Tuesday, April 9 South Land Day - Today we got up and had breakfast and a mangrove lecture. We went to Androsia. This is a small factory that makes colorful, tropical fabrics using a batiking process. They take white fabric and dip stamps in to wax and stamp the fabric. Then they soak the fabric in colorful dye so the fabric turns that color, except for the wax stamp areas. Then, they remove the wax and dry the fabric and make clothing, table cloth and bags out of them. Check out all the colorful fabrics. Most everyone bought a cool shirt or clothing. Then we went to Somerset beach. We did a beach cleanup activity to learn about the amount of trash found in the ocean. Then we took note of the types of trash that we found. We also created art by taking the trash and made creatures out of them. There is an artist that uses the pictures to increase awareness of the trash in the ocean. We got in groups and each group pick a phylum to show. This helped us review material we were studying. We made it into a competition and the boys pictured below won with phylum Mollusca. Then, we went to Davis Creek to have lunch. It was an area that had shallow water and mangroves with colorful boardwalks. We had lunch there and saw all kinds of fish a and even sea turtles!!! Then we went to Captain Bills Blue Hole. This is a huge blue hole with a large deck to jump off of. The fresh water feels great. We made our way back to the field station to clean up for dinner and then had some time for a little bit of volleyball. Then we had our second day of basket weaving.
Wednesday, April 10 North Land Day - Today we went on a short hike at Atala Coppice. This is a protected area for the Atala butterfly. The Atala was on the verge of extinction and is now rebounding because of the protected areas on Andros. On the short hike we spotted the butterfly and learned some Bahamian plants in the area. There was small pond and trees filled with epiphytes. Epiphytes are plants that grow on other plants and don't need soil. One of these plants included native orchids that are endangered. We also visited