5/28/2014 Around 1/2 of the world.... Bequia, London, Dublin and too many hours in too many other airports.... all in the name of coral!Read NowThese days when asked where I live, my response is often " well, I pay rent in Nassau, BUT, that doesn't necessarily mean that you are going to find me there." This is of course no complaint, I love The Bahamas, and it is home, and when I am far away I miss the blue skies and perfect waters. However the minute I arrive home I start daydreaming about another trip to a far away land all in the name of coral. What can i say, I have a passion for exploration and love a good story. Coral, tiny symbiotic animals that have no idea that I or any humans exist, have transformed my life in a weird, I can't sleep, stressed out of my mind, but madly in love with these creatures kind of way. Coral reefs sustain our economy and our lifestyle in The Bahamas and are often taken for granted and their importance overlooked. It is so important that we as Bahamians start to stand up and protect our culture and heritage and this includes all of our natural resources. The reality is that if we don't ensure that we have a healthy environment, we will loose our economic stability and the quality of life that we are all accustomed to will be lowered. This opens the door for more delinquent and unfavorable behavior in the country. It's a reality that we are faced with and as Bahamians we need to take control of our future and shape the country that we want to live in. So Back to coral and traveling 1/2 way around the world ( I am going to try and keep this brief because I should be working on my thesis right now, but writing a blog post was a wonderful opportunity for procrastination!) Bequia Young Marine Explorers, has been going through some really exciting transformational changes, most of which is "underwater" housekeeping and structural- transforming from the one woman and many intern show to a sustainable organization that will be able to continue offering the programs throughout the country without me actually facilitating them. This transition hasn't happened over night but we have a great team and Board of Directors that are guiding the organizations work...... which takes me to the whirlwind trip to Bequia. YME is working with an environmental arts organization based in Barbados to develop an Environmental Leadership Exchange programme with students from Bequia in the Grenadines. On my trip down there I met with the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Environment in addition to the principles of the two high schools, key island stakeholders and of course the youth! It was a great start and I am really excited about this inter island cross caribbean YME exchange! Cambridge I spent a month in England really all in the name of conservation and coral. I attended the Student Conference on Conservation Science at Cambridge University. It was a fantastic experience with brilliant key note speakers and a forum to discuss conservation with other students. My three take home points from the conference are:
London From Cambridge I spent three weeks at the Zoological Society of London working on my thesis.... ( which i really need to get back to so going to try and wrap this up). Those three weeks were an emotional roller coaster, it was hard, i was challenged in ways my mind had never really comprehend before. But i pushed through. I had amazing support from ZSL staff which helped me look at some of my points in a different light which was really good. To say that I would have come this far in the thesis writing without any freak out moments would be like me saying I have come this far without drinking any coffee.... as if haha. Ireland I left London and my aunt and uncle who took great care of me and went to Ireland for a 2 day whirl wind trip. There I connected with my irish side of the family who I hadn't seen in about 15 years. We had a crazy family reunion and then I was off back to Nassau..... Nassau
Back to Nassau really means I landed in Nassau went to Exuma the following day to work as a dive master for the weekend...Then to Miami for two weeks where I was chained to a desk and worked on my thesis.....and I am now back in Nassau and with 14 days to go, My birthday present to me, probably the best birthday present I will ever give myself will be to submit my MSc thesis.... It will be a good.... a FANTASTIC day..... but it will only be fantastic if i don't get back to work! In the name of caffeine, coral and conservation ......... I go back to work to accomplish goals and set in motion bigger dreams..... to publications and PhD's ..... that is all
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The month of July marked the 40th year of independence for the Bahamas and although I am too young to be one of those Bahamians who remember that 10th day of July in 1973, I was honored to be recognized as one of 40 outstanding Bahamians whom will make a difference for the Bahamas within the next 40 years. Some might describe my passion for the ocean and the Bahamas as being contagious but simply put I love the ocean and I love what I do which makes it really easy for me to share my enthusiasm with others. I think that is what makes the EDGE fellowship so fantastic as it has provided a vehicle for me to combine my love for diving, the ocean and conservation and share that with youth throughout the Bahamas. One of the objectives of my EDGE project Empowering Youth Through Coral Conservation has been to train youth to become members of a Coral Conservation Team (CCT) that will work along side me in the filed as we study Pillar