A Crazy Couple of Weeks

Sorry I have not done a great job keeping up with the blog, but things have been CRAZY around here! When my professor arrived at the beginning of the month, it was just Julianne and myself. Now, however, the entire team has arrived and my longest day has been over 20 hours of work! And my "short days" are 12 hours. It took me until Oct. 14 to get my bacteria. Fortunately, they were donated to my project from Laboratorio San Jose, so it saved me a couple hundred dollars. The unfortunate part is, the turtles started coming before I had all supplies (again). Fortunately, I was able to run some experiments right away with the fluid that we collected during the mid-October minibada and found some awesome results! I then got excited about getting a Master's degree because my project was working...and then it stopped working. As a results I have been spending up to 10 hours in the lab in a day trying to get everything to work. In the past week I have had 3 days where I have worked for over 20 hours, including a 40 hr day... I'm sure you can imagine why the old brain is no longer functioning.  However, I do have some cool things to show you...

Some Experimentation.  The zones of no bacterial growth around the white disks on the plate to the left are what I am looking for this season!  Now to repeat those results...

.

Day time ridley

Though my project has hit a road block, life in Grande continues and is never short on adventures. My dad came down for a couple of days. Though he did not see a turtle, he did see me chase down a poacher and ask him for the eggs back. This was my first poacher encounter, but far from my first poached nest. He popped an egg in his mouth, decided the entire clutch was no good for eating, and meandered down the beach.  In Costa Rica, it is a delicacy to eat raw eggs with a little hot sauce, thus poachers normally will crack one open and taste it to decide if the rest of the eggs are worth taking.  He explained to me that you can eat eggs, but this particular batch was no good...SO WHAT?! IT'S A NATIONAL PARK AND A THREATENED SPECIES!!! YOU CAN'T EAT THE EGGS! Needless to say, I relocated the eggs to the hatchery so he could not snack on them anymore. I am pretty sure I see him around town now, and he smiles and waves at me, making it super awkward.

Video of a day time olive ridey.  I hope you can see why we clean the beach of logs every once and a while.

Someone clearly doesn't feel rules apply to them, this was after screaming at us for asking her to kindly step away from the turtle. She then proceeded to invite everyone to pet the turtle. This turtle did not nest, but at least they waited for her to turn around.

Other than poachers and long days, the only thing worth mentioning is that a film crew called the other day because they want to film my project. They are doing something with my professor. Basically, they are going around the world for 3 yrs filming research projects, cultural events, and more. This is for 2 tv series and a movie. One of the sponsors of the project is the BBC (Think Planet Earth, Life, and Blue Planet)!   However, I thought I would be back home by the time that they get here, I should be done with lab work, and I should be done with my allotted amount of sample turtles. Still a month and a half away, so I have time to figure stuff out. Well, that's all I have.