First Holiday Away

Avalon and Kike dancing to the band on night off.

On my night off I went to listen to the local band play with Jim, Avalon, Kim, and Matt. Kike got in on Guantanamera. Isaac (blue shirt) was amazing with the vocals, harmonica, and guitar, that is Carlos (Kike's son) on bongos, and I believe Tom is the basist. P.S. This is where I eat everyday.

After almost 6 years of moving around the US, this Thanksgiving was my first holiday away from home. That means no mother's cooking, no holiday movies with the fam and Cici, and a meal different than what I would typically eat. We made dinner here with chicken instead of turkey (which I actually liked better) and I made my mom's famous stuffing and apple pie to make it a little more like home. The Costa Ricans for the most part didn't want to eat with us, we had 4 people cancel out, but there were two students here from Panama that joined. All and all, it was a pretty good holiday, and the food was delicious. I woke up the next day and had pie for breakfast (typical) but this time it was not while heading out the door for some Black Friday shopping...perhaps next year. We had 5 pies for 10 people, so I thought I should help with the leftovers. I even had enough messed up gravy (that I was not incharge of) to make a dumpling and sausage soup. I had like a gallon and a half of the wonderful soup with all the thanksgiving leftovers poured in. I had to give a bunch to the boys at Rancho Privado (or Bro-vado as they call it) just to get rid of some, and they were hungry and excited that I had cooked. I also brought over some of the stuffing I made and some apple pie, which they said was the best they'd ever had . Bee on morning glory

Coati in a tree.

There are entire fields of morning glories (this doesn't do it justice).

Other than that, not much has happened this past week. We had another beach clean up, but this time it was a BIG DEAL. It started when I got back from morning walk and appeared to go all day (though we only stayed until we were starving for breakfast at 11am). There was music, a band, and food for sale. The tamales were AMAZING!!! We couldn't stay all day because we had work to do, but everyone had a lot of fun. Though I was late for beach cleaning due to an extra long morning walk with Sanitago (child of one of the Leatherback Trust workers who was more interested in chasing dogs, playing in the water, and practicing baton twirling) I did manage to get a couple of pictures from the walk back. There were so many cool animals out and flowers blooming, unfortunately without a zoom, they were difficult to capture.

A Reason to Worry

Maggots in my petri dish of fungus from an egg!

Fungus from a turtle's cloaca

This is Diego.  He is a catcoon...Literally,he thinks he is a cat. He comes when called and will come up and touch you beging for food. He even patrols the site with our guards.

Hatchlings that hatched during the day and were rescued from unleashed dogs

Part of the beach after clean up.
The rest of the beach that has not been cleaned up. This has caused many turtles to turn around or try and nest too low. It is also difficult for the hatchlings to cross.

I've finally started plating my samples and trying to start identifying bacteria. I have 30 samples to date, which is incredibly exciting considering how many turtle we missed this summer and how many ridleys we are continuing to miss.  Especially now that the leatherbacks are around and they take priority. However, I have made it through my first 15 samples and only found 6 that were for sure not contaminated.   I also found 3 that may or may not be contaminated, so I'll probably find out when I plate those. I, however, also have to be very careful with contamination in the lab because I found maggots on a plate which is never good for a microbio project. Fortunately that plate was only a practice from a contaminated sample. Now I make sure to seal the plates to keep out flies...So gross! Other than that, not much has happened here. We just got done with our third group of volunteers and have one lady coming tomorrow. The place is starting to get packed with other researchers, randoms, volunteers, and people coming from Panamana because they are starting a leatherback project there,for ridleys, on an arribada beach. We just had 2 people back out for Thanksgiving, but I'm ok with that...more stuffing for me if someone can make it tasty. There really is not much else to write about, so I'll just posted pics.

La Noche de Cuatro Baulas

Well, it looks as though leatherback season is officially here! November 9th was the last night that Earthwatch Group 2 was here, and the night we received the most leatherbacks of the season!

We were on split shifts (one group early, one group late) and the first group had already left the beach along with about 50 tourists and their guides. Our truck was broken, thus my volunteer and I had to walk all the way to the south rather than drive, which worked in our favor. We ran into the first turtle after about 15 minutes, and since there were no tourists and the tide was so low that it was not likely we would run into another turtle, Kim and I decided both volunteers could watch. For those of you that have been following cheer for the turtles, it was Tamarinda, who laid just under 90 eggs.  (This is an unusually high number.)


