Better yet, some of your peers attended the Coral Reef Biology course in May 1999, and two were in the 1998 SeaMester course. Use these people for ideas and input. So now you have a bunch of ideas. My advice to you is to pick a project you can complete in minimal time, with minimal resources and cost to you. It always takes longer and costs more than you think anyways.
Many ecologists do fairly cheap science, and usually require more travel money than anything.
You will see what I mean in the section on project ideas. If at any time you find yourself spending an inordinate amount of time just thinking about how the project will work, or what types of problems might arise, you may be thinking too much and doing too little. You should get out there and collect some preliminary data to make sure that most of the bugs are worked out before you actually start the project. Even total failure might not be a waste of time, and it might actually save you time. The fact is, great science is rarely done without at least some sort of preliminary failures.