We've been working a lot again this past week, trying to coordinate research projects. We had tests Monday and Tuesday, and then for the past three days I've been editing my paper, which I think is at 24 pages of actual text, 28 with the copy of my interview questions.

The staff decided that my group shouldn't present to the town, because they're worried that the fishermen in town will be jealous that the island guys are getting so much money and help from so many people. Also, their "marine protected area" sounds a lot like the "natural marine park" that is proposed for the entire bay and has people up in arms. So they're also worried that people will get confused and angry.

Today we had a cooking class with the cooks. They showed us how to make all the salsas we have (which are very easy-all a combination of chiles, tomatillos and blenders). Then we made empanadas. You get corn flour and add water until it's about the consistency of Play-Doh. Then you squeeze off a ball of dough, flatten it with your tortilla press, fill it with whatever you want, and fry it. Of course, the only tortilla presses readily available in the US are at Williams-Sonoma and cost like $200. So I'm buying one and packing it in my luggage. Goodbye 5 lbs of personal property. I'll definitely be leaving things here to try to lighten my load, or just to fit everything!

We also had a tour of the sardine cannery today. I have to say it wasn't that impressive. They weren't working at the time, and AJ said that when they're working there's fish guts flying everywhere and it smells awful and it's just really disgusting. Instead we got to see rinsed concrete floors and machinery. Not as effective an "ohmygod look at this" tool.

I'm not horribly excited to come home right now. Yesterday or the day before that I couldn't wait to come home. But now I'm a little depressed. I'm in Mexico studying ecology, and I get to come home to a country that just created a racist immigration law and had a massive oil spill.

Speaking of which, now for a bit of soapboxing. That oil spill is the size of the state of Rhode Island. Imagine taking Rhode Island and wiping all of the living animals (not even considering effects on plants) from the surface of the state. That's what that means for the environment. It's essentially ecological genocide. Some ecologists are predicting that the Gulf may never recover. Not just "not our lifetime" but never, in all the time you could give it. Now take the Arctic Sea. It's the migratory and breeding home of many species from all over the world, including important fishery targets and endangered marine mammals (such as the gray whale we've been studying all semester). An offshore drilling accident there, similar to the one in the Gulf, would be catastrophic. Not only would it be hitting really sensitive wildlife, but they probably wouldn't be able to get to the problem for much longer due to harsher conditions. So maybe you'd be interested in signing a petition to stop offshore oil drilling in Alaska. It takes 5 seconds, and doesn't cost you a thing. Off soapbox.

Finally caught up

So I haven't blogged at all about this last week because there's not much to say, we've all been working our butts off and stressed out of our minds. This past week we had AJ's IIAT paper (10-20 pages) and presentation (12 minutes), plus our results/discussion for our DRs, plus a report for Eduardo, plus two tests yesterday and one test today. So we didn't really have time to do anything. For this week we have to hand in our final DR paper and do a 10 minute presentation to the center, and a 3 minute presentation in Spanish to the town.

We did go to a kindergarten (literally jardin de ninos) class and try to teach recycling. We thought we were doing ok and then the teacher got up and put us all to shame lol. But I think most of them got it.

We leave in a little over a week and I have mixed feelings. I have a list started of all the things I want to do when I get home, but at the same time I really don't want to leave. I also think I'm going to have major reverse culture shock. I'm expecting to get sick off all the fat and grease in American food and be overwhelmed by all the consumerism, and driving my car. I think I'm also really going to miss all the other students and staff, and chances are I won't see many of the Mexicans ever again. At the same time I can't wait for a long hot shower (you can get like 5 minutes max here) and American tv and being able to go places by myself.

In other news-new photos are up. EarthShip and updated album with camping pictures.

Last day of camp

So the last day we of camping we broke camp and drove to an Earthship, which is just about the coolest thing ever. It's a house that's made with almost all recycled materials and completely off the grid-no power, no water, no energy. The walls are made of tires packed with dirt, stacked, and spaces filled in with cans. It's all then covered with adobe. They have solar panels to collect light, and it's built into a hill to conserve heat. The roof collects rain water, which is then filtered for drinking water. Once you're done with drinking water it goes to showers and toilets, which is then filtered again and filtered by plants before it's released to your yard, at that point cleaner than most water sanitation places can make it. The place we went was still under construction, but it's still very cool and actually pretty too. One of the coolest thing is that they don't have to be millions of dollars-the one we went to is like $150-200k, less than a lot of people's houses.

After the Earthship we drove through La Paz for lunch. Most people went to go find American food, but some of us tagged along with some of the professors to this place that does Mexico City food. It was really good, I had a quesadilla with flor de calabaza (pumpkin flower), and a gordita filled with cheese, both with blue corn tortillas. Most of our professors are from Mexico City (chilangos) and they were really excited to have chilango food for once.

