shopping was in Fredrickstead. There wasn't really much there but a few small shops. My mom would love it there because much of the stuff was home made by islanders. I got a few souveniers for friends and walked around with a carona souvenier for myself. Alyssa and I road the tandom bicycle together which is much harder to ride than it looks. Most of the time I"m pretty sure she wasn't doing any work and just letting me peddle because my thighs burned :( . The rest of the guys decided to go back and Alyssa and I went snorkling on the pier which was somewhat of a disapointnment to be honest. The pier was really pretty and it was fun to jump from it to the water but there wasn't many fish to be found. There was a fair bit of organisms on the piers themsevles which were cool but they all seemed the same. I like big fish so the life on the piers that I didn't recognize didn't seem all that cool after seeing them a few times. When I got closer to shore though I noticed an octopus on the pier. Alyssa and I separated so I looked up to yell to her but by the time I realized she was nowhere to be found the octopus was gone. It was still really cool to see though since they've been one of my favorites for a long time. Even closer to shore, I saw some 18-24 inch fish that I would have loved to spear. I don't think I would have been able to because as I tried to approach them they swam away much quicker than the smaller fish. On our way back our chain fell off but we coasted for what seemed like a half mile since we couldn't peddle. Driving the bikes is wierd since everyone drives on the opposite side of the road here with the same cars. I later snorkled for a while to spear fish something. I made my mind up that anything smaller than 12 inches was not worth shooting. Buzz told me there was some parrot fish out there which get big enough to eat but I didn't see any of them. What I did see was pretty cool though. I saw something relatively big swim underneath a ledge. I swam down to see what it was and saw two eyes looking at me. I could tell it was bigger than most anything I'd seen to that point. I can't stay down very long so I swam to the surface and took my gun off safety. My next trip down I took a shot and missed, not sure where though. I reloaded my spear gun as fast as possible which took about 30 seconds, defogged my mask (I accidently had Alyssa's which seems to leak), and swam back down. This time I saw a big moray eel which I had seen before but never this big! I had a clear shot and most definitely could have speared it but I was scared. I wasn't sure how it would react if it were connected to a spear which led to my body. I surfaced one more time and went down again. This time I saw what looked to be a different fish but I can't be sure. It appeared larger and uglier and I shot straight at him. I felt a tug as if he was on my line and I started to swim towards shore. At that point I didn't feel anything pulling anymore but I couldn't free my line. I yelled over to Matt and Nate who had been kaikking using their (and my) hand real. Matt is much braver than me so I had him dive down and see what was going on. I have heard horror stories about morays. He said it was just stucking behind a rock but the angle that the spear was at was different from how I shot it. I'm pretty sure that the fish/eel whatever it was swam backwards and got loose leaving my spear behind a rock. I could be wrong though but even if I am, it's more fun to think I'm right :). That night we went back out to collect our mongoose traps. At this point we now had 14 traps lining the beach which was exciting for me. I was very curious to see if we caught anything around the beach since it would help developing my experiment. We didn't catch anything which is such a short term event that it doesn't really tell me anything. However, to my knowledge, there hadn't been 14 traps left without a catch the whole time we've been here. I did find some track around my traps though which was very cool. I wanted to have buzz help disinguish them but he was setting up more traps. I am confident though that I had some mongoose tracks, some bird tracks and maybe some others. In the hole that I dug 6 inches deep and put the pips (leftover sea turtle eggs) in, there was one egg exposed. It doesn't make anything conclusive of course but at least the area stunk horribly still and clearly attracted wildlife. I feel as though it was a fair representation of different sea turtle nesting grounds. Nothing seemed to dig up the 12 inch-28 inch nests which are representative of any of the sea turtles that I know of on the island. The short term observations seemed to suggest that predators don't much more than 6 inches into the sand. The experiment needed some adjustments though. The most obvious one was that only the 6 inch hole had the pips in them. The following night I would only use pips in all the nests. I'm still waiting to see what type of observations I would get from these nests. Also I need to make the depths that I dig constant and I would like to show that there are mongoose present in the area of my holes whether it is with track or the traps. Teresa had a great idea of using flourescent powder to mark the sand to figure out what depth the animals were digging to. I figure if we had different colors at each site we could figure out how deep the animal dug based on which colors were exposed on the surface. I made 4 more holes at 26, 22, 12, and 6 inches at another site and just used pips in each. I also decided to wet each hole to make the digging easier. It was a lot easier since not all the sand fell back into the hole but it still continued to happen. Eventually we finished but it was dark and difficult to do much else. Did I mention working with a machette was really fun to clear paths and chop up fish :). That night we had dinner and I got to get to know everyone a little better. We had some drinks and it was a good night as usual. As buzz has said 7 times so far, "just another day in paradise". Tomrrow we got to buck island to go on a cool snorkling trip!

