The time has come to say goodbye. After 6 months of travelling the Caribbean on Ocean Star, I now have a few months off to travel back to England, see my family, hang out with Mrs Mott, and generally enjoy some rest and relaxation! I hope you have had fun hearing about my adventures and finding out a little bit more about the weird and wonderful sights of the Caribbean, whether it was learning about the islands of the Lesser Antilles or seeing photos of the strange marine worms that live on coral reefs. Have a great Easter! Kirsty [View Full Entry]

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Grandma was eaten by a shark Dad, by a killer whale And my baby brother got slurped up By a rather hungry sea snail Andrea Shavick So you think you know your sharks: scary, horrible, teeth producing machines, all set to attack! Well according to National Geographic, more humans get bitten by people from New York each year than by sharks. So it’s time to learn a bit more about these amazing creatures and realise that sharks tend to leave us alone, as long as we leave them alone. Don’t get me wrong, sharks are efficient hunting machines, but they would [View Full Entry]

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Oh how I wish I was a fish to swim in the deep blue sea. I would swim up and down and all around in laps of two or three. There would be no rules to follow,all fun down here. On land rules are trouble,a real pain in the rear. K.B. Butler Whenever you swim in the Caribbean, whether it is over the reef, in amongst the dark sunken roots of mangrove trees, or above sparkling white sands, you are sure to spot a fish or two darting and diving, making the most of the three dimensional wonderland. Bony fish, like [View Full Entry]

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'Up in de hills, where de streams are cool, An mullet an janga swim in de pool, I have ten acres of mountain side, An a dainty-foot donkey dat I ride, Four Gros Michel, an four Lacatan, Some coconut trees, and some hills of yam Evan Jones The plants of the Caribbean are extremely colourful, with exotic looking flowers and fruits. Some of the most common species were brought by early settlers for food, or to decorate their garden and remind them of home, so the vegetation of today is almost certainly very different to what it looked like before [View Full Entry]

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Worms finer for fishing you couldn't be wishing; I delved them dismayed from the velvety sod; The rich loam upturning I gathered them squirming, big, fat, gleamy earthworms, all ripe for my rod. Robert Service In the morning if you get outside early enough you will see blackbirds pull wiggling pink worms from the grass before wolfing them down hungrily. The sea is also home to worms of all descriptions: long, short, fat, thin, hairy, spiky…, you could come up with pretty much any adjective and there are worms to meet the description. These worms rely on a body full of [View Full Entry]

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I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by, And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking, And a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn breaking. John Masefield I started sailing around on Ocean Star in September but have never really introduced you to her properly, so I thought I would take this opportunity to tell you a bit more about this beautiful vessel. Ocean Star is a gaff-rigged schooner …”what [View Full Entry]

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I’d like to be, under the sea In an octopus’s garden in the shade The Beatles This semester as I travel around the Caribbean I am going to be posting blogs on some of the weird and wonderful creatures and the exotic vegetation I see along the way. Today I’m starting with the ‘Common Octopus’, although believe me there is nothing common about this bizarre animal. If you snorkel through the turquoise Caribbean waters, you may be lucky enough to spot a jumble of shells and rubble surrounding a deep dark crevice in the reef. Swim a little closer and watch [View Full Entry]

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I hope you had a great Christmas and holiday and are now back at school raring to go for 2008. I travelled to Puerto Rico over Christmas. We visited the island of Culebra, also known as one of the ‘Spanish Virgin Islands’, for a bit of a break and to do some diving. Culebra is a tiny little place with only about 2000 residents. Everyone knows everyone so when we found ourselves without transport on Christmas day to go out for a slap up meal, a friendly taxi driver who was having the night off, agreed to leave his party just [View Full Entry]

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This is the last week of our current trip around the Caribbean, on Sunday all the students fly home and it will be a time for maintenance, training and rest aboard Ocean Star. To round up the end of the marine science courses, the shipmates spent this morning at a local school in the British Virgin Islands teaching the children about strange marine creatures and their ways of living and surviving in the sea. After a short lesson we split the group up into three and each section learnt about a different endangered species - turtles, whale sharks and Elkhorn coral. [View Full Entry]

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….maybe I’ll become a pro-surfer! Ok so I do have a little way to go, but I thoroughly enjoyed my day of surfing in St. Barths. The whole crew went to the beach to do a lesson and laboratory practical on wave formation and movement, and what better way to learn than by experiencing the waves first hand; attempting to surf them. We began by a quick introduction to waves and how they break, and then moved into a beach lesson on standing up on a board, before the students hit the waves to experiment with what they had learnt. I [View Full Entry]

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