Thursday, February 26, 2009

Making friends with the POLICIA :)

Today we started our Directed Research projects. For my DR, I am working with one of the professors (and 2 students) investigating the role of sea turtle NGO's and community groups in enhancing local environmental awareness. Basically we go around different towns handing out surveys and/or doing interviews. Dining out is also a big theme of our project (I had delicious sopes and fries today!!!)

Today we surveyed people from San Carlos. My partner, Alyssa, and I spent most of our time chatting it up in the police station and giving the officers the surveys.

The station is hilarious. There is one small room with a single desk and a TV (which was playing "The Nanny" in Spanish) and a one cell...and that's about it. All in all we had a lot of fun. I definately need to work on my Spanish though.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Me and Lizzie with the giant cactus


"Luna"

Me tagging "Michael Jr."


I RODE A SEA TURTLE

Right now I am laying outside on a hammock relaxing and reflecting on the past 2 days of camping...

The trip was full of firsts for me.
My first time camping, unless you count sleeping in a tent in numerous backyards.
My first time playing backgammon...I won!
My first time peeing in the wilderness....sorry guys had to mention that one.
My first time seeing/touching a sea turtle...actually 10 sea turtles :)

So much stuff happened so I'm just going to begin with the most exciting things...

  • I rode a sea turtle.....It sounds kinda weird, but I did. When we release the turtles you walk them out to the water and when they start to swim you can hold on for a little ride. Of course you have to let go fairly quickly so you don't hurt them but it was still probably one of the coolest things I have ever done.

  • I measured and tagged my first turtle. The camping trip was specifically for turtle monitoring. Each night we had three 4 hour shifts that would go out to check the nets for sea turtles and anything else that got stuck (we caught two sting rays that we released). You have to check them every two hours so that the sea turtles don't drown (normally they can hold their breath up to 6 hours but when they are stressed...ie stuck in a net... its less). Then in the morning we measured and tagged them. The ones in the bay are juveniles so they were between 45-60 cm long and 16-25 kg (sorry I'm not sure about the conversions but they were pretty big and heavy. I'll post photos soon.) They are such amazing and beautiful creatures. When you see them it looks like they are crying but don't worry they aren't sad they just secrete concentrated salt water through their tear ducts to regulate their salinity.

For anyone who is wondering they were Chelonia Mydas or "Green" sea turtles.

  • I named a sea turtle. If you caught a untagged turtle on your shift you had the chance to officially name it. My shift caught one. We named it "Michael Jr." after my darling boyfriend. I love you. We also named one of the other ones "Luna" because it had a barnacle that looked like the moon.

  • I saw three shooting stars. My shift was from 8pm to 12am. Since there were only two nets to check twice we spent most of the laying back on the boat staring up at the starry sky. It was gorgeous... and freezing but still so amazing.

  • I learned some Spanish. With 4 hours and not much do I spent most of the time trying to have a conversation with Chilaco (one of our pangeras-boat drivers). Although I think most of the things he taught me I shouldn't trust. He's about my age and pretty funny. He spent most of the time trying to teach me to say that Sam (the staff on the boat with us) was a witch....but I caught on. He also likes to sing a lot...not very well I might add. I can't explain how funny have this guy standing up on the boat, belting Bob Marley "One Love" and "No women no cry" in a thick Mexican accent in the middle of the night.

  • We wrote a haikus for one of my classes. Some were pretty, others were deep, and some like mine were just kinda silly.

I can not go to pee
There are spiders everywhere
How traumatizing!


We also went swimming and snorkeling, built fires from cactus wood, played lots of "mafia", ate Mexican marshmallows (strawberry flavored...very weird), had class, went for a desert walk lecture, saw a coyote...and much more.

Monday, February 16, 2009

We are going camping for the next couple days in Banderitas to do sea turtle monitering. Very exciting, but unfortunately I will not have any forms of communication until Thursday night.

Saturday, February 14, 2009




Field Lectures are awesome!!!!

The other day we had a field lecture on the ecology of Magdelana Bay. For this we set up our camping chairs on the dunes that separate the bay and the Pacific Ocean and after class we spent several hours playing at the beach, gathering sand dollars and shells (which we were then told we were not allowed to keep), body surfing (one of our professors was actually surfing), jumping off the dunes, and sunbathing. Best day of class ever :) Also my first time swimming in the Pacific Ocean!!!!

The following day we had a lecture on Rhodolith beds (a marine algae that looks like coral) and went snokeling in the bay to collect data. The rhodoliths weren´t very interesting but while I was snoking I also found a starfish, and a seahorse. Very fun except when our boat got stuck on the sand for 20 mins and my feet went numb from the cold.

For both of these lectures we had boat rides and got to see lots of the surrounding marine wildlife stingrays whales, sea lions, and dolphins.

The boat trip to the dunes felt like I was in a disney movie. On the right side a sea lion was waving to us with both flippers while a pod of dophins swam on the left. In the distance you could see 4 or 5 gray whales putting on a watershow through their blowholes.
My stay so far in Mexico has been pretty cushy but there are a few things I have been noticing that I regularly take for granted back home...

1. Clean tap water- after about the 15th time I left my water bottle in my room to go to brush my teeth I started to get very annoyed about about this.

