It's hard to believe, but we're almost a month into the fall semester here at University of Guam! I'm taking just two classes this semester: a statistics course with heavy use of the math computer program
Mathematica, and an ecological modeling course with heavy use of the modeling computer program
R. I've spent a lot of time trying to learn two completely different programming languages at the same time!
I know two classes doesn't sound like a lot, but I'm also working. I have two work projects that I need to get finished up, both of which require lots of field days--too bad the weather has been super crappy lately! I've only been out ONE DAY in the past month! That is terrible. We've had a lot of weird storms and tropical depressions the past two months. Normally I wouldn't mind a little choppiness for a boat dive, but I have a lot of expensive and delicate gear--mainly a $14k camera rig that weighs a ton and a $30k sonde (a fancy probe that records data about temperature, salinity, turbidity, chlorophyll, etc.) that belong to the government and that I reeeeally don't want to damage.
Fortunately the bad weather hasn't stopped me from doing one of my favorite pastimes: hiking! I've been on a couple lovely hikes this month. A group from the lab did Tarzan Falls a few weeks ago, which is in the central part of the island. It was pretty and short, but we were all a little worried about getting leptospirosis from the icky water!
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| Just 1.4 miles, nice and easy! I think 3 hours is a lot longer than you need. |
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| It was a nice, easy-to-follow path! |
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| Big downhill on the way there.... means a big uphill on the way back. |
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| I always have such great hair... not. |
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| A lovely little river crossing! |
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| Good luck not getting your feet wet. |
Here's the start of the Tarzan Falls:
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| Lovely falls! |
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| Trying (and failing) to not get my feet wet. |
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| Big rocks! |
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| Reminds me of the Upper Peninsula! But more tropical. |
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| I hate apples on Guam. They are always mushy and gross. |
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| We definitely don't have trees like that in Michigan. |
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| Icky water... |
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| A long way down... |
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| Gotta be careful on those slippery rocks. |
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| Them's some big rocks! |
The guide I read beforehand said that there was a rope you could use to climb down from the top, but we couldn't find it. Once we got to the bottom of the falls I found the rope--and it was more like a very long, algae-covered string. I definitely wouldn't climb down a big waterfall on that 'rope'!
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| Pretty falls! |
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| But that's some nasty water. |
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| Worth the short hike! |
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| A little farther downstream. |
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| Another, less accessible waterfall. |
The following weekend we went hiking at Anao, a spot way up north, just south of Anderson Air Force Base. Another nice short hike that ends at the water! You wouldn't want to go swimming there though--the north side of the island is all volcanic rock, and the waves are constantly crashing up against the rocks. It makes for some very nice caves and tidepools!
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| The hike down was a little slippery, but well-maintained. |
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| A great tree! |
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| I remember 'learning' at one point that if you're lost in the forest, you can always tell which way is north because moss only grows on the north side of rocks. I think that is a load of BS! |
This plant is called a cycad! They're a very ancient plant, kinda resembling a cross between a fern and a coconut tree. They're long-lived and slow-growing, which is part of the reason why they're not very common on Guam-- the species here,
Cycas micronesica, is endangered. The near-total loss of the island's fruit bats (which eat cycads adn are an important distributor of the seeds) is another contributor to the cycad's decline.
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| A nice, healthy cycad! |
But maybe it's not all bad. Up until the 1960's, Guam had an unusually high incidence of a fatal paralyzing neurodegenerative disease known as
lytico-bodig, from the Spanish "
paralytico." This disease had features similar to Parkinson's, ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), and Alzheimer's, and occurred up to 100 times more in the Chamorro population than in the mainland US. Interestingly, the disease only affected Chamorros, not immigrants to the island.
Doctors still don't know exactly what the disease was, but it was suspected that the disease was caused by eating the cycad fruits. Chamorros ground the fruits into a flour and used them to make a sort of tortilla. The fruits had to be meticulously washed, since the cyanobacteria living in the cycads' roots produced a toxin called BMAA. Some sources say that Chamorros would give the rinse-water to chickens, and if the chickens fell ill, they knew they needed to rinse the fruit more.
However, studies of the toxin's effects found that the concentration of BMAA in the fruits wasn't high enough to produce the neurodegenerative effects. And since the disease has all but disappeared since the 1960's, it isn't being studied much anymore. A more recent theory suggests that the disease was actually caused by eating fruit bats, once a staple of the Chamorro diet. The fruit bats accumulated the BMAA toxin in their fats, and it was this high dose of the toxin that caused illness. The decline of the fruit bat population (due to the brown tree snake invasion) coincided with the decline of
lytico-bodig, which lends further credibility to the theory. But in other areas where BMAA is found in high levels the same high levels of neurodegenerative disease aren't present, so nobody is really sure. (If you want to read more about it, check out
this article from Scientific American.)
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| We were rewarded with a lovely view! |
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| It took about another 10 minutes to reach the water. See what I meant about it not being a good swimming spot? |
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| A nice cloudy day--good for hiking! |
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| Pretty (dead) butterfly. These are common on Guam. |
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| Some nice karst! |
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| Ocean, karst, and jungle all within 100m of each other! |
There were some great tide pools and a wonderful cave at Anao, but unfortunately my computer ate the rest of my photos. I guess that just means I'll have to go back!
This past weekend was very busy. Saturday was the day of the annual International Coastal Cleanup, and I was a site coordinator for the Marine Lab! About 40 people came down to the Marine Lab to clean up trash bright and early Saturday morning, and we ended up with about 30 bags full of trash and recycling. Some bigger sites, like Asan Beach Park, had trailers full of trash and over 300 volunteers! I'm glad I was just coordinating a small site, phew!
After the cleanup, everyone got a voucher for $5 admission to Underwater World, a touristy aquarium attraction in Tumon. I'd never been there before, so I figured why not go when it was cheap? I was happily surprised to find that the aquarium was actually very neat, was well-maintained, and had lots of cool marine life!
The main attraction was an underwater tunnel, featuring several species of sharks, numerous reef fish large and small, a sea turtle, and the remains of a WWII Japanese fighter plane. There were also tanks with eels, jellyfish, lionfish, and live corals. Lots of pretties! I only took my phone but I may go back next year with my nice DSLR camera.
Apart from hiking, I also went a concert a few weeks ago. Remember Shaggy, that Jamaican dude who put out songs like "Wasn't Me" and "Angel" in the early 2000's? Of course you remember. Guam typically gets artists who are at least 10 years past their prime popularity. That doesn't mean they're no good, just that you might have to jog your memory to remember all the words to their songs. It was very hot and sweaty but a lot of fun!
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| Shaggy had a pretty cool shirt on. |
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| Also very unusual pants. |
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| This performance was not kid-friendly but I saw young children right up at the stage. |
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| Ladies! |
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| Shaggy! |
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| More ladies! |
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| Our Shaggy group! (Or most of us, anyway.) |
I also hurt myself last week in a really stupid way... I ran into a truck. Or more specifically, I ran into a sheet of metal hanging off the back of a truck. I definitely learned my lesson about running at night without my light!
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| Ouchies. It actually looks a lot better in this photo than it did the few days before! |
And that's what I've been up to lately! :)
