The Stories We End Up Remembering
‘“MY SNOOORRRKEEELLLL!!!!” I screamed as everyone smiled and waved and cooed at the camera, and the Zodiac motored away from the ship in slow motion, my snorkel disappearing into the black Arctic waters. The camera panned to me with a look of pure distress on my face.
“You guys, my snorkel blew away.”
“Oh, we can go back for it. What color is it?”
“Camo.”
Everyone laughed, and we continued on our way. There was no way we were finding that snorkel.
That was the start of the most exciting experience of my life, in the fjords of Norway. Later that day, I almost got swallowed by a humpback, in the best way ever, and it’s all on camera. I know it’s me in the picture because I was missing a snorkel.
But that’s kind of how life goes sometimes. You take the bad with the amazing. And that’s how expeditions can be too. No matter how well planned they are or how excited we are, there’s a high probability that not everything is going to go right.
Tela was no different.
The largest stand of living coral I’ve ever seen is directly under where the jungle meets the sea.
For me, it began five days before leaving for Honduras. Apparently, I had eaten the wrong salad sometime in the two weeks before departure. If you weren’t living in the U.S. in July of 2026, you may not get that joke, but at the time, we called it “diarrhea lettuce.” It contained a parasite called Cyclospora and resulted in an awful sickness called cyclosporiasis, with symptoms that came and went, so you weren’t really sure if you had it.
I went to a doctor who told me she didn’t think that’s what I had. My symptoms had retreated by the day before I was heading to Honduras, so I kind of just forgot about it…
Until the first day on the boat.
I have worked on boats since 2015, usually with no issue, but due to dehydration from the sickness I didn’t think I had, I ended up having the worst bout of seasickness of my life. I thought getting in the water would help. How could I be seasick in the water?
But no. This bay had about a three-foot swell, and the reef was too far below for this snorkeler to be able to focus on anything, so it just made me sicker. I focused on the horizon. It was zero help.
I just couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel room and nap in the AC during our four-hour break between activities. I knew that would cure this.
Well, the town had other plans.
There was a city-wide electrical outage for “planned work,” which meant no AC for me. I attempted to nap in our 90-degree hotel room.
I was ready to go home.
Thankfully, the electricity came back on that evening, and I survived.
Not bioluminescent, but a jelly encounter during my twilight snorkel.
The next day, we motored across the bay to the Rebel Reef, the reason I was there. And it did not disappoint.
I realized I had never seen a live coral reef in my adult life. I snorkel with reef fish in what looks like a reef ecosystem in Florida all the time, but it’s mostly sponges with tiny patches of coral. The reef is mostly dead.
This was elkhorn as far as I could see, with the jungle reaching up above us.
That day, I found an almond in the water that a howler monkey had taken a bite out of and thrown away. Where else does that happen?
As the week went on, we experienced more setbacks, despite meticulous planning by the group leaders. We had spent night one creating the coral spawn catchers from scratch, but completely out of our control, the coral we intended to capture spawning did not spawn while we were there.
As much as we thought our hydrophone-handling protocols were adequate, we got out in the field, and it did not record properly. We have our fingers crossed that we can fix this recording.
And that seasickness did not subside, as the cyclosporiasis came back to haunt me.
At least three of us on the trip contracted giardia.
But we did get some incredible science done, including a coral transplantation, which none of us knew we would be doing!
During the coral spawn dive, I was so seasick on the boat, but I also saw the most beautiful green bioluminescent jellies.
On the last day, we motored through a forest of giant mangroves, I spotted a saltwater crocodile, and we ate a lunch of whole fried fish with our toes in the sand.
With every obstacle, we learned a lesson. We updated protocols. With the bad came the amazing. Sometimes the snorkel blows away, the coral doesn’t spawn, the hydrophone doesn’t record, and your intestines completely revolt. But somehow, those are the stories you end up remembering. And we are all eagerly looking forward to the next expedition, despite our intestines maybe not loving the idea.
Relevant Expedition Information:
- Date: 2026 July 28 - Aug 2
- Name: Spawning Adzenture
- Location: Tela, Honduras
- Partner(s): Tela Coral, Adzentures
- Vessel: various, run by Tela Marine
