Planning trips and lighting candles

       

    Map and plan of attack



  

    Candles and pipis


And more endings. As the year ended and a new one began, I was caught planning my 2013 trips with my volunteer Sam at "Who´s your Mumma" (where they actually sell Flor De Caña!), making maps and dreams and deciding how to best tackle the WA coastline to gather tuskfish data. Red Bluff with Gypsy is the name of the trip, and as Sam would say: "I am frothing". We will be tackling the area around the Ningaloo Marine Park, which is the northermost limit for baldchin groper and the mid-range for its sister species, the bluespotted tuskfish. Many clues are sure to be found.


And then back home, lighting candles, meditating on the year passed, placing intentions for the new one to come, and working on shell-based creations. Local pipi shells are just perfect!

Reencuentros

Kathy y Claudia; tomada por Federico que se pillo el momento perfecto

Empieza un nuevo año y se dice que una nueva era, marcada por el fin del calendario Maya y el comienzo de un mundo más lleno de amor.
Empiezan nuevas cosas y con cada comenzar hay una especie de recapitulación del pasado.
Un recuento de lo sucedido que nos lleva a meditar, a contemplar la vida como un todo, desde un ángulo especial.
Este final del año me encontró junto a mi amiga de la infancia recapitulando en un atardecer playero de hermosos colores: naranjas y amarillos de un lado, y morados y azules del otro. De un lado, el sol. Del otro, la luna casi llena. Y en medio de todo, dos chicas maravilladas por el conjunto natural, sintiendo, meditando en silencio.

Estaciones

Asi se ve el mesón de mi casa en primavera; mango y aguacate!!

Nunca antes había vivido en un lugar con estaciones.
Cambia todo.
La gente, las actitudes, las frutas en los mercados, los atuendos, las flores.
En mi patio empieza a florecer el palo de guayaba; con florecitas blancas.
Cuando empiezan los fríos, la fruta está lista y me dan ganas de hacer mermelada como las abuelas.
Todo en movimiento constante, con flow.

Como las estaciones, así es la vida.
Porque todo está conectado al final, por medio de un hilo a veces invisible,

pero conector.

La flor del guayabo

Thursday

Scottie, Jules, Laura, Stevie, Todd, Matt, Damo, Ben, Jake, Kathy and Kim, enjoy sharing end of year stories and unite in saying farewell to Stevie who is off to join the Catlin team on an amazing video survey of the Great Barrier Reef! (www.catlinseaviewsurvey.com)

The week is almost ending and so is the year.

This Thursday caught me on a real good note, despite being seriously stung yeserday by jellyfishes on a sunset swim in my local Freo beach, and having a bad case of the itches. 

Woke up with the sunrise, wore flip flops to work, gave a talk to some very talented and engaged teenagers, had pub lunch with my lab mates and got some awesome research advise. I wonder what else I can fit into one day...

The morning´s talk was for PISCE, at Curtin University,a program that provides placements and scholarships to students in their last year of school. My task: to chat to them about careers in marine science, my path as a scientist, and my current research. The chat which consisted mainly of mouth watering pictures to lure them into becoming marine biologists, ended with a skit to look into conflicts between fish, recfishers and managers. To my surprise they were spot on to identify problems in all sectors, they identified with the point of view of each party, and had some awesome suggestions for solving conflict between users while still helping conserve fish and fisheries. Education and outreach came up as the main tools and they thought my talk was an example of how these could work! So I am very pleased to have contributed to some young promising minds and I look forward to seeing the field grow. My respect to the youth of western Australia and may you work hard to keep your oceans beautiful!

My gifts for making efforts to inspire Australian youth. The least I can do to say thank you Australia for funding my PhD!

Carnavales de Freo

Otra manera de mirar los carnavales.

Desde un ambiente más de familia, más hippie.

Más de conciencia ambiental y más a manera de compartir entre la comunidad, pero también con una que otra reminiscencia de latino-américa, como un par de disfraces de samba, o el grupo de Capoeira. 

Con tambores y música, con chicos y grandes, con crayolas color pastel para colorear el cemento de la calle, con mucha alegría,y siendo yo sin lugar a dudas la más bullera de los espectadores, aconteció el carnaval de Freo. 

Una de mis competidoras en el proceso de colorear la calle!! Azul o rosado?

Y si ella no les derrite el corazón....

