Category Archives: Travel

I Like Invertebrates

Don’t get me wrong; I like fish too. But there’s something about the inverts of the sea that fascinate me. 

Take squids, for example. Cephalopods, they are over-developed mollusks (yeah, like snails and slugs and clams, only awesome-er) and are usually predatory. They swim “backwards,” using jet propulsion to push themselves through the water, tentacles trailing behind them. And their eyes are awesome. 

ImageThat’s not to discount the worms, though- these guys, segmented worms or annelids known as “fireworms” due to their stingy white side bristles, resemble strips of bacon when they swim or crawl across the sand and coral. 

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Inverts are so interesting- so many different forms and colors and weirdo ways of living. Expect more mollusks and crustaceans in the coming days! 

We’ve got another dive (actually, two) tomorrow, but the camera won’t go with me yet. Still making sure I’ve fully got my bearings and my buoyancy underwater before I add more distractions. But maybe tomorrow I’ll post some pictures from my night snorkel, to commence directly after this blog ends… LIKE NOW.

 

Slow and Steady Finally Shows Up

Remember all that running around on dark beaches that we did back in Santa Rosa at Playa Naranjo, looking desperately for nesting or hatching turtles? Well, I do. A total of four sleepless hours without moon, just red flashlights searching the jaguar-infested sand for little baby turtles… we saw lots of interesting crabs, but not much else.

But today, the turtles finally found us. Or at least this one did:

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He came swimming in over the reef, straight toward Seth, who was very pleased with his find, and Jill, who could not contain the awesomeness:

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Not sure why he was in so close to shore, but I’m glad he came by for a visit. I’ve loved sea turtles since I was little, on the beach in Hawaii.

This one was a new species for me: a hawksbill turtle, Eretmochelys imbricate. These turtles aren’t herbivorous like the Chelonia mydas (green sea turtles) that I know from Hawaii, but prefer to eat reef sponges. Since the coral’s taken such a hit from disease and acidification of the oceans, sponges have proliferated along this reef- might that be beneficial for the CITES-listed, once-hunted, critically endangered Hawksbill?

All in all, a very beautiful and successful day at the beach- we had our first dive (camera-less, sorry, didn’t want to have to think about that plus all the gear on my first dive in two years) and everyone checked out with skills, and we made plans for a night snorkel tomorrow after dinner! We’ll be figuring out research projects to start on tomorrow as well- post any reef questions or comments that we might be able to investigate in the comments!

Life is pretty sweet. The adventure continues.

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Goodbye, Costa Rica… HELLO LITTLE CAYMAN

We left La Selva two days ago (…sorry… I’m running just a little behind…) and took off for Miami, Grand Cayman, and then Little Cayman Island, where we arrived yesterday. The view of the reef flying in was incredible- Little Cayman has a barrier reef almost all the way around, and the color of the water changes dramatically from reef to nearly bottomless drop-off. The wall-diving here is supposed to be spectacular, but for today we stuck to snorkeling. 

We walked right out of the dining room from breakfast into the waves, taking a several-yard detour to snag wetsuits and fins and snorkels.

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The reef right in front of the Little Cayman Research Center, where we’ll be staying for the next few weeks, is simply incredible snorkeling. And Dad got me an underwater housing for my camera for Christmas- I don’t know if I’ve ever been as excited for a Christmas present put to use! Thanks Dad!

A few of the creatures we saw our very first few hours in the water:

This is a scorpionfish- I got lucky and spotted it on the seafloor next to a rock, I think because it was breathing and I saw its gills move. They’re quite venomous if you get pricked with their dorsal spines- like all the snakes from previous posts, no touchie!

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This one’s a Southern Stingray, one of the critters that makes the Caymans famous (the biodiversity here is huge, but the stingrays are pretty charismatic and like to be hand-fed, so snorkel tours go out of Grand Cayman to pat them all the time). 

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This Queen Conch, probably 18 inches from front to back, was presumably sifting through the sand to find food… while other mollusks and algae and tiny fishes colonized its beautiful shell. The wiggly reddish thing is a fire worm- a very good and painful reason not to dig around in the sand with bare hands.

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Tomorrow, we go on our first check-out dive (just to make sure everyone’s skills are up to par). Maybe in the afternoon when we get back, I’ll go looking for the 6-foot nurse shark that is supposed to hang out in the grass off of one of the boat moorings. Maybe I’ll get started thinking of research project ideas… hopefully ones that involve octopuses or pufferfish or nudibranchs or other cool stuff! 

Life could definitely be harder… 

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Expect more underwater photos, and hopefully some more natural history of the islands, coming up soon!

Night Life, Party Time

College kids are known for their late nights- procrastinated papers, raucous parties, frats, beer pong… well, our FSP does involve the occasional game of ping-pong on the folding table outside the researcher’s lounge, some late-night paper revisions (though it would be essentially impossible to procrastinate here), and, well, bio-nerd’s dream parties: night walks through the jungle.

La Selva is known for great birding, and to the FSP program is known as a great place to take night walks. The paths are wide and clear, and there’s always something interesting to see, whether it be an ocelot, an armadillo, a bat, or the little glass frog who sits on her eggs by the bridge. But if we only looked down on our nighttime excursions (party, woo!) we’d miss out on some of the most impressive sights.