coral (Dendrogyra cylindrus), analyze our findings in the lab and share the importance of pillar coral and coral reefs within local communities. On paper the project sounds fairly simple find youth, teach them to dive, study coral…. the reality is not as simple, but rather a story of logistical trials, character development and many laughs…laughter, because crying is simply not an option. As I am still conducting an in-depth literature review on pillar coral and methods on studying rare coral species I jumped into training the coral conservation team. One of the first things that I have realized is that the quality of my data is paramount and what I am really doing is training youth that in two to three years will have the capacity to monitor reefs but for now our efforts or focused on coral id, mastering buoyancy while diving and learning the basics about the marine environment. Working with youth on each island presents its various challenges, In Nassau where I live there are 18 youth currently enrolled in the project where an hours bus ride and trek through a dirt trail with everyone pitching in to transport the dive gear is just the beginning of our day. Our home base is a little thatch gazebo on a sandy beach that provides access to deep water from shore. Unfortunately the reef that we frequent for our training is not the healthiest and is covered with macro algae, however during a training dive last week we spotted a dead colony of pillar coral with only one living column about the size of my thumb. Even though its small I now know there is pillar coral in the waters around Nassau. Working in Cat Island has been far more exciting as far as pillar coral sightings are concerned. The Cat Island CCT has conducted training dives where there have been beautiful colonies of pillar coral and the first person to site it usually ends up banging on the back of their tank to get everyone’s attention and behind everyone’s masks are wide eyes and big smiles. It is always exciting to hear the joy in a CCT member who has no more than 10 dives under their belt describe an encounter with a pillar coral colony during a dive that I wasn’t present on. It is during these conversations that I realize that my passion for the ocean and pillar coral is being transferred and that in time these Coral Conservation Teams will be powerful forces of conservation within local communities. Working with the CCT is just the beginning of my EDGE conservation project and it is exciting to be a role model for so many youth and introduce to the world of conservation as I am developing an early career conservation biologist.
On Friday I had the honor of attending the CEE Global Awards and Women's Summit in recognition of the 40th year anniversary of the Bahamas. During the ceremony I was presented an award for my dedication and hard work in the field of Marine Biology. This was an exciting event and it was an honor to be recognized for the work that I am doing in the Marine Sciences. I sincerely hope to contribute significantly to the field of marine science throughout The Bahamas and around the world and I think this award suggests that I am heading in the right direction, although I won’t get far if I can’t complete my masters so I think this entry will have to be short and I need to finish my assignment on science communication.
Last weekend I found myself in Cat island for the second time in one month... not bad if you ask me. I was asked to talk at the first annual Earth Day celebration hosted in Arthurs Town Cat Island. It was great to be part of the 3 person panel from Nassau that spoke about various environmental project and initiatives. I talked about my coral conservation project, which was great the more presentations I can give the more coverage the project gets. It was also fantastic to connect with some of the other stake holders within the community. It makes me happy about the networks that I am developing throughout The Bahamas especially with the youth. Even though I am talking about Cat Island I am writing this blog post from lovely Exuma. Cat Island one week lovely Exuma this week I must say two of the best islands in The Bahamas back to back, not bad at all. As I sit here looking out the window I contemplate where I am in my journey of so called life. I am really excited to be only one and a half classes away from finishing this second year of my MSc. I say half because I am in the middle of one class now and then once I get the final A ok I begin my thesis year... the last and final year!!!! Oh how I am so excited. Even though I have already started working on it with my EDGE project it will nice to be able to focus on it and not have to worry about classes!!!!! But this mean I have to start thinking about my doctorate and where I will go to school to do that. I want to go somewhere in the UK or EU. I think it would be nice to get my Phd done in 3 years as opposed to 4 to 5 years and also it would be a nice change and give me a chance to try and connect with the Irish side of me. This weekend I’m working with some of my friends from the states and we are going to be diving danger reef, its funny I will never forget the day I went to danger reef and saw the eagle ray ballet.. at least that’s how I remember it with at least 1o rays swimming about 50 feet bellow as I floated on the surface in awe. I know my friends want to see sharks which we will of course see but I wouldn’t mind having some eagle rays in my life tomorrow. Heres to a fun filled weekend with friends and great dives and so thats my cue to get out from in front of my computer and go and enjoy sunny Exuma!