Los chicos de la Capoeira antes del tremendo show de clausura

Y no podían faltar quienes luchan por los derechos de los animales

United for the tropics

The multicultural cohort enjoys the Daintree

Trans-disciplinary work: a solution for tropical problems? The newly created Graduate Tropical Network for Tropical Research sure thinks so and is taking the first steps to doing so by uniting promising doctoral students across Australia´s most important universities to foster a new generation of researchers collaborating  for a common cause: to improve research in the tropics that helps solve environmental and social problems. 

Last week caught me at Trinity Beach in the outskirts of Cairns, sharing with a group of very talented researchers from a variety of disciplines, antrhopology, archeology, biology, economy, ecology, conservation, agriculture and biotechnology. The result: a new outlook on how to solve problems by uniting skills and taking new approaches. The future will hopefully see this network expand and will surely constitute a source of new ideas to solve real problems. It was encouraging to see people unite, open and believe in each other´s potential for creation. Collaboration and networking made possible by a community that slowly turns global, is truly making a change in how we perceive and deal with the issues facing our world today. The heroes of tomorrow are in the making, just wait and see them shine. 

KC remembers her days as a tour guide at  the
Tortuguero mangroves

The multicultural group mingles

Panelists give advise on life beyond PhD

Uganda, Australia and Colombia!

In Print!!

My first scientific article was published today.

It  felt good to get that email of the MEPS Table of Contents and see my surname there.

It felt good to imagine so many people opening it and going "Ah, I wonder what this one is about" and hopefully following the link to downloading the full article.

One year it took me to get this baby published; multiple co-authors, a tricky dataset and many trials, but in the end a much improved piece of work that I am happy to call mine.

The article, which is the first comparison of native and invasive lionfish, is the result of teamwork, and an excellent example of the kind of science we can be doing if we help each other. This would have been impossible to achieve without all my co-authors and collaborators. Thank you all!

And to those of you reading this blog, you can find my paper at:

http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v467/p181-192/

 

Pterois volitans, the invader of my affections

 

Caught Infraganti!

Buoyancy troubles?? -photo by Steve Lindfield

My awesome lab mate Stevie L. just gave me the best present ever. A folder with pictures that make me look amazing when I think I am just being silly looking mesmerized at the fishes I study and which fuel my scientific curiosity. He has such a photographic talent. I am lucky to be able to use his images for my talks, which always make them better, as my audience can just go: wow! and feel like they want to be in just that place. A captivated audience is a won audience. Thanks Stevie L.

But anyways, the purpose of this post is to share this picture which I thought was funny and has a story. What happened? Well I was having serious buyonacy issues at the Abrolhos, diving with a new 5mm wetsuit, with a leak in my BCD and doing some real shallow dives. So I remembered my friend Coro in the Philippines who would stuff his dive belt with all kinds of rocks to keep stable. And here I am, carrying pieces of rubble to keep my cool and perform the task I was sent to do: collect coral samples for my friend Luke. So all you divers out there, having buoyancy issues? Grab a rock would you? Just be mindful of when and where you let it go!

Amazed at the Abrolhos

Your blogger being more aquas than areos

Talk about beauty and remoteness and relatively untouched areas where nature thrives.
Impossible in this day and age?
Well think again! The Abrolhos Islands about 80 km offshore in central Western Australia is a taste of such  paradise. Not only that, it is a unique area where corals and kelp trhive together, in a series of unique ecosystems between tropical and temperate, maintained by warm water currents flowing southwards along the coast.

The Reel Affair and my buddy Stevie L.

On board the "Reel Affair" a lovely ship with amazing staff hailing from my new neighborhood the lovely Freo, I travelled to the Abrolhos as part of a research team led by postgraduate researcher Luke Thomas, who is studying patterns of coral connectivity in the area. I was lucky to be selected by Luke to take coral samples during this trip, in which aside from doing my job as a research assistant, I got to suss out potential study sites for looking at the behavior of baldchin groper, one of the species I will be looking at as part of my doctoral thesis on the popualtion ecology of tuskfishes.

The Houtman Abrolhos is baldie heaven and I must now find the way to make it a study site. Tough life being a marine biologist is it not?

Release me! An undersized baldie is  unhooked  

An adult baldie checks the reef out

Destellos submarinos

Es como brilla,
como viniendo desde abajo,
desde la profundidad
formando un abanico en forma de destello,
brillante.

