One of the best ways to learn a new language is through immersion — living in an unfamiliar culture, experiencing the language through everyday activities that introduce you to a way of life as well as the language.
For five Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts students and one instructor, they experienced a different kind of immersion this summer. Dr. Lindsey Waddell, a chemistry and geoscience instructor at ASMSA, and the students immersed themselves in the world of coral reefs while snorkeling in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Belize.
The ASMSA group visited the Tropical Marine Research and Education Center in San Pedro, Belize this summer along with a group of undergraduate students from Henderson State University in Arkadelphia. It was the first research-related program in ASMSA’s Global Learning Program. Previous trips were language and humanities based.
The opportunity for the ASMSA students to participate when Waddell corresponded with Dr. James Engman, a biology professor at Henderson. A few spots on his undergraduate trip to study at the marine center remained open. The trip also included students from KIPP Delta School, Des Arc High School and Maumelle High School.
The students studied several days at the marine center learning about the coral reefs that populate the Caribbean Sea off Belize’s coast. They followed that with several days of snorkeling to study the reefs.
“We went out to all of the major sites around San Pedro,” Waddell said. “There are a lot of marine protected areas. There is an incredible concentration of coral in one place. A lot of the coral suffered disease a couple of decades ago.”
The group would spend a couple of hours snorkeling at one site and then head to another. Each site offered its own unique feature that one of the others may not have. The marine protected areas often showed a greater variety of coral and other sea life.
In one marine protected area, Waddell could tell the size of the fish were markedly different from other sites. There was one incredibly large black grouper. Another had a variety of sea cucumbers, including a donkey dung sea cucumber, which is considered a delicacy in China.
“People are paying incredible prices for them, and they are disappearing from the reef. They are very rare now,” she said.
Allowing students to see the various creatures up close and to learn what is threatening them will make them better stewards in the future, Waddell said.
“When looking at a menu in a restaurant perhaps they will think I shouldn’t order it because it is endangered. It makes them more connected to the ocean, even in terms of making daily choices. It also shows them the opportunities they have to take on things as a career that they may not have thought about before,” she said.
Often students from landlocked states such as Arkansas might not consider a career is marine biology or oceanography, she said. Experiences like this one may encourage them to pursue those careers or others.
“We do not have enough people watching the reefs and taking care of them,” she said.
Two of the ASMSA students who went on the trip — Will Duke (’17) and Nicolas Nahas (’17) — decided to base their Fundamentals in Research Methods project on their trip. Now both are considering marine biology as a major in college.
During the snorkeling trip to a site called Coral Gardens, Duke and Nahas recorded footage of the reefs. Coral Gardens has surprisingly healthy coral, Duke said. It is located next to two marine protected areas but is not protected itself.
“It’s interesting though because it has some of the best coral in the Caribbean,” Duke said.
Duke and Nahas are taking the video footage of the Coral Gardens reef and comparing the data to previous studies as well as to two other reefs in general. The data will allow them to study the reefs in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico in a broader sense.
They are working on the FIRM project jointly and are planning on entering their project in the Siemens Competition for Math, Science and Technology sponsored by the Siemens Compeition.
Duke said there was one type of coral — staghorn coral — in Coral Gardens that was particularly impressive. Staghorn coral is endangered, but Coral Gardens had pieces that were a half inch to an inch thick.
Nahas said he was impressed by the pillar coral found on some of the reefs. “Some of it was as big and tall as you are,” he said.
He also liked the brain coral found in the reefs. One of the brain coral was large enough to allow Nahas and Duke to be in it together.
Nahas and Duke decided in the months before the trip that they would produce a joint FIRM project from the trip. They received a Summer Research Fellowship from the ASMSA Foundation to go toward the trip. This was the first summer that the fellowship awards were available.
The trip had the benefit that Waddell hoped it would. Nahas said he has long thought about becoming a marine biologist and the trip confirmed that. Duke said he is also considering some form of marine science for a major in college. Considering he had never been snorkeling before this trip, the change in career plans was triggered by this experience.
“I had been around fish and water my entire life, but I never thought about it as a career. I went on this trip and now I want to do marine science. This trip kind of changed my plans,” Duke said.
For Nahas, this trip provided him his first opportunity to travel outside of the country. Both students said having the opportunity to study abroad is special. Besides viewing the coral reefs, the trip also gave them the opportunity to experience a new culture.
“It was an awesome cultural experience. You’re learning about what their daily lives entail,” Nahas said.
The trip also included an historical element, Waddell said. The group traveled to Guatemala to visit Mayan ruins, climbing to the top of a few of the temples. It isn’t until you experience the true size of the ruins overall that you can grasp the size of the Mayan civilization, she said.
“You just have no comprehension of the Mayans until you see the ruins. There are 222 square miles designated as an archaeological site. There is just temple after temple. Most of it hasn’t even been excavated. They decided for the preservation of the ruins it was better to just leave it. Most of it is still jungle,” she said.