Today we had a lecture from Vero on marine reserves in the Baja area. We read two interesting papers from one guy (Richard Cudney-Bueno) who studied a marine reserve for rock scallops and black murex in the Gulf of Mexico. The first looked at how to select the location of a reserve to best benefit fisheries. For example, both of theses species have free-floating larvae stages that become attached to a substrate at a certain age. You need to have the reserve located so that the larvae will drift to the area of your fishery. The second paper followed the community response to the marine reserve. I thought this was super cool because the fishing cooperative was really good at regulating itself via social punishment (disapproval, guilt etc). But when bandits began fishing in the reserve, the co-op essentially dissolved because there was no government enforcement to back them up.

We also had an interesting spanish class where we pulled subjunctive words out of spanish songs. It made me miss Sra Warda (high school spanish teacher for 3 years) because we listened to her favorite person ever, Juanes! It made me a little reminiscent, I should go back and find some way to contact her, she'd probably be really excited to know I'm studying abroad in Mexico and speaking lots of spanish.

After lunch we went into town again to conduct more interviews. We didn't get as many as last time, partly because we didn't have Brady to drive around and talk to people she knows. I'm thinking that she knows half the town. We went to the doctor's office to try to talk to a nurse, but she was out for the day, so we walked to La Roca and talked to Armida, the owner (and Poncho's sister). We asked Antonio if he would do some interviews with men, because Jenna and I thought they weren't being totally honest with us, because we're women. We were asking questions about how they feel about professional women, and we weren't getting any negative answers, but almost all of the women we talked to said that men, especially their husbands, were the largest obstacle they faced. One man told us that he thought professional women were great, and after he left his wife told us "He's a total liar! He's the reason I had to quit!" We still didn't get any real negative reactions, so that in itself is an interesting result, compared to the women's experiences.

We had to hand in our DR choices to Brady this afternoon. I ended up putting AJ first, then Vero, then Eduardo. It would be cool to do whales, but I feel like AJ's and Vero's projects have a greater effect on the people of Puerto San Carlos, and since I already know about hard science, I'd like to focus on the human aspect of conservation while I'm here. I didn't really realize that until recently, I had thought that I wanted to experience hard science in a different ecosystem with an interesting cultural component. What I've since realized is that I can do hard science in any type of area, but that SFS provides a really good opportunity to look into community involvement and motivation. I wrote in my request that no matter how many papers you publish, nothing will happen if you can't get the community involved. I'm also thinking that my "home" may be in forest ecosystems, I really miss trees here! It's great to explore something different, and that's part of why I came, to figure out where I want to go, or at least to get ideas.