My life has been all about coral, which is good .... great ... although i have been spending many of my days above water reading about coral as opposed to underwater diving with coral. I understand reading is important to and you cannot just play in the water every day.... although lets be real thats all I want to do. I am in my last semester of my classes at U Edinburgh which has me really excited because that means I will be able to focus on my coral conservation project next year and not have to think about classes. Which will bring me to graduation in 2014 with my MSC... and then the path to my Doctorate will begin... yikes! The coral conservation project is coming along well. We have had 2 intense coral conservation trainings, one in Andros and the other in Cat Island. We have been focusing on our SCUBA certifications both the Andros and the Cat Island group have passed their tests and finished their confined water work, so our next trips will be focussing on Coral ID and our open water dives. I feel as though I am writing so many grants these days, we really need to find a sponsor so that we can expand our coral conservation project and YME. I will be heading back down to Cat Island this weekend to talk at the Earth Day Fair I will be speaking on my EDGE/YME project “ Empowering Youth Through Coral Conservation”. It will be nice to be down there and see the YME group again. I am working on a few new projects and as they develop I will be sure to blog about it. I have a new quotation that I live by “ I want to remember that no one is going to make my dream come true for me... it is my job to get up every day and work towards the things that are deepest in my heart...and to enjoy every step of the journey rather than wishing I was already where I wanted to end up”
My life has been all about coral, which is good .... great ... although i have been spending many of my days above water reading about coral as opposed to underwater diving with coral. I understand reading is important to and you cannot just play in the water every day.... although lets be real thats all I want to do. I am in my last semester of my classes at U Edinburgh which has me really excited because that means I will be able to focus on my coral conservation project next year and not have to think about classes. Which will bring me to graduation in 2014 with my MSC... and then the path to my Doctorate will begin... yikes! The coral conservation project is coming along well. We have had 2 intense coral conservation trainings, one in Andros and the other in Cat Island. We have been focusing on our SCUBA certifications both the Andros and the Cat Island group have passed their tests and finished their confined water work, so our next trips will be focussing on Coral ID and our open water dives. I feel as though I am writing so many grants these days, we really need to find a sponsor so that we can expand our coral conservation project and YME. I will be heading back down to Cat Island this weekend to talk at the Earth Day Fair I will be speaking on my EDGE/YME project “ Empowering Youth Through Coral Conservation”. It will be nice to be down there and see the YME group again. I am working on a few new projects and as they develop I will be sure to blog about it. I have a new quotation that I live by “ I want to remember that no one is going to make my dream come true for me... it is my job to get up every day and work towards the things that are deepest in my heart...and to enjoy every step of the journey rather than wishing I was already where I wanted to end up”
Check out my most recent blog post on the Zoological Society of London EDGE of existence website http://www.edgeofexistence.org/edgeblog/?p=6944 For as long as I can remember, I have always loved the outdoors and being in the water. It was of no great surprise to anyone when my first summer job was working as a snorkel guide. For the 15-year old Nikita, it was a dream come true, and a summer that changed my life. It was that same summer that I became a PADI open water diver and was introduced to the wonders of the underwater world. Working on the snorkel boat I began to notice that, despite the fact that my co-workers and I were all making a profit off the ocean, there seemed to be an overwhelming lack of respect – where throwing a candy wrapper off the boat was considered the norm.
