Eighteen months, four tropical storms, three hurricanes and one Irish boy.

On the outskirts of Belfast (Northern Ireland) a U.S. embassy official stared at me through the thick glass screen and asked his final question: “Are you a terrorist?” “No”, I replied wondering if anyone had ever said “Yes, actually, I engaged in a bit of the old Jihad last Tuesday, will that be a problem?”. He took a final flick through my passport and inserted my visa. Two months later I arrived at DISL to carry out research under Dr. Just Cebrian. First impressions last and this one certainly did: Hot (not Dr Cebrian….the weather). Here I was, a pale Irish boy at the mercy of what I considered to be an oven-like climate…it was April…and my perception of temperature was going to need to change radically.

I was paired up with Amy Hunter (now Dr. Amy Hunter) to assist in her research into eutrophication of coastal marshes. For six months we plodded through the marsh, cursing the sharp Juncus, the heat, the humidity, the mosquitoes and anything else we could think of. Following completion of the research I moved on to study the effect of hurricanes on coastal lagoons. “Great”, I thought, “now I’ll be safe from the Juncus”. However it was a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire…

On my last day in the field it certainly seemed some cosmic force was telling me to return home: Hurricane Katrina was gathering strength in the Gulf. But that wasn’t all - we found a brown widow spider on our equipment, witnessed evidence of sharks close by, came across a dead bull shark, had to dodge stingrays and all the while mysterious gunfire echoed from the shore.

So after Katrina had spent her fury I returned home for a month before moving to Aberdeen (Scotland) to pursue a Ph.D. It’s snowed here for the past three days so it looks as though my perception of climate is going to have to change again.

                        -- David “Paddy” Patterson
                            Former DISL Technician