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.