I will never forget the beautiful summer day where the ocean was so calm it looked like a table but we had to change our snorkel site because the ongoing oil leak from the electrical plant left a slick of oil that covered the water. It was at that moment that I turned to my captain and said, “ give me four years and I am going to do something about that”. I returned to high school that year knowing that I was going to become a Marine Biologist and make a difference in The Bahamas. It was that summer in 2002 that ignited my uncontrollable passion for the ocean and educating Bahamian youth about its value. During my second year of University, I stayed true to my promise to my captain and founded the non-profit organization Young Marine Explorers that is committed to inspiring Bahamian youth to become agents of change through experiences in outdoor classrooms. After my undergraduate degree I struggled for some time to find a graduate programme that embraced the physical sciences just as much as the social sciences – to me conservation requires both sciences working together – but I finally found this. It was in my first class at University of Edinburgh that I was introduced to EDGE species, so when I saw the EDGE Fellowship programme and their requirements for conservation projects I got really excited. As an EDGE Fellow, I am able to introduce the world of conservation science to students of The Bahamas by fostering the development of their leadership skills, teaching them to become SCUBA Divers and engaging them through citizen science to work alongside me as we uncover the life history of the Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered coral species found within The Bahamas. Although I have just started this project, I can see the enthusiasm and passion growing in the students as they develop pride for the ocean and our unique pillar coral. To learn more about Nikita’s work, please visit her community page. As you know, the key to the future is education,” is what a young boy from the Makongeni community told me the other day as I waswalking back to the camp. I immediately agreed with him but his words “As you know” stuck with me, he said it with such certainty as though there was no doubt in his mind that I knew education was the key to the future. Perhaps this is something that I know, but it made me question as to how many young Bahamians his age would share the same conviction towards education – that there was nothing more important than finishing high school and moving on to University. For those of us in the EDGE training workshop there has been no lack of mental stimulation between statistics, R, GIS, media, behavioural observation and oh did I mention statistics….. my brain has not had a chance to rest. Despite my pre-statistic fears I can say I have conquered standard deviation, the chi test and I even understand what a parametric test is and how to test for assumptions. I have accepted that this clearly is just the beginning of my newfound relationship with statistics and, as Dr. Rajan Amin has made clear, the key to conservation is solid statistics. We could not have asked for a better mentor. Taking a break from statistics we took a trip to Shimba Hills as we learned about behavioural observation. It was there that I had my first encounter with large African mammals such as giraffes, elephants and warthogs. On a safari ride driving through the reserve during the afternoon we really didn’t see anything until it started to cool down and got closer to 5pm. Despite the beauty of these wild animals, I am not ready to trade my underwater world for the grasslands of East Africa. As part of an evening lecture series each EDGE Fellow as well as the teaching team have been giving short presentations about who they are and what they do. It was my turn tonight and I was happy to talk about Young Marine Explorers (the environmental non-profit that I run in the Bahamas) and my plans of connecting Bahamian youth with coral research. What I was not expecting was to be on the verge of tears….. who really thought anyone could cry over science?….. apparently I have that special ability. This time in Kenya working with the other EDGE training participants has been an inspiring experience for me. I have always wanted to be involved in conservation science but for some reason I was taught to think that environmental education was as close to science as I would be able to handle. These past two weeks have showed me otherwise, which was why I nearly broke down into tears this evening presenting about my EDGE species Dendrogyra cylindrus. I know this EDGE Fellowship is going to launch my career as a Conservation Biologist and this is something that I am really excited about. We are getting to the end of the theory section of the course which means next week we will finally be out of the classroom and underwater where I belong.
