Isla Mayagues: Field Station

 

My first day at Isla Mayagues with Francisco and Manual was nothing short of amazing.  When I was little I always dreamed of being a marine biologist and today I got to live out that dream.  They took me out to their field station where coral that are ready for outplanting are put into the ocean to make sure they will survive the outplanting.  We had to use GPS to get to the site because when they put buoys out, the fisherman would destroy the sites.  They are working on educating the fishing and tourism community about their work.  As luck would have it my work focuses on failures and perseverance and the batteries in the GPS died.  Both veteran scientists, went by memory and when we got close they snorkeled to find the site.  We talked about what it is like to spend most of your time failing in research.  They see it as a normal process and talked about how they have to coach the newer students.  Manual said "you're going to fail a lot and its a normal part of the process in science."  

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