Today we had our typical morning collecting the traps and coming back for a swim. We have been collecting traps 2X a day before but we have been catching so few mongoose recently that it has not been worth going out 2X a day. Once we got out to the beach to collect our traps there we noticed the huge cruise ship that docked. I was facinated at the size of the thing. I knew the pier to be roughly 4.5 miles from us and the ship still looked huge. It reminded me of the spaceships from Independence day. When we got back to Cottages, we took the bikes down to check out the cruise ship and the street market shops opened only for the tourists. I bought a necklace for me and one for my mom but have still not found a letter opener for my dad. Apparently people don't get mail here? The security guards kept me away from the boat which was not fun. That night we went to dig some more holes for my project. It's really nice to be doing my research on what I consider the nicest beach on the island and seeing the sunset every night. However, most of this time I'm digging holes or collecting water to make the digging easier. After digging holes in the dry sand last time we concluded that it must be easier to have wet sand to prevent the hole from caving in on itself. We've also made some other adjustments to my experiment which I'll talk about more in my next post. Working with the sea turtle girls on the beach is fun too. There very knowledgable and cooperative with me collecting there pips. Know I understand pips to be broken egg shells. So a pipped egg would be an egg that hatched but the sea turtle didn't make it. Those are the ones that are the best because they smell awful. I can imagine they've already began to decompose. The turtle girls (and 2 guys) think they should be on dirty jobs for what they do. I don't disagree. Their job smells awful and they get the slimey pips on there gloves/arms/my face. I don't mind though, I'm used to cleaning gutters. The sand all over the body and the sweat probably aid to their claim. We went snorkling at the pier that night which I was not thrilled about. When Alyssa and I went it was quite disapointing but I knew buzz really wanted to go plus I didn't want to stay around by myself. It turned out better than I thought. We didn't see any of the elusive sea horses but we did sea a 4' baracuda hunting small fish and got to see buzz show off how deep he could dive. On a side note, jonathan just lost one of his teeth which he's really excited about. After getting on the pier, I met a guy named Biggie. The name speaks for itself. He looked like David Ortiz before the steroid crises. He was really nice and taught me some things about fishing down here. I then left and heard one of his step children yelling my name. I was very suprised that they wanted to talk to me, but after they asked if Alyssa was pregnant, I didn't really care what else he had to say. He wanted to know if I wanted to go spear fishing with them tomorrow. I agreed. Us party animals (buzz, me, matt, alyssa, and nate) drank and talked by the beach as has become our custom that night. The only think worth remarking on was our argument about whether or not chiropractors are legitament for what they claim they can do. I'm not completely convinced but I'm open for ideas.

