The Christmas I Learned to Snorkel and Swam for Global Warming

Late August of one year, I was browsing through an Earthwatch catalog and came upon a trip that occurred during the Boeing holiday weeks. At Boeing, we were given paid vacation from December 24^th through January 2^nd. That meant I could escape for almost ten days without using any of my precious vacation time. When I read closer, I found the duties of a volunteer were swimming, snorkeling, and scuba diving. I didn't have a scuba diving license, never snorkeled but was a swim team swimmer in my high school years. I couldn't imagine a better vacation than one where I did what I liked best, spend time on a beach, learn about science and swim. I signed up.

So that year, instead of sitting around drinking hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps and eating fudge in a hot room with my sisters, I escaped. I flew into Fort Lauderdale, Florida a day early and took a drive down Alligator Alley. The next day, I found my way to our chartered flight to San Salvador, Bahamas. Midway, we had to stop to refuel and found trouble.

The flight run by the same charter company just fifteen minutes ahead of ours had a crash landing with a fire. Most of the people onboard lost their luggage. I felt bad for them, but most had that adventurous spirit that said I can pick up Bahama Mama t-shirts and buy a toothbrush so our team was intact. Yet, for the first time ever, my nerves stood on end during a flight. But I soon forgot.

Our quarters were at a field station with a public kitchen that served dormitory style meals. Our rooms were single dorm style beds in groups of two or three. My roommates and I settled in well.

The next day found us all gathered into two small vans that took us to one of the beaches on San Salvador. The divers took out their gear while the rest of us sat around the beach waiting to get started. The first team of divers went out about twenty feet, and three or four snorkelers went with them. Soon we had snorkelers swimming chunks of muddy sea grass to all of us on the beach and returning to the snorkelers. All of us on the beach had the job of washing all the mud out. The divers had a device that looked like a pipe with a sharp end on it that would cut into the seafloor muck and pick up clumps of the grass.

Later, the next day, our job was taking the grass and sorting it into clumps of three varieties of local sea grass. This sounded rather difficult, but soon we realized that each variety was shaped differently.

Not bad work in all. We visited the site of where Christopher Columbus landed, visited an old plantation home, and worked three different beaches. The purpose for collecting samples at several beaches is to get a baseline of how much seagrass grew along the three different currents that San Salvador was exposed to. The researchers wanted to understand how seagrasses were affected by a variety of changes, things like pollution and global warming.

And one day, one of the ladies lent me her snorkel gear and I went out; it was so easy. It was a great trip and I had a lot of fun including dancing to the island's only music tape, star gazing, hearing about the wonders of the deep from the dive master and writing.

A favorite poem written during this trip is : San Salvador Bahamas Seascape