2. Thing generally working - So far our internet has been in and out everyday. Those who talk regularly with me on skype can attest to how frustrating this is. Our student phone hasn´t worked, the VCR and DVD, the hot water ( I had my first hot shower three days ago) and something else I am forgeting at the moment.

3. To go along with the last one... access to things you need - The closest town were we can get access an ATM or bank is an hour away. For other more specialty things (such as the cable to fix our VCR) the professors have to drive 4 hours to La Paz.

4. Recycling- Our school has been working hard to start a recycling program in town but still there are no recycling containers in town. I can talk about this more later. Today I am going with 4 other students to work at the recycling center.

Things we could learn from Mexico...Relax there is no reason to hurry. You can especially appreciate this at a local resturant los arcos (great margaritas but don´t expect to quick service at the other resturant I like we have just taken to grabing the cervesa from the frig rather than wait) Also be friendly. Everyone here says hi ....and if you talk more than a few mins you will probably get a hug and a kiss on the cheek... However the men are a little too friendly.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Classes, Field lectures/labs, group outings, homework, and more. There has been so much going on lately that its been hard to keep up with everything....especially updating my blog.

Things I haven't mentioned which where pretty sweet......

-Lecture by Wallace J. Nichols. "J" Nichols basically started the sea turtle conservation movement and founded/cofounded countless NGOs. His talk was kinda depressing at first...all about how much we have screwed up our environment but ended on a much higher note. The last section of his talk was about people he has met through his travels and different people have made an impact....everything from a illegal shark fisher who retired and turned in gear to his parents who gave up eating shrimp. The most interesting stories he told were about the more unlikely people who supported this movement.

Check it out ----> Shrimpsuck.org

-Field Lecture on the ecology and management of Mangroves. Out lecture took place in a disrupted Mangrove and after the lecture we walked around the mangrove identifying the different species of mangroves and discussing our restoration project.

-Yoga. Today after our outdoor lab on seaweed we had an impromptu yoga class lead by our Student Affairs Manager. Lots of fun and great excercised. Although in the future we are thinking of it in the mornings because it is hard to hold an eagle pose when people come up to you to show you a giant slug!!!! yuck.

<3

Friday, February 6, 2009

Tomorrow I am student of the day...which means several things.. mostly that I lead morning RAP (Reflections-inspirational quotes, poems, thoughtful questions, etc, Announcements-this is opened to anyone who needs to say anything, and Physicality- a game, team building exercise, or some kind of physical activity) So I figured I would share my quote with everyone...

"Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how. To plant a pine, for example, one need be neither god nor poet; one need only own a good shovel. By virtue of this curious loophole in the rules, any clodhopper may say: Let there be a tree—and there will be one. If his back be strong and his shovel sharp, there may eventually be ten thousand."


Leopold, Aldo: A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There, 1948, Oxford University Press, New York, 1987, pg. 81
Pangas













Mama Gray Whale

Gray Whales

Today we had our first trip out on the pangas (boats) for our swim test. While we were out we saw 6 gray whales ( 2 sets of mom and child and 1 set of adult whales ), 2 dolphins, lots of shore birds, and a pirate ship!?! or at least what looked like a pirate ship. Some of the whales were as close as 20-30 feet away. SO AWESOME!!!!

For my brother Dale, who inquired about the pollution near the center: the pollution comes from the fish cannery up the road and is over-nutrients not chemical, which I think just means that there is an abundance of bacteria and algae...and to get to the not polluted section you walk any where north of the cannery (about a mile).

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

My phrase of the day: 'No necesita una bolsa' or I don't need a bag.

SFS has recently started a program to switch from plastic bags to reusable ones in San Carlos however it hasn't quite caught on yet.

SFS Address

Feel free to send me letters....but no packages (they have told us that packages often get lost, stolen, or opened)


Center for Coastal Studies/ AP 15
Puerto San Carlos, BCS
CP 23740
MEXICO
My roommates and me outside my Cabana

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Hola!

Right now I am sitting outside on the patio at the SFS Center with the other students (there are 16 of us total) watching Finding Nemo on a projector on the side of one of the cabanas. We thought it was appropriate for the first night of program since we will be studying marine life. Tomorrow the some of the teachers are going out sea turtle monitoring. We don't get to go tomorrow because we just got here and haven't gone through all of orienation yet. We have to monitor twice a month...so we should have 5 more opportunities for playing with sea turtles. : )

Our first night here we spent in a hotel in La Paz so that we didn't have to drive after am already long day of of travel. Today we drove to 4 hours across the desert from the bay side of the Baja Penisula to the Pacific side where we are staying outside of a small fishing town called Puerto San Carlos. The drive was beautiful but pretty uneventful...basically 4 hours in the with nothing but desert. We drove on one two lane road the whole way only passing through one town other than San Carlos....there weren't even any crossroads other than maybe three dirt roads. The most excitement of the drive was the military checkpoint, police checkpoint(it's weird being somewhere where we are targeted by police)....and some sweet spanish music.

At the SFS Center we got settled in and had some presentations about school polices and risk management stuff....lots of wildlife to watch out for (sting rays, bugs, black widows, rattle snakes, scorpians....and more)

Also the food is awesome. Fish and frided zucchini tacos. yummm!!!

Thats it for right now. I'm exhausted.

<3

Maddie

P.S. the weather is gorgous....it was 70 and sunny today.