This week, I started my internship with the Marshall Islands Marine Resources Agency (MIMRA), rented a bike for the summer, and generally got settled into a day-to-day routine. Everyone here has been fantastic, and I’ve made some wonderful friends who have gone out of their way to make sure I feel at home, both inside and outside of work. I can already tell that I will miss Majuro when the time comes for me to say (a hopefully temporary) goodbye at the end of the summer.
Things are just warming up at my internship, but so far I’ve been working on updating some educational materials that I wrote for communities in Ulithi Atoll so they can be used in the Marshalls, and helping to analyze photo quadrats of benthic surveys using the software CPCe. Next week, I’ll help to prepare a report by analyzing some data that was collected from sites around Majuro and writing a summary of what was found.
It sounds like I’ll be joining MIMRA on a couple of outer islands trips in the coming weeks, which I’m thrilled about. The first is to Ebon, the southernmost atoll in the Marshall Islands, made famous by a castaway who arrived there from Mexico after 13 months at sea. We’ll be flying there on Marshall Islands Air, will stay for about a week, and I’ll help train community members in benthic monitoring techniques (using snorkel instead of scuba), again based on the work I did in Ulithi. The second trip is to Ailinglaplap, northwest of Majuro, where I’ll be assisting MIMRA with ciguatera monitoring. There’s been an awful outbreak there and a number of people have died. I don’t know much about ciguatera, but I appreciate the opportunity to participate and learn from the vital work MIMRA is doing (don’t worry, I won’t eat the fish, although that’s easier said than done on an outer island atoll).
I’ve really fallen in love with life here. To give you a small glimpse of what that looks like, I strapped my GoPro to my bike (rented from College of the Marshall Islands for an extremely reasonable $2 per week), and made a tour of my commute to MIMRA. Town is much more congested than this – I live a bit on the outskirts – but I love commuting on my bike. The morning (when this video was filmed) is comparatively cool to the heat of the middle of the day (although I’m still a sweaty mess by the time I arrive). In the evenings, when people are awake and the weather has cooled a bit, it’s even more fun – there are basketball and volleyball games, people socializing, the smells of cooking, and just general evidence of contented living. Riding through town is a bit more harrowing, but still nothing compared to the hazards of city biking. I will be absolutely ruined when it comes time to go back to biking the hills of Vancouver, though.
Sara E. Cannon, PhD 