Destello que hipnotiza y enloquece.
Destello que tranquiliza.
Destello oh destello tu, que sigo en mi imaginación hoy día.

Hard work finally pays off: Viva Turneffe MPA!!!

After years of looking forward to this news, I finally open my email to find it.
Turneffe Atoll has been declared a marine protected area. Not just any protected area, but the largest marine reserve in the whole of Belize. A major victory and one in which I had the pleasure to be involved in as part of workshops with The Nature Conservancy, while working for the Oceanic Society at Blackbird Caye.
How I hope to see those big and beautiful Scarus guacamaia swimming once more in large groups at The Canyons. Thank you Belize Fisheries Department, local fishermen, Oceanic Society and Turneffe Atoll Trust!!!!!

Turneffe is a beautiful place, a unique mixture of mangrove, reef, seagrass beds and coral reefs, much in need of management following increases in ilegal fishing and plans for development. The atoll holds healthy populations of fish, mammals, birds and reptiles, inlcuding resident populations of bottlenose dolphins and saltwater crocodiles. It is a paradise for snorkelers, recreational fishers and anyone seeking to immerse into the beauty only Belize can offer. And now, you Betta Belize It!!! Turneffe Atoll has protection status and its beauty has just gotten a million more chances to remain for all of you and hopefully me, to one day once more see.

Enjoy some of my favorite vistas during my lucky and very happy years there.

On mojos, projects and passions

Passion.
For some people it is non-existent. For others, it is a life driver, something without which life becomes meaningless. For latins it is inherent to the blood flow, it provides rythm to the palpitations of hearts that dance to the sound of a million drums.
For me, a large part of that passion comes from the sea. From looking at fishes: big and small, drab and colorful, fast and slow, shy and bold. A million stories from one snorkel.
I just got back from my first trip to Ningaloo, one of the most pristine reefs my eyes have seen.
A great study site, a passion driver and a great camera frame. So video-making to share my research outcomes, here I come.

Sabias palabras de E.O. Wilson

Life

We get to live it once.
We get to love it once.
We get to create it once.
We get to experience it once.
This is my shot, my take, my experience.

De las cositas que me encuentro en la playa

Pipi o mejillon del surf

Caminando por la playa me encuentro siempre cositas.
Y me pregunto ¿qué serán? Como por ejemplo los huequitos en estas conchas, diminutos y perfectamente circulares, que hacen que sea super fácil insertarles hilo y convertirlas en uno de los móviles que decoran mi casa. El perfecto regalo que me hace el mar.
Y al encontrarlas, mi mente curiosa busca respuestas.
Y las encuentra.
Los huequitos en estas conchas que se llaman pipis y miden tan solo un par de centímetros, son hechos por la rádula (una especie de lengua) de un caracol. Resulta que a las pipis, que viven en playas con muchas olas, enterrándose y desenterrándose en la arena con cada ola que pasa, se las comen los caracoles haciéndoles un huequito minúsculo y chupándose los suculentos jugos. Qué perfecta es la naturaleza! Y después me preguntan que por qué soy bióloga....

Scallop

Spirula spirula

Otros de mis descubrimientos son los scallops, que aparte de ser deliciosos tienen múltiples ojos bordeando sus conchas, y las Spirulas, unos espiralitos que me encuentro por todas partes, muy delicados de textura, y que resulta son el esqueleto de unos moluscos de aguas profundas llamados Spirula spirula. Los esqueletos flotan a la superficie cuando el animal se muere. Juzgando por la cantidad de estos que encuentro en mi playita de south Fremantle en Perth, hay muchísimos Spirula en el fondo del mar!

¿Que pasó con el agua de la pluma loco?

Mi propia botellita

Es la pregunta que se hacen miles de personas como yo y a la que se han sumado escuelas en Australia, que han prohibido, oíganlo bien, PROHIBIDO, la venta de agua embotellada dentro de sus instalaciones (http://www.gotap.com.au/). Un aplauso para los Australianos que aunque un poco faltos de sazón, están a años luz de los Colombianos en materia medio-ambiental.

Y tú, ¿qué esperas para volver al agua de la pluma? ¿Eres uno de esos que compra la caja de mini botellas plásticas para poder cargarlas contigo y luego botarlas a la basura? Ojo, que hasta en mi familia sucede. Así que mami, papi, Luz Ma, y quienes están leyendo este blog, pilas con las botellitas, que el hecho de que no esté la policía ambiental cerca, no los lleve al facilismo, que nos matan el mar a mi y a todos los que disfrutamos de ver más pececitos y menos plástico.

