Life Without Vols

Iguana Necropsy

Now that the volunteers are gone, it feels like every turtle could possibly be my last, at least my last leatherback...of course, now that my project does not appear to be working out, I may be back next year. Just in case, I've been trying to absorb as much of the last couple turtle experiences I've had. I had a black turtle nest hatch, I missed the mass hatch, but I was able to rescue one little hatchling who was being carried away by a crab! He was beautiful!!! Of course, I don't really know if it was a boy or a girl, but the nest was in the shade and due to temperature sex determination in hatchlings, boy seemed to be the most likely choice. Black sea turtle hatchlings are rounder than the others I have seen, and have a brilliant bright white stomach. Even when he was resting on his way to the ocean, his back flippers kept moving...I think he was in a panic about predators. That same night I was also ables to see a black turtle and a leatherback nest, and it was all on Ventanas (the beach that does not get as many turtles) in the full moon light!!!

Our friends' band playing on a night off

I've started looking into some summer jobs and trying to figure life out, mostly I am waiting to hear back from a lab to see if they can process my samples without breaking the bank before I leave in 4 days! That way I know if I still have a Master's thesis. AAAAAHHH! I guess I thought things would be clam and relaxing my last few days here, but I was wrong.

A hatchling from an excavation we showed the sixth graders

Mantis

 

Salt marsh mangroves with salt excretion on leaves

We currently have a group of sixth graders in from California who are presenting at the Sea Turtle Festival here on Saturday, like they do every year. Since I am good with bird identification, at least I seem to like them more than the other biologists, I was sent on bird walks through the salt marsh. There wasn't a whole lot to see, and by the time I pointed out a bird, it was usually gone before the kids could see. However, between the fiddler crabs, a walking stick, a preying mantis, coati, and hummingbirds, the kids saw plenty and were very excited. The kids were also able to see a leatherback who had problems with collapsing egg chambers and left the beach without nesting, and a black sea turtle whose nest had to be relocated because it was below the high tide. Considering we had not seen a turtle in three nights, that fact that we found two and were able to get 40+ people to them was pretty fortunate.

The last week of season has not been just about the turtles, but about having some fun. The whole staff went to the Brazilito festival. Costa Ricans know how to do a fair right! All food is homemade, delicious, and not more that 2 dollars.  There are games, dancing, and a huge rodeo. I paid for parking, ate an arrepa, tamale, and went in on some doughnut holes all for $10...try doing the at the Puyallup Fair! We still had to patrol so we were unable to make it to the rodeo, but it looked fun. There were even some rides and bumpercars! For such a small town it was pretty impressive, but I can't wait to do the Puyallup next year now.

Churros at the festival, Matt says he loved the churro but his face shows differently

Avalon posing for Tera's pic at the festival

I'll probably have one more post from my Costa Rican adventures to cover the sea turtle festival and my leaving, but that won't be until I get home. Hopefully there will be a lot to report, starting with what is happening with the Master's Degree. That is all for now, and I'll see most of you when I get home!...4 days!

Last of the Volunteers

On Friday morning, the last of our volunteer groups will be leaving, that means it really is the end of season. Though the season was long, the last month seems to be going rather fast. My whole master's project is kind of up in the air right now, as I have not heard back from labs to see if they can process my samples. I keep loosing plates to maggots in the lab, no matter how tight I seal them and patch the seals everyday. Not sure why I still use the lab, since the only thing that will save my project at this point is sending them out, but I guess I just feel like if I'm not working, then I'm not trying.

On a more possitive note, look how cute this hatching runt of a ridley is!:

This group volunteer group has 9 people, but there is not enough turtles to go around. I am amazed that we have been able to get everyone to at least see a turtle at all, and for most, it has literally been a single turtle and after the nesting process. We have, however, had a lot of other cool things to keep them entertained. For instance, my first time on morning walk with this group I had a morning ridley, and I was walking to an excavation at 2:30 in the afternoon when my volunteer noticed a single hatchling on top of the berm. I sprinted up there to get him because it was WAY too hot and he could die before he got to the ocean. However, once I reached the top of the berm I noticed it wasn't just the 1 hatchling, but the entire nest erupting. There were far too may hatchlings for my bucket and I was forced to empty my excavation bag and put them in there until the other biologist could run back and get more buckets. Three had already died from the heat, but we were able to save 46!!! We released them at night and they all made it to the water! Fingers crossed that one of those will come back in 15 years to nest (since only 1 out of 1000 hatchlings makes it to adulthood).

The leatherback nest hatching:

The nest exploding with hatchlings

My favorite picture of the season.

 

My lovely volunteer helping me with an overflowing bucket and bag, their reward for going with me to an olive ridley excavation instead of the leatherback nest excavation that the rest of the volunteers went to.

