28 February 2017, 0545HRS
It was still dark out when we departed the field station. Groggily, we loaded up the truck with our dive gear and SCUBA tanks while sipping coffee to try to wake up. The clock was already ticking. We had 30 minutes to get to the dock in Caracasbaai before the ferry was scheduled to leave.
This was a risky yet critical endeavor. Our aim: collecting sediments from the reefs of Klein Curaçao, a tiny, uninhabited island located approximately 15 miles off the southeast point of Curaçao. Less visited or fished than Curaçao, the reefs there would provide a more ‘pristine’ end member with which to compare our other Caribbean samples. The orientation of the island, which was nearly perpendicular to the trade winds, meant that the leeward side would be quite sheltered despite lacking any lagoonal environments. But would the sediments be fine enough to contain shark dermal denticles? This was the gamble.
We arrived at the dock just in time and confirmed that no recreational divers were joining the group. We would therefore have the flexibility to select our dive sites and use the tour group’s dingy to lift our heavy sediment samples to the surface. We decided to board the ferry.
After a rough 1.5-hour ferry ride, the island’s barren landscape came into view. A thin strip of white sand beach intersected the cerulean sea and stormy sky. A lighthouse, accompanied only by a rusting shipwreck, rose in the distance, breaking the otherwise flat horizon. ‘Paradise,’ thought the tourists. ‘Healthy reef,’ thought our team.
Descending along the reef slope, I was astonished by the vibrant reef and number and size of the fish. Large parrotfish swam by in a swirl of colors and movement, and I had a standoff with a toothy barracuda within minutes of entering the water. This reef was obviously full of life. While the staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis) had likely died off in the 1980s like in many other places in the Caribbean, many other coral species abounded.
The fine sand on the beach was a good sign. Feeling the sediment along the reef substrate, we found that the gamble had paid off. There were patches of fine, silty carbonate sediments! I let out a sigh of relief through my regulator and signaled ‘okay’ to my dive buddy. We collected eight bulk samples in spots where sediments had accumulated on ledges or patches between corals. Here, the sand grains were often held in place by an interlocking matrix of dead staghorn coral, limiting mixing.
The day, however, was far from over. Upon arriving back at the dock on Curaçao, we loaded the samples and gear into the truck and began what should have been a 20-minute drive home. Except that it was Shrove Tuesday of Carnival and half of Willemstad was blocked off for the big parade. After desperately searching for a clear route, we stopped to get directions from a police officer, who gave us the disheartening news that we would have to drive around half of the island to get home. An hour and a half later, we finally reached the station, exhausted yet victorious. What a roller coaster of a day and a fitting end to the expedition.
Baseline Caribbean 