LH Cave

My favorite part of the trip was when we went to Lighthouse Cave on Wednesday the 21st. Caving has always been a hobby of mine, so it was amazing to see a cave that had a completely different morphology than what I am used to. 

We went down into Lighthouse Cave through a pit cave entrance, and found ourselves in the main chamber. We poked around for a while to find the water loop. I had looked at the map beforehand, but was hard to get my bearings. The rocks around as were loosely cemented together. It was mostly biogenic material with around 2 mm grain size. We don’t under some songs to get to the back rooms. It was an important experience for me, and has shaped my view of the field that I want to get into.

I am very grateful and hope to return one day!

Lin Harris

Existential experience

Where to even start with this amazing trip! So many awesome things happened. I saw a sea turtle (who we later found was named Saint) on the first day in San Salvador which told me that it was going to be an amazing week. Other things I saw included sting rays, reef sharks, and countless species of fish including blue tang, black durgon, and the very interesting white-spotted filefish. Everything that I saw and did on the beautiful island of San Salvador will forever be ingrained in my memory, but the highlight of the trip for me was swimming out to "The Wall". The wall, the shelf, the dropoff, the area where the ocean floor dramatically drops. The swim out was pretty intimidating, special thanks to Dr. Payne who came out with us to stand on the shore in a bright teal shirt so we could look back and see him for comfort. The sand ripples in the ocean floor were amazing, and before long we were seeing sea grass and sand dollars. The real excitement started when we saw a decent sized stingray. Majestic is a pretty good word to describe it. Eventually we were swimming over coral in water that was far far deeper than we were tall. We saw so many fish that I lost count of the species along with a few tiny adorable jellyfish and reef sharks. The moment that I'll remember for the rest of my life is when I swam out a few feet past the drop off. This is where the existential moment happened. I went from being surrounded by classmates in water that was shallow enough to see the ocean floor and all the life to water that was just this deep, dark, dense blue that I don't even know how to describe. It was definitely one of those moments that kind of puts the world in perspective for you, and in that moment I fell completely in love with the mystery of the ocean. 

The ocean wall (photo courtesy of Elizabeth Haralson)

One of the things I noticed in several of the snorkel spots was the lack of color on the coral reefs. In several places even within one stretch of beach there were sections of coral that had already completely died off, left as a shell to house stringy colonies of algae and completely void of all color and other life. In the photo above, this was an area of relatively healthy coral, but it still lacks color and abundance of life. Coral reefs are complex ecosystems that house numerous varieties of marine species in addition to offering protection from wave action and providing a platform for necessary marine chemistry to take place. Other people on this blog have mentioned the beauty of French Bay, but I didn't see it. I was only about 50-70 yards to the left of the group of people who saw the healthy coral, and everything that I saw was dead and covered in algae. This should be alarming, and to me it is. I'm feeling a renewed desire and intense motivation to pursue conservation of our oceans and marine ecosystems. I encourage anyone reading this to find the Netflix documentary called "Chasing Coral". We saw first hand exactly what those guys were talking about.


I hope that I'm blessed in the future to take another trip to this amazing island, and I hope that future students recognize the opportunity that they are given by being offered this class!

Ashton Mize

Graham's Harbor Sugar

During some downtime on the evening of March 23rd a few of us decided to venture back out to Graham’s Harbor. The mesmerizingly blue water was a bit choppy but yet we persisted in the hunt of spotting another green sea turtle, we geared up and headed for the seagrass beds that are couple meters from the beach. Of course had to make a pit stop and enjoy the alluring coral reefs, where we were able to identify some blushing star coral, golfball coral, and several sea fans.  We were even able to catch a glimpse of a cushion starfish and a yellow sting ray. Although these sights were captivating, we were out to spot a sea turtle and sure enough our efforts would pay off in the most hilarious way possible. Liz and Ashton were first to notice the young green sea turtle grazing away in a small seagrass patch, and we all observed in awe as we watched this turtle munch away as if we weren’t even there. As I turned to swim away the curious little guy began to follow me but then quickly started to swim towards Rachel. Who was completely oblivious and enjoying the fish until she looked up to a sea turtle trying to lay down some sugar. Rachel instantly screamed, I’m pretty sure the turtle did too, and I’ve never laughed so vigorously in my life.

Barn Owl Sighting

The experience on San Salvador, Bahamas was a unique one.  There are numerous amounts of life forms on this island.  The barn owl, which are very important in controlling the mouse population on San Salvador Island is a rare.  This is the only species of owl on the island and almost the only biological control to prevent the mouse population from growing and preventing the native Bahamian iguana.  When we first descended the owl cave no one knew that we would stumble upon a mother owl nursing her owlets.

I also enjoyed swimming out to 'The Wall' at Bamboo Point.  This was a beautiful experience.  The ocean floor slowly grew and grew.  The coral reefs were beautiful and then all of a sudden we were out in the deep blue ocean.  There were a plethora of schools of fish, and a shark appeared!  The shark was harmless and added to the experience.


