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A surfing trip in the tropics has turned into the opportunity for an arctic adventure for recent journalism grad Kailey Aiken ’26.

After visiting Nosara, Costa Rica, last January, Aiken wrote an article about a system of monkey bridges that she learned about during her stay. The piece, “The Nosara Monkey Bridge Project is saving howler monkeys in Costa Rica,” was published to Planet Forward, an environmental news outlet housed at George Washington University that publishes content by college students. She also entered the story into Planet Forward’s annual Storyfest competition, where it won Best Written Story. As the grand prize, Aiken will join five other winners from the competition’s other categories, like Best Short Video and Best Multimedia Story, on a 10-day voyage to southeastern Greenland in July. The winners will travel with Planet Forward and Lindblad Expeditions aboard the National Geographic Endurance.

Aiken first heard about the Nosara Monkey Bridge Project when planning a winter break surf trip in the small coastal town. While researching the area, she came across Sibu Sanctuary, which cares for native wildlife and oversees the bridge project. As she read more about the project, she learned how important it is to Nosara’s ecosystem — it’s estimated that more than 6,000 animals in Costa Rica get electrocuted each year by traveling from tree to tree on power lines. The bridges are built from brightly colored ropes and provide a safe alternative for animals like sloths, squirrels and monkeys traipsing through the jungle.

With one semester left before receiving her journalism degree, Aiken recognized that this was a story that needed to be shared. She got in touch with the woman who runs the bridge project, and next thing she knew, she was riding in a tuk tuk — a small, doorless taxi — to her house on a hill, surrounded by a canopy of trees.

After some navigation challenges — the house didn’t have an address, so she had to describe the directions to the driver in less-than-fluent Spanish — Aiken met with Lisa Kraft-Gould, a retired New Jerseyan who started the project in Nosara about four years ago. Aiken learned that rapid urban development over the last two decades replaced many existing tree paths with power lines, sparking the electrocution crisis and endangering the once-prolific howler monkeys. While it’s difficult to estimate how many monkeys have been saved by the project, Aiken said that 140 bridges had been built at the time of her visit.

This wasn’t the first time Aiken felt spontaneously compelled to pursue a story on a surf trip. Over spring break of her junior year, she visited Rincón, Puerto Rico, and found out about the Salva Tres Palmas movement. The community was protesting a proposed bike path designed for tourists that would harm flora and fauna in the Tres Palmas Marine Reserve and restrict access to the ocean.

“That was the first story I did that was really just seeing other people’s passion for things,” said Aiken. “That was so cool to me and such a beautiful thing to experience.”

While in Rincón, Aiken connected with the Surfrider Foundation, and a volunteer walked her through the reserve and brought her to one of the protests for boots-on-the-ground reporting. Although, she noted, “Nobody, including myself, had shoes on for that interview.”

Her Salva Tres Palmas piece was published in American Surf Magazine, which she also regularly freelances for. More of her bylines can be found in Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, Tampa Bay Times, the Fort Lauderdale-based Florida Bulldog, and her hometown newspaper The Rockaway Times.

Shortly before graduating in May, Aiken was named Outstanding Journalism Student of the Year at the College of Arts and Letters awards ceremony. Post-grad, she's looking forward to summer and fall travels while continuing to freelance.

Aiken said she’ll likely get inspired to write about Greenland as well, especially since it’ll be a polar-opposite experience from her usual vacation locales. She doesn’t yet have a full itinerary for the expedition but is looking forward to hiking and seeing glaciers, mountains and, fingers crossed, wild polar bears.

“This is one of those trips that I probably never would have gone on unless something like this happened,” she said.