Day 12 - June 18: A slow day on the island

Today was a pretty slow day compared to the past week. It began as always with breakfast then it was a morning filled with presentations at the Natural History conference. The first was a case to prove that San Salvador Island was the landing site for Columbus. All the supporting evidence collected from archeological sites on the island was reviewed and comparisons made with the Columbus diary. The next presentation was about sex determination in an oyster species that lives in the anchialine lakes. This was more biology related and all the students agreed that it was one of the best of the day, mainly because we could relate to the entire project. Then it was back to archaeology; a presentation of a planters journal describing day to day life on the island in 1832 during the colonial era. The last presentation of the morning was on an unusual Lucayan wooden platter found buried in bat dung in a cave on the island. The platter dates back over 700 years and is one of only a few known to exist.

After lunch, we trooped off to the library to work on our next 5-minute-minis. We worked a little bit faster this time because we had some experience with what we needed to do, and organized who went on the computers in what order as because we had limited time to complete our research.

After some down time we attended the day’s poster session and social hour to look at other research being done on the island. After dinner we had time in the library to check e-mail then it was back to the conference for the evening session. There was a presentation on work with a 2 species of lizards that are unique to the island followed by a slide show on how the island has changed over the past twenty five years. Lastly there was a presentation on research examining fire coral phenotypes and their speciation. A day of presentations and working indoors, although learning filled not the most fun filled as days past. But tomorrow will be different…..as we’re back in the field again.

- Keith and Brad