-Andrew Ramírez

Sea Turtles and Sharks oh my!

This past week has been one for the books! This was my second time visiting San Salvador but there were many new things that I was fortunate to experience. There are sea turtles that frequently visit Graham's Harbor and we were able to meet two different ones! The first one's name was Saint and the second one we actually got to name ourselves! Its name is now Trojan (in honor of UALR). Following along with the turtles and watching them graze among the sea grass beds was a once in a lifetime opportunity. These creatures are so amazing and graceful underwater, it was such a unique snorkel adventure to observe them in their natural habitat. The sea turtles were definitely my favorite part of the week! We also gave a few other new things a try this week while exploring the island, the most thrilling of which was swimming out to "The Wall" where the carbonate platform of the island drops off drastically. Before you know it you're staring off into the deep dark ocean. I was very nervous walking down the beach to the spot we entered the water and I was still even more nervous swimming out that far to get to the wall. Once we had made it to the drop off, the water got so deep all of a sudden that you could not see anything but the deepest blue color one could imagine. We saw huge schools of fish, numerous sting rays, and we even saw a few different sharks that were hanging out around the edge of the wall. Once out there, my nervousness subsided and I was able to enjoy the beauty for what it was and reflect on how small we really are compared to the vast ocean.

I have never felt so small looking out into the deep, even compared to when I've been on the tops of mountains and looking out across the landscape. One thing that has affected me much more than I anticipated was the overall health of our ocean's corals. Compared to two years ago, so much more of the coral has bleached and is now deserted wastelands with the decayed skeletal remains covered in algae. The importance of our coral reefs is one that is often overlooked and I have come back with a renewed passion for saving our planet's oceans. This has been an enlightening trip overall and we got to witness some of the most amazing things! I know that I will be returning again at some point in the future to this wonderful island, and hopefully we can all start doing a little bit more to make less of a human impact on our oceans and planet overall.
Elizabeth Haralson

Dixon Hill Lighthouse Cave--John Snell

On March 21st 2018, we visited Lighthouse cave on Dixon Hill on San Salvador Island, the Bahamas. We arrived at the cave at around 9:40 in the morning and it was around 78 degrees Fahrenheit. It was very humid. Lighthouse cave is around 125000 years old, of pleistocene age. It is the perfect example of a flank margin cave. A flank margin cave has no surface opening until some form of erosion exposes the underlying cavity. Speleothems were abundant and have Farm since about 71000 years ago. This cave is one of the largest cavities in the Bahamian aisles.
To enter the cave, we climbed it down a metal Ladder into a spacious Cavern. There is water around the outside of this cavern. The water leads into different areas with other semi-large cavities. To access a couple of these separate rooms, we had to duck below the water surface and go under a very short archway.
There were 2 bats that were flying around within this cave. There was also a very strange looking centipede-type insect.
As I entered the water, fear and freezing temperatures greeted me. Right on the heels of Matt Carey, We continued on word looking for the path that would lead us on the loop so that we could come back to where we started and exit the cave. Matt showed no fear and was eager to find the right path, and even though I was nervous I followed him. The feeling of doing something that you're afraid of is extremely liberating, not to mention how awesome it was to be swimming in a cave.
This was legitimately one of the coolest experiences that I have ever had in my entire life, and I am extremely grateful.

San Salvador Bahamas Caves

I was proud to be a part of the 2018 Introduction of the Geology and Ecology of the Bahamas course. During the trip to San Salvador, we saw many great sites. I studied and taught my fellow peers about Bats on the island. My favorite site was lighthouse cave, a cave on the Northeast side of the island, near a lighthouse.  It was a thrilling experience. I was able to see magnificent speleothems, stalagmites, and stalactites, and dive under water in the cave going from room to room (as the tide was coming in). We saw 2 bats while in lighthouse cave. They were Erophylla bats (Brown Flower Bats). Other caves I visited were Owl’s hole, Dripping rock, and Altar Cave. In dripping rock I saw great examples of Cave Bacon, and Soda straws, which are more speleothems. In Altar cave, I was able to see around 20 Erophylla Bats, hanging on the tall dome-shaped ceilings. Towards the back of the cave, I went to the low hanging ceiling, and was able to see 2 Natalus Bats (Bahamian Funnel Eared Bat). The main difference between the two bats I’ve mentioned are Erophylla stay on High Dome-shaped ceilings, while Natalus Bats hang on low flat cilings in the cave. Erophylla eat nectar and seeds from flowers, and Naltalus bats eat insects—they can eat hundreds of mosquitoes in one night. Naltaus bats only occur at the Bahamas, and their conservation is very important. One good thing about The Bahamas’ bats is that they don’t suffer from white nose syndrome, like they do in the U.S. The public needs to continue to be informed about the importance of Bats, and many other species as well. One thing that we as a group found unusual is something we saw in Alter cave. We found hermit crabs in the cave, and one was really big. Perhaps more research should be done on the caves in San Salvador to find out more about the organisms that reside there.


Cody Smith