After this excitment, Ashley, my volunteer, and myself went to our ridley excavation that had almost completely died out, probably due to high tides since they were all about the same developement stage and getting close to hatchling. The nest was well below the new spring high tide line (http://home.hiwaay.net/~krcool/Astro/moon/moontides/) and we had just recently had a full moon. Only 8 made it out, 60 stage 3's (about to hatch) were found dead, and maggots cleaned out about 10 eggs, making it impossible to determine their stages. However, one lucky little turtle, a runt if you will, did make it out (pictures above). Good thing we had such good news with the leatherback nest hatching, otherwise it would have been a depressing day with that ridley nest.

There are only 12 more days until I head home and can no longer say I live in Costa Rica. It's kind of bitter sweet, but I am really looking forward to being home. I am trying not to be too stressed about the project and enjoy my last few moments here, but it is quite hard with a Master's project that I thought would be long done by now lingering over my head.

Wrap it up!

I know, it has been a while since I have written a post, and a lot has happened since then. This is going to be difficult to post since the internet has been going in and out for the past 2 weeks or so,  lately it has been 20 minutes no internet, followed by 5 minutes of working internet (though at night when I should be sleeping it works perfectly).

Tiny preying mantis that found his way on to my foot at the beach...in his attack pose!

We are on our final Earthwatch group! I can’t believe the end of season is here! The beginning went by so slowly, but with volunteer groups coming one after the other, spending 6-8 hours a day in the lab, plus the 8 additional hours of beach work, everything has sped up. It was too hot for the last volunteer group to be on the beach during daytime work, so it was a lot of work for us biologists. Usually we have no problems finding people to do excavations, triangulations, and even occasionally temperature, but it was too hot!  The volunteers were all nice and the teachers did a good job at sharing the experience with their schools through Earthwatch’s Live from the Field Program (my mom seriously needs to do it).  I was able to skype a couple of classrooms and answer turtle questions and show them hatchlings that were found during excavations, but I the middle of my lab work so I missed most them.  I recieved my supplies a week later than I had anticipated, an issue because fungus needs a month to grow and I only had 3 weeks from the day I recieved them until my season was over.

Me with Kike's pocket squirrel (he keeps it in his pocket). Some men chopped down his tree and killed his sibblings.  They were trying to kill him, but Kike paid $10 to keep it. His name is Rescate (rescue) for obvious reasons and he ate breakfast with Jac and I one morning.

This brings me to updates about my project. I’m looking into sending out samples because it is significantly cheaper than processing it all in Grande.  I had a microbiologist tell me that I should not have frozen the samples because freezing could kill bacteria with the formation of the ice crystals, but I was instructed that this was the best method given that the turtles were coming before the supplies, so, in order to have any hope of a Master’s, I had to. This, of course, caused me to spent all day sending emails (with our on-again off-again internet) to get other opinions. Fortunately, I have quite the cool committee and Dr. Visalli told me that what I did was the best that I could do and that I still have a project, it’s not ideal, but since I am still getting growth so I must have done something right. He said to process it all, and if it makes sense get a publication, and if it doesn’t, just get the degree and explain how it should be done the next time. Again, not ideal, but completely put me at ease. Now I just need to find a lab for bacterial identification of frozen samples. On the upside for me, downside for turtles, I successfully identified a fungal species that has had 2 papers (one published, one in press) in the past six months which shows that this fungus is having detrimental effects on hatchling success. So far, I have only found it in a cloaca samples, but I’m pretty sure I have 3 more plates with it growing on it. In other bad news, flies have taken over my lab and I am loosing plates at a rate of about 5 per day due to maggot infestations, even with sealing my plates. Another reason to give the samples to the lab, which I think will cost me $4,000- $5,000 for both bacteria and fungus, so good thing I took out extra loans because I cannot ask my advisor for that, but it is cheaper than sending me back here another year with airfare, living expenses, and supplies/sending samples out. So I’m hoping to find a place quickly so I can figure it out before I leave.

Fusarium (a fungus) a.k.a. hatchling killer!

Finally, Jac (college roommate) and Julianne (friend from IPFW who is taking over the station for Tera next year) both came last week. It was a nice little break.  Julianne was especially good at calming me down, something we had lots of practice doing for each other with tests and projects in grad school. More importantly, it was a surprise that everyone kept from me until 4 days before she got here. Jac was great to see too because it has been far too long. Unfortunately, it was a lot more of me working at the pool in the shade with my computer then hanging out and relaxing, but she got sun! And true to form, the wind picked up one day and blew my notes into the pool…But it’s ok, they weren’t ruined somehow, and I had backups!
 

Jac and I at Kike's.

Me "relaxing" by the pool. Mostly using the internet for project emails and researching fungus because our internet is down.

Other than that, I am just trying to get home in 2 weeks and enjoy the rest of my time here while tying up a bunch of loose ends and wrapping up the project. I’ve started applying for jobs back home, two at the zoo, one as a sea kayaking guide in the San Juans with orcas, and still looking for more because I am beyond broke!