After my amazing time and work in Botswana and South Africa, along with an alarmingly delayed flight, I spent 7 hours in the United States before catching my flight to Belize. It was a fast paced experience to say the least. This trip was also sponsored by the University of Central Missouri, this time to complete the last bit of a field course. We spent @ a week and a half on Ambergis Caye island. While there, we surveyed and recorded the biodiversity of both oceanic and mangrove habitats. For me, the coolest thing to see was the mangrove habitat and all of its inhabitants.
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Mangrove Habitat
Coral Reef Habitat
Manatees
Law mandates that no one knowingly gets in the water when these are seen and they cannot be touched. We were lucky enough to be in the water when these giants passed by.
Loggerhead sea turtle
This fella came around to feed off of one of the last remaining conch fisherman boats. Needless to say, he was not shy. You can see all of the conch shells that the fisherman have dumped from their catches over the years. They have made the entire area a completely new habitat.
Mayan ruins at Lamanai
During our time on Ambergis Caye, we were able to travel to Lamanai ("submerged crocodile") of mainland Belize. Lamanai is one of the sites of ancient Mayan remnants where we could navigate and explore.