Those who know me will know all about my passion for owls- silent fliers, possessed of awesome eyes and wicked eyebrows, sharp hearing, powerful wings… owls are pretty sweet. So far in Costa Rica I haven’t managed to get any good pictures, but I’ve been surprised a few times by a sudden rush of air over my head followed by a ghostly set of wings.

But another bird might be overtaking (or at least coming close to) my favorite avian predators- the Great Potoo, a tropical bird that perches during the day on dead trees, sitting perfectly still and pretending to be a dead branch. During the night, this fairly large bird (about  regular owl-sized, actually) shakes out its wings and yawns its massive beak before taking off into the sky and hunting down some big flying night bugs and sometimes even bats. (Can you imagine?)

As Tommy commented in a previous post, they have one of the most interesting and unsettling calls in the jungle- listen to the Cornell bird lab’s recording and imagine hearing that from out of the jungle as you walk alone through the dark:

http://neotropical.birds.cornell.edu/portal/species/overview?p_p_spp=222936

Here’s my best Potoo picture- this one surprised me on the bridge over the river, and hung out for a few minutes to be admired.

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These next guys are some members of the nightjar family, either nightjars or possibly pauraques- I spotted their eyeshine with my headlamp on the ground right outside of our cabin, and had to check them out. They didn’t seem to care about my approach at all until they took wing in unison, buzzed my head, and set back down to wait for more insect prey on the ground nearby. You never know about those tricky birds… they could be anywhere.

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I probably ought to go to bed earlier than I do… but you know college kids, can’t miss out on that night life! 

Everyone Gets Defensive Sometimes

Animals displaying bright coloration and patterning to warn away predators are known as “aposematic,” and include things like coral snakes, skunks, and poison dart frogs (Dendrobatidae). This “blue jeans frog” is bright red and blue as a warning to potential predators that it is very nasty-tasting and/or dangerous to their health… but doesn’t lend them any stealth abilities for avoiding curious and camera-laden humans.

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Other fun facts about these frogs: they lay eggs in the leaf litter, fertilize them, allow them to hatch, and then carry the tadpoles on their backs high into the canopy, to deposit them in tiny pools of water caught in bromeliads. The mother will return to feed them every day until they are big enough to grow legs and leave the pools, somehow remembering each tadpole’s location, and providing them with the chemicals in their foods that they will need to retain their parents’ defensive poison.

Another type of animal defense involves not advertisement of unpalatability but simple hiding-in-plain-sight. Tent-making bats like the two species below chew along the midribs of big leaves, collapsing them down into little shelters. They hold on to the midribs with their tiny little feets, and nap through the day bathed in the green light coming through their tent walls. They also build decoy tents, with no bats inside, possibly to foil squirrel monkeys and other bat predators’ efforts to find their real hiding places.

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These ones look like cotton balls. Way too cute.

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Other interesting defense mechanisms we’ve seen in La Selva include: the armadillos, hard to photograph because they like to crawl around in the underbrush in the dark; fer de lance snakes with a very nasty bite to impart on anything foolish enough to tangle with them; and bullet ants, inch-long little boogers that are named for their ability to make you feel, for 24 full hours, as if you have been shot.

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Then there are things like this tamandua (ant-eater) that see potential predators like us, squeak, and waddle over to a too-small tree in order to climb it slowly and cast timid and unhappy looks down at the scientists below. Not maybe as impressive a defense strategy… but still pretty adorable.

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Spirit Animal

According to Ryan, our main professor for the first 3 weeks of this trip, we have all been assigned spirit animals after much deep thought. Mine is the quetzal:

From Wikimedia Commons, photo by Dick Bos.

I’m down with this. There are worse ways to be described than “resplendent” though my Science Pants might not be the best support for this animal’s representation of my innermost soul. Anyways… now I have to go learn how to do a quetzal call, so that I might commune with my fellow little birdies.

Costa Rica

Okay, so here’s the deal. When I was applying to colleges, one of the things that really caught my eye was the Dartmouth tropical biology field studies program. I didn’t really think I would end up going- it seemed kind of too good to be true, and also seemed like it would be very difficult to get on to (not to mention get in to Dartmouth). But… here I am! Three years later, I’m sitting on a bed in Costa Rica getting ready to sleep before orientation and studies begin.

The program is about 9 weeks long, 6 at various field stations in Costa Rica (jungle, beach, desert, mountain, cloud forest… all the good stuff) and 3 at the Little Cayman Research Center on Little Cayman Island. There are something like 15 of us on the trip (not sure exactly), three professors, and two graduate TAs, and we’ll be traveling, sightseeing, studying, writing, and exploring as a group. It’s pretty much a dream come true. 

So this blog will be a chronicle of my exploits on this trip, I hope, with lots of photos (as soon as we get somewhere photo-friendly… so far it’s all been airports and dark streets and pretty plain hotel rooms), some science, and constant reassurances to the greater world that yes, I am still alive and botfly-free. 

Feel free to follow along, comment, and if you’re my facebook friend (which you probably are, who else is going to read this but Mom and maybe my aunts and uncles :P) check there for more photos as often as I can post them!

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