After the first turtle, my volunteer, Mary, and I had to get to the south. We, however, were stopped by another turtle just 5 minutes later that was just finishing crawling up the beach and began creating her body pit. She, however, looked like she was just coming off of a nest and was camouflaging it from predators. My heart sank as I thought we had just missed a turtle because we stayed at the previous turtle. I ran up to her to try and scan her incase I would need to put a pit tag in her so we could ID which turtle it was that came up in this spot. Sure enough, she had no tags. As I got the needle prepared to tag her, she began to dig a nest chamber...what a relief! I had not missed the turtle. Kim came to our turtle during her break to make sure I was tagging her correctly, since it was my first time tagging a leatherback. Everything went smoothly, and she laid almost 100 eggs!


At this point in the night we had only completed half of a sweep, as opposed to the 2 that would have normally been completed in the two hour time frame. Mary and I tried to rush to the south and finish our section, but it was no use. We ran into another turtle five minutes later. I walked up her track to see where she was in the nesting process, and she was just finishing crawling up the beach. When I went back to my volunteer to explain what the turtle was doing.  I saw a funny patch of sand without tracks that looked like a turtle. I walked about 30 meters to investigate, and in fact, it was another leatherback! The reason she had no tracks was because the waves were rushing up to her body pit due to the fact that she was nesting too low on the beach. Since she appeared to be almost done with her egg chamber, we were going to have to relocate the eggs, I set up behind her with a plastic bag until the eggs started to drop. At that point, Mary took over and collected the remaining eggs as I began running back and forth between the two turtles with my scanner. The first turtle we had seen before, but the one that we had to relocate the eggs for was La Famosa Tom! Leave it to the turtle named after my friend Tom Backof to be difficult and make us do extra work.   (If you knew Tom at all you would think he told the turtle to do that to us)!


Once Tom had finished laying eggs, we had to quickly pull the bag out before she had put too much sand on top and before the tide came.  At this point it was already crashing on our feet. We temporarily buried the bag of eggs in the sand so maintain temperature and quickly sprinted off to the next turtle to get Mary back in place for counting eggs again. Kim came to get Tom's eggs and relocate them in the hatchery as Mary and I worked on our final turtle of the evening. Once that turtle was done we finally were able to complete our sweep of the beach at 3:30am! At 4am we took off to go back to the house and mark all the nests now that the turtles were no longer on top of them...or so we thought. The turtle that came up with Tom was still camouflaging, and when we tried to recover the thermocouple (what we use to read the temperature), she turned around and decided to run right  over the top of it. We tried to find it after she moved  For a half hour we searched, but it was almost 5am so we gave up to try again in the afternoon..

That is my most exciting news in the past week. I however, also did receive the rest of my supplies, checked to make sure everything was sterile, and will get to start my actual project today...I hope! When the rains came, they sent all kinds of trees down the rivers, which have managed to find their way onto our beach. We tried doing some beach cleaning so that the turtles could get on to the beach and nest, but it took 30 of us 3 hours to only go 500m of the 3.5km beach. I'll go take some pics so you guys can see how hard it is for the turtles to find a nesting spot right now. The only other news I can think of is that we had a hawksbill stranding and I was able to get some cool pics of that!

Wet Season Begins

Wet season is supposed to hit its peak in September around here, rain some more in October, and be done by mid February. This year, however, the rain decided to start in November with only a little bit of rain in October (I was not here in September, but hear it was relatively dry). When I say rain, I am not talking your Seattle drizzle, but more your hurricane weather with weaker wind. Let me put it this way, I was on the beach for six hours during the first night of rain and could not see the bright lights of Tamarindo and the power was not out. Also, Jim and I were sitting in the middle of the beach taking our break when a leatherback came up not even 8ft from us. We neither heard nor saw it, only felt a few thumps which I thought was Jim finally sitting down instead of standing. Needless to say, by the time we saw her she was well into her nest chamber. This ninja turtle was done in under an hour, the whole nesting process usually takes about 2hrs, and we almost missed her because of the rain.

