Fieldtrip to Bonaire in COVID19 times
During 2020 a lot of our fieldtrips were cancelled due to travel restrictions. Therefore we had to quickly find alternatives and work together with local researchers that could maintain our ongoing experiments, for example on Bonaire. But after one year, our turtle exclosure experiment would come to an end and an intensive set of final measurements and sampling could not be arranged from a distance. After applying for special permission I finally was allowed to travel to Bonaire in October 2020, although my students were not allowed to travel with me.
An empty plane, an empty island! It was a different experience on Bonaire, with dive shops closed, and predominantly residents on the island. The vibrant dive community is what livens up the island and although tourists form the main income for the island, I did not miss the 3000+ tourists that arrive at the island everyday by cruiseboats.
I worked together with one student that managed to travel to Bonaire when it was still allowed, and together we performed all final measurements of the turtle exclosure experiment, took underwater videos, processed a lot of samples into the evenings and in our limited spare time went for some fun dives!
The trip was very successful, I was amazed at the impact of excluding turtles for one year on the seagrass morphology. Measurements will reveal the impact of turtle grazing on ecosystem services and recovery capacity of turtlegrass. See below an impression of our time on Bonaire