The 9th was a pretty standard day which I'll mostly bypass to avoid the bore. I was worried I woudln't get back to Cottages in time to fulfill my spear fishing date with Biggie and his Possie. I got back 10 minutes before I had to meet him and got my stuff together (goggles, snorkel, spear, chain, and lock for the bike). I rode the 3 speed bike down the road as fast as my chicken legs could take me without losing my chain on the speed bumps which they conveniently place every 50 yards :(. I got to the pier about 10 minutes late and couldn't find him anywhere. I went to get a water because I was very thirsty but saw him on my way there. He told me I was just in time which ruled out me getting my much needed water. Let me tell you, this is not a guy you'd want to question, especially when he's carrying a 6 foot spear gun (mine's like 4 :( ) and he's surrounded by a band of little demons. I followed this guy anywhere and everywhere. We immediately saw a hawksbill sea turtle I believe. I wanted to swim close but I didn't know if Biggie had the urge to shoot the endangered species so I stayed back. Turns out he was an amazing spear fisherman. He could hold his breath forever and swim along the bottom which was at least 20 feet down. There wasn't really anything big to shoot but he managed to hit a few fish. I only got 2 shots off at small fish. One of which made my spear tip fall off floating to the bottom (which was at least 30 feet at this point) along with a dead fish. Biggie, some other guy with some branded marks all over his body, and I had some hienekens. They invited me over for supper to eat the fish they caught but I didn't feel safe even though they seemed like great guys. That night I dug some more holes at various depths and did my same old pip collecting routine. Now I'm writing this blog and drinking a pina colada on the beach. If my life wasn't already so convenient I'd probably agree with buzz more so that it's, "just another day in paradise".

I dug some new holes starting with 8DTS at 12" with 4 pips over the hole. 9DTS was at 12" with no pips on outside with wetted surface to see tracks if possible. The following day I examined all the sites and found that there was no new excavation at any site but digging on 5DTS and 3/4 of eggs removed from 8 DTS. This night I did my data collecting alone which proved to be more diffificult than I thought. Alyssa offered but she deserved a night off. After thinking for awhile all I could think about was all the different variables I had going on. I had to worry about how far the mongoose would travel on the beach, how wet the sand is and if it affected mongoose digging behavior, if there is bait near the sites or not etc. I then realized how silly I've been. Why would I not just attempt to use the holes that the sea turtle people already predig for me. It would take out all the work for me except the measuring. Also it would keep the sites nearly identical to how the sea turtles leave the nests in terms of distance from the brushline and dampness. The only thing I'd need to control would be the depth. The only flaw in this idea might be that the sea turtlers might not let me do this but I suspect they will and also that all the sea turtle eggs would be dead which I have no clue how this would effect the mongoose digging habits. Needless to say, the following night I decided to use the new technique. I found this is how I will be conducting any future research. It makes so much sense and I partially feel like an idiot for not considering it. Alyssa said she told me before but I guess I didn't understand what she was saying. I made three new nests which I'll remark on in a bit. While there tonight I collected as much data as I could. I'm very glad that I did my preliminary observations near the brush line because it's shown me that there are mongoose in the area and they will dig for pips. My observations showed that I had bird and mongoose tracks around A DTS sites but there was no stench from the pips that I could tell. B DTS was much the same except there were dog tracks instead of bird tracks. I find it hard to figure which is digging, the dogs or the mongoose. Hopefully the trail cam will shed some light on this question. My three new holes that I set up this day were labeled NDTS for new digging training stations. I plan to make as many sites with depths at 6", 12", and 18" (possibly 24" if the 18" get action) I put 1 NDTS at 18" I also started labeling my nests by location. I use the sea turtle marking system. This nest was near stake 186. I would like to start labeling the number of pips in the nest and try to consider the smell of the nest as that my be extremely important to whether or not the sites are dug up. I still have not found any real good way to measure these two things so as for now I'm just replacing the nests as they were when they were dug up. I made my second holw at 12" at post 172 called 2NDTS. There was no digging/no tracks at 4DTS 18". There was some digging/ partial excation at 5DTS with signs of both mongoose and dog tracks. There was mongoose tracks and digging at 9DTS 12". There was probably mongoose and definite dog tracks at 6DTS 18". 8DTS 12" had partial excavation and 3 eggs exposed with dog + mongoose tracks. 7 DTS 18" had no excation and some dog tracks. 3NDTS was a 12" hole at post 186.5. I've now started to bury my depth to the top of the nest as I've been told that is where the measurements that I've been given come from. Also, I'm not packing any of these nests as from what I hear, the mongoose explore the nests post hatching but before they are dug up. This is only about a 24 hour period by the way. I really enjoy the refining process of research. I have a ways to go before I can truly create a solid experiment with limited variables. However, I feel I've came a long way and my observations have given me so many new questions that I could explore in the future.