Eggs sticking out of a scarp due to high tides from the storm (fortunately these hatched)

That first night of rain we also had some professors from Cornell College (Iowa) come to the beach for patrols. The two ladies dipped out during the first run because of the rain, one of the ladies had a stroke a couple years ago and struggled to make it up and down the beach at night holding my arm the whole time, I think she might have left more frustrated than annoyed by all the rain. She however, was a trooper the first run. With the ladies not wanting to patrol, Jim had to come patrol the North end with me because you can not patrol alone, and it happened to put us in perfect position to be where the leatherback came up during our break over 40min late. Otherwise, there is a high possibility the turtle would have been missed.

Bats inside of the house that is being built across the street

The rain just let up today, but began last Sunday morning. They are having all kinds of problems in the Central Valley with roads washing out, flooding, and have even had quite a few casualties. We have a friend down in Ostional (arribada beach to the south) who can't get supplies because 5 rivers have opened up in the city and you can't get in or out. That, however, did not stop the arribada from occuring. A "real mall" though there wasn't many stores in it....or people.

Kimmy being called to see Harry Potter!

I haven't had fast food in a long time...enjoying it a little too much

Other than that, we have another Earthwatch group which just came into town. The married couple Ed and Cathy made us all dinner last night and will make us another meal tonight. Their trip here was difficult because the airport in Tamarindo was flooded, and eventually the airport in San Jose closed due to high winds and one volunteer had to bus here. I waited for her at the airport in Liberia for 2 hrs, with Kim and Matt (the person studying iguanas).  Fortunatly, we were able to go to the city and have Burger King, ice cream, purchase the rest of my supplies, find the mall with movie theater and go to a store to buy children's books. Bibi got in last night with smaller, sterile, sample vials and I can not wait to start using them! I predict by the end of the month I should be in the lab and hopefully done collecting samples until I decide to compare rainy vs dry seasons.

Just like a scene from the bat cave!

One Month Done!

Jesus caught a boa constricter and gave it to us in a gallon water jug.

Close up

Well, it is officially 120 days until my time here on Playa Grande will end, meaning I have a rather short time to pack in a whole bunch of work on my thesis. I, however, officially have all my supplies ordered and 24 samples (I think 5 won't be able to be used)! There is light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully, I can actually get started on my thesis as I have had writer's block and can't seem to motivate myself to just do it (simplemente hacelo).

The biologists and Gill

The biologists with Alex

The past week has been rather eventfull. We had our first 2 Earthwatch volunteers come to the project, Gill and her son, Alex, and they were awesome. They have lived such exciting lives moving around Europe and Africa, speaking many different languages, and always had amazing stories to tell. It was sad when they had to leave, but we have a new group coming in tomorrow, so perhaps they will be as cool.

We had a juvenile hawksbill wash up dead on Ventanas. I did not take pictures this time as Kim and I saw it during a night patrol, but the shell was amazing! It looked just like the tortoise shell hair accessories and jewlery that you would see in a catalogue (the reason they are going extinct). It was very thin, but we could not visibly see what was wrong with it. On an even more sad note... Jacob Hill and I were walking down the beach in the middle of the day and saw hatchlings all over the beach! We soon realized they were not moving. It was so hot that they all dehydrated and froze in place on their way down to the water. Only one out of the 59 hatchlings actually touched the ocean, but the chances of him making it far being by himself and suffering from heat exhaustion is not high.

Now it is time for happy news! After being skunked by turtles for somewhere around 10 days, I finally was able to work on one! Eventhough leatherbacks do not get me any closer to a degree, they are always amazing. Also, they are how my investigation is funded. Of course. an olive ridley thought it would be a fun joke to nest in my section while I was working on the leatherback so I couldn't get a sample. Other than that, not much has gone on around here. Tomorrow we have Earthwatch and Matt comes back for his iguana study. Bibi will arrive November 5th with all of the candy and condiments we have been asking for from the states! Think of it as our Christmas. This week should be an adventure.

Apparently children don't have to use car seats here

PS. I forgot that Cheer for the turtles is up and running on the Goldring Marine Biology Station website, which I posted about last time.