No internets...so from yesterday, 2/10

Today there was considerable less excitement than yesterday-no earthquakes, no research conundrums, etc. Just a site cleanup (staff and students, everyone assigned a chore) and a bunch of classes-Sustainable Development, Spanish and Coastal Ecology. With AJ we talked about environmental economics, which is how you put an economic value on the environment and ecosystems. We read a paper (Costanza's Value of the World Ecosystems for those scientifically inclined) that estimated the value of our ecosystem services (i.e. nutrient cycling, gas regulation) in dollars, and the value they found was more than the total global GDP. It may sound like a bunch of BS at first glance, but their methods are sound enough to make it the 2nd most cited paper for a period of 10 years. I think it's cool because they didn't even take into account the fact that we couldn't do some of these ecosystem services if we tried. AJ pointed out that if we changed our economy to reflect the environmental costs, our prices would be completely skewed. A product may be four times as much as it is now because the company built their factory on a wetland and we now have to work on processes the waste that that wetland filtered. I think it was the Iroquois who made decisions based on how it would affect people seven generations away. I found that really sobering.

Something that's been hitting me hard here is just how much trash we put out, especially plastics. Puerto San Carlos has trash everywhere, and the vast majority of it is plastic. Plastics take forever to decompose on their own, and often release really noxious chemicals when they do. In the meantime, they threaten the health of our ecosystems. Even if you recycle, that only buys your plastic bottle maybe one more life before the next person throws it out. I think that's something that's going to stick with me-finding things that are reusable instead of disposable and conserving water and energy. In suburbia we take it for granted that water is readily available. What we don't realize is that it takes vast resources to then treat that water after you use it, and to pump it back to someone's house. Another interesting "green" fact-the easiest way to greatly decrease your carbon footprint is to stop eating meat, or at least cows. The resources that go into feeding, raising, killing and transporting cows is one of the greatest contributors to carbon footprint.

Tomorrow we're going out for our first whale watching, weather permitting. We're going to collect data on how many whales we see, where we see them and behavior (spy-hopping, breaching, diving, etc). We had to make up our slates beforehand because there's so much information we have to collect that there's no way we'd be able to do it on the fly without anything in front of us. I'm still a little concerned that we're going to skip something. We're also picking up some crab pots for one of Vero's studies, and I'm really glad we don't have to snorkel for it. I liked snorkeling, but I would not want to go snorkeling then spend the next 3 hours on the boat.

Tonight seven of us went into town for a salsa lesson that Brady set up. We convinced some of the guys to come, even though we didn't end up dancing in pairs. The dance instructor was really amusing, definitely stereotypical male dance teacher. Vero came with us, and she's good! She takes his regular dance class (you know, for mexicanas who already know how to dance) so he kept using her for demonstrating. We did basic steps of salsa, meringue, "country" and samba. The Mexican version of country is much more intense. It's technically still square dancing but probably twice as fast with lots more moving. And the samba was tough-white girl got no hip movement. I was beat by the end. Another good thing about Mexico-the lesson cost 20 pesos, the equivalent of $1.50. I've spent more on one beer than I did for an hour's worth of dance lesson.