Recent heavy rain during the day made seeing tracks very difficult. There was no further excation at A and B DTS. 3NDTS 12" had a crab hole and other digging. There was no excavation and no positive identification of tracks. 3 DTS had digging at the 18" and 24" hole. The 18" hole was dug deeper. No excavation and no tracks. 4 DTS 18" had crab digging and possible other digging. NO tracks and no excavation. 2DTS had nothing new except some small excation at 12" with some probable mongoose tracks but they were very few and very hard to read. 5 DTS 18" had some small digging. No excavation and no tracks. 9 DTS 12" had digging up to 6" or deeper with no obvious tracks and no signs of excavation. 6DTS 18" had nothing. 8DTS 12" had much digging to a minimum of 7" Eggs at surface but not necessarily excavated. There were fresh mongoose tracks near the hole and some scent of pips unlike the other hole. 7 DTS had holes dug to 5" and was too big to be crab digging and too small to be dog. Probable mongoose. No excavation seen and no tracks. 2NDTS 12" had crab excavation with long hole going to the nest. First the tracks seemed undefined until I look closer at other crab tracks and concluded they were indeed crab. 1DTS had two crab holes, no tracks or excavation. I dug new holes at 183 and called it 4NDTS 6" and 5NDTS at 182.5 6". 6NDTS 6" did not have a a post number because I forgot. I also put a nest of pips to be observed at mongoose trap 13. I put it there with chicken feet which Teresa put there earlier. I also set up a trail cam which makes two total at the site. I think it will be very cool to find out if the mongoose will eat the pips instead of just digging them up since essentially that is my question. If the mongoose don't eat pips than I need to start experimenting with chicken eggs perhaps. I'm excited to see what we find out tomorrow. Although I Know the variance of mongoose in the area could mean no mongoose visit the feed for one reason or another. However, if they only eat one pile of bait and not the other that will tell me something. I also learned a lot about sea turtle nesting today from Chris (code named Goose for his mongoose trapping). He told me that there is little threat to the leatherbacks for predation since they dig such deep nests and dig them in the middle of the beach. However, hawksbill lay there nests near or in the brush. This creates a much better experience for the hungry mongoose. Not only is it in their wheel house for environment and shade, but it is in a sand/soil mixture which is much easier to dig in without caving. Since they are most threatened my mongoose I beleive that in the future I should design an experiment to check out the different sea turtle nesting sites, their depths and how likely they are to be dug up. Based on my observations, the 10" nests of the hawksbill could be destroyed by the mongoose. I am curious though when mongoose excavate. Based on sea turtle peoples observations they excavate between hatching and manual excavation of the site. This isn't very threatening to the turtles since the ones that will make it will already be out of the nest. I do not know yet though if the mongoose will dig up a nest before the turtles hatch. The green sea turtles lay their eggs between leatherback and hawksbill in the semibrush of the beach. A future problem I forsee is that leatherbacks hatch in early August while hawksbill hatch in late september/october. Also I would like to know if there is any bias based on the kind of eggs the sea turtles will eat. I very much doubt that there would be. Especially if the mongoose eat the dead pips I set out for them. They appear to eat anything. Teresa is sleeping. Little does she realize she's missing just another night in paradise.