10/26/2012 The Return to the motherland....Or a Conservation Adventure for a Young BiologistRead NowFor most Bahamians the continent of Africa is thought of as the “motherland” or the origin of our existence. As a Rolle (a prominent Bahamian Slave surname), there is no question that my ancestry has direct ties to the continent of Africa. As a scientist the idea of going to the African continent conjures different ideas of large mammals and unique species; exploring a biodiversity hotspot and learning the art of conservation science. So then I ask myself, what am I expecting of this scientific journey in the motherland? Nassau, London, Entebbe, Mombasa a 3 day trip of over 19 hours in the air as opposed to the unimaginable trip by boat that my ancestors took hundreds of years ago headed in the opposite direction. I was in Kenya for no more than 15 minutes when I saw a monkey running around outside the airport, not to mention the ones screaming outside my tent as I am writing- this is a wild place! Our first official day began with an introduction to Makongeni Village, the community where Camp Kenya (the host location for our EDGE training course) is located. As we walked through the community’s dirt roads we passed goats, chickens and homes constructed from mud and palm frawns. Camp Kenya is located close to a primary school that the organization has been influential in constructing. According to Gladys our camp Kenya Coordinator, when Camp Kenya moved into the area four years ago the students did not have a classroom, but rather would conduct lessons underneath the trees. Our first course was on the Principles of Conservation Biology; this was a nice introduction for me as I just finished a very similar class last semester at University of Edinburgh. As such it provided a straightforward introduction to the more intense classes to come. Meanwhile, the current Ecological Monitoring course is a bit more demanding and has introduced a number of challenging statistical principals that I hope to fully understand by the end of this training. Despite the stress of statistics and the challenges associated with it, it is an area that I really need to work on. The classes we have done so far have been a nice balance of theory and practical application which mix things up and helps my brain cope with some of the really intense topics. Today was by far the best day as I had my first dive in the Indian Ocean! I was really impressed with the different types of coral along with the coral cover here. Everything was so healthy, not to mention that we had a surprise visit from a turtle and number of dolphins. Despite my passion for coral and the ocean I never thought that I would find myself specifically doing coral research. I am looking forward to seeing what the coral quality is like outside of the park. The diving in Kisite Marine Park reminded me of previous dives in the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park in The Bahamas as there were so many different animals and everything was vibrant. It wasn’t until the second dive today that it hit me that I was diving in Kenya and that life as I know it is amazing and full of adventures! I can only imagine what’s to come. The experience so far has got me thinking about my project and some of the parts that I want to refine. I have already been inspired and have many ideas on how I can positively impact conservation in The Bahamas.
It has been fantastic getting to know the other members in the group, learning about their EDGE species of focus and what life is like in their home nations. An experience like this is something that will truly impact all of our future careers, and hopefully conservation in general. Tomorrow we begin statistics, if I said I was not worried I would be lying, but at the same time I am prepared to take on the adventures and the challenges of this conservation biology journey in the motherland. This was the last full day in DC and I am now packed and ready to fly out tomorrow morning headed to San Francisco. Today was a productive day and has made this trip so far. I had the follow up meting today with NCSE, The National Council for Science and the Environment. I have noticed that when I am really excited about a project and the wheels in my brain start churning , I begin to speak very fast -well today was that kind of day. EnvironMentors is a fantastic program that connects high school students with science professionals, professors, undergrad and graduate students. Together the mentor pair work on a science experiment that develops skills of the student, ultimately preparing them for college and a career in the sciences. I am happy to announce that we are working towards developing the first EnvironMentors International Chapter. This affiliation will fulfill a component of YME that we have not yet been able to develop;the mentorship program and quality research projects. The structure of the EnvironMentor program will undoubtably take YME to another level and provide new educational opportunities for students throughout the Bahamas. Our goal is to be an official EnvironMentors Chapter by fall 2013 however we will be slowly introducing the EnvironMentors program beginning this september.
DC has proved to be a fantastic networking experience and I am sincerely looking forward to the new experiences to come....... |
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The Science BlogIn the spirit of scholarship and adventure my writing explores a range of topics about the ocean, conservation and Small Island Developing States. This island girl, although not always writing from an island hopes to introduce you to the fun and wild side of science! Archives
September 2019
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