New lab and how past members are becoming idols

So I am now part of the Fish Ecology Group under the direction of Dr. Euan Harvey at the Univeristy of Western Australia. And it feels good. The people, the aims, the research, the vibes, the leaders, the methods, the coffee breaks next to the fridge with all those duckie magnets, the conversations, the open field on which to create my new research project and direction.

Today, a cold and dark morning in Perth, my heart warmed and my face smiled when I learned about a new past lab member Dr. Caine Delacy. Caine was supervised by the same people who are now taking me on, so I figured I should read his work. And then I figured I should Google him. You know how it goes. And here I am, writing a blog post about him because yes Caine, you are now one of my idols, achieving what is one of my dreams and making me feel it can become a reality. You have appeared at TED and maybe soon I too, can give an empowering TED talk. Perhaps I will be the first Colombian marine scientist to do so at the same time! Check Caine´s talk out. He talks about his research, thinking big, trusting his data by using stereovideo techniques and how his journey is in the making and will never end, much like each of our own journeys. Enjoy!

A trip down the coast

A sunny day´s vista along the Albany coast

Field site anyone? So yes, I have made it to Western Australia! And I am delighted by the crystal clear oligotrophic waters that surround me. Brrr.... yes, the Indian Ocean is cold but an energy rush runs through my body when I swim in it. Shark fear after all those attacks reported around Perth or the tingly feeling of the cold rush on my skin pores? A bit of both, but neither stops me from weekend swims in the search of new creatures, unseen by my Caribbean eyes.

Last weekend I visited Albany, a town in the southwesternmost point of Australia, featuring spectacular views, gorgeous beaches and very nice locals. Accompanying my doctoral thesis supervisor Dr. Euan Harvey to give a lecture at a local diveshop on the use of stereo-video as a survey technique for fishes, I embarked on the five hour journey south from Perth. Dr. Harvey is trying to get locals involved in monitoring fish populations around Albany, making use of easy to learn tools that can be applied by divers with a little scientific training. Hopefully the fish team will get going soon!

Finalmente el tan anunciado video...

Si! Ya está en YouTube mi video con mi canción del lionfish. Disfraz, canción, ritmo, edición, todo creación original de Areos Aquas y filmación de El Gordo Sharmuto.

Ojalá disfruten de estos primeros pininos de lo que Areos Aquas pretende a futuro: unir el arte con la ciencia. Para los que no hablan inglés, la canción cuenta mucho de lo que encontré al estudiar al pez león, que es un pez muy versátil que se adapta a cualquier ambiente y circunstancia, razón por la cual es tan buen invasor.
Excelente cazador que consume presas tan variadas como los juveniles de peces loros, pargos, meros y camarones, el pez león se ha convertido en una de las invasiones más nombradas en la historia de los arrecifes coralinos. Y fue sin intención! Derivada de nuestro afán por transportar pecesitos de lindos colores para ver en los acuarios en donde no pertenecen. Así que antes de comprar mascota exótica, piensa! Tu también puedes contribuir a un medio ambiente más local y sano. 

Turns out more fishes eat coral...

Psuedocheilinus hexataenia which feed on Pocillopora; Photo from Berumen & Rotjan 2010

         Turns out that while I was busy studying fish that prey on other fish and crustaceans,  I was missing all this cool information on scientists finding out that there are more fishes that eat coral. And what is way cooler is that many of these fishes are parrotfishes, which I always learned (and taught all my coral reef monitoring volunteers!) were the saviors of corals because they ate seaweeds that could smother corals and impede their growth.
          Turns out, some parrotfish species are actually detrimental to corals, feeding even on their reproductive parts and causing serious colony damage. Old news? Let´s say the evidence keeps accumulating and the subject has recently shined, but I have found records as late as the 80s. Coral reefs never cease to amaze me! I applaud the curiosity of my colleagues who are always finding new and really interesting information.

Some coral bite pictures:
The fish is Arthron diadematus biting an Acropora colony.
Believe it or not c are pieces of coral from fish guts, imagine trying to pass on of those down!

from: Berumen & Rotjan 2010

These other pics show bite marks on coral from yet other fishes: the puffer Arothron meleagris and the parrotfish Chlorurus sordidus.

from: Jayewardene et al. 2009