We then drove all the way home to return to massive amounts of work.

Day 5 of Camping

Saturday we broke up camp and then went back to the snorkeling place. We split up into boats and snorkeled in 4 different places. First we went into a massive school of bigeye jacks that also had some triggerfish. And at one point I looked down and 15 ft down from me was a bull shark. AJ was already telling everyone about it by the time I popped my head out of the water, and we had to get back in the boat. Apparently bull and tiger sharks are the most likely to attack people...

Then we went to the second place, over coral. We had to wear lifejackets there so the park officials knew we couldn't dive down to touch anything. But it was really cool, I saw a moray eel, a golden grouper (which is supposed to be really rare), more queen parrotfish, lots of butterfly fish, schools of Chromis, and more.

The third place was a sea lion colony that we swam with. I did get pretty close to one, but these guys weren't as friendly as the ones in Loreto, so we got back in the boats pretty fast.

The last place was another reef-some fish from there: surgeonfish , King Angelfish, Rainbow Wrasse, Cornetfish, and Leopard Grouper.

After we got back from snorkeling we drove through Cabo (where we stopped to get lunch) and went to Todos Santos. We stayed with one of AJ's friends, all of 3 doors down from the awesome surf hotel we stayed at for spring break. She's planning on making it kind of a mini-camp ground and it was completely beautiful. It was also fantastic to stay somewhere with a roof and a kitchen and a shower, even if we slept in tents. It was a nice break.

Day 4 of Camping

Friday we got up ad drove 40-50 minutes to Sierra la Laguna National Park, stopping in this cute little town (Santiago) on the way. Sierra la Laguna is kind of a chain of oases that provide water for a large portion of Baja California Sur. It was originally preserved because it provides all that water and because there are so many endemic species-species that are found only in that place.

Once we got to the parking area we had a rocky downsloping hike for 10-15 minutes to this awesome oasis with a waterfall. We had a distracted lecture with Vero for 10 minutes, then got to swim for awhile. It's soo nice to swim in freshwater when you're used to going to the sea. It's like taking an hour long bath when all you've had is like sponge baths. It was cool too, there were a lot of species that I'm used to seeing in PA ponds, like the dragonfly larvae my lab works with, and the snails that my friend Emily works with, as well as some diving beetles and we even found a tadpole in a stream! I didn't expect to see any tadpoles when it's surrounded by desert! I managed to jump off this high rock, but I needed some major help from Poncho & Chilaco, the pangueros. Chilaco eventually jumped with me. After we ate lunch we walked for another 10-15 minutes (another semi-mountainous hike) to a small lagoon. It was funny, I was thinking "it smells so good here, what is that? It reminds me of home" and eventually realized it was leaf litter on the ground, since we were in forest.

I got a little burned because you aren't allowed to wear sunscreen if you swim in the lagoons, since it's someone's drinking water and they can't exactly filter out chemicals. A couple of us also got a little dehydrated and felt pretty shitty until we stopped in Santiago and loaded up on Gatorade.

In other news, I started the book Lolita and so far I love it, even if it is kind of weird. Once we got back I just layed around in the shade and listened to music and watched people play volleyball. It was nice, I didn't have to walk far away to feel by myself.

Day 3 of Camping

So Thursday was our first full day at Cabo Pulmo, which is Mexico's only Marine Park (as in reserve). We were supposed to go out snorkeling within the reserve, but once we drove up to the tour station we found out they had us booked for the wrong day. So we snorkeled just off our campsite instead. It was a rock reef with tons of fish-goatfish, queen parrotfish, a trumpetfish, trunkfish among the coolest fish.

We also had women come from CONANP, Mexico's park service, and the President of Amigos Para Cabo Pulmo, all to talk about the park. Cabo Pulmo was a really interesting park because it was basically started by one extended fishing family, the Cortez's, who realized what the reef held and decided that it needed protection. They started by restricting their own actions in the area and then enlisted the help of Mexico's national parks service to create it. It's now in danger because there's a large development group planning a massive resort just 2 km north of the reserve. It'll have over 2,000 houses just for the workers. They are creating a 400 boat marina (which they're carving out of the coastline!), and a golf course with grass watered from the wells...in a desert! Judi, the president of Amigos para Cabo Pulmo was telling us how people keep saying how this resort will bring good things like electricity and paved roads, and how people living in Cabo Pulmo don't want that, not at that cost. They'd much rather keep living the way they're living.

Day 2 of Camping

So Day 2 we drove from La Paz to Cabo Pulmo, but had a few stops along the way.

First we drove into La Paz. The original plan had been to look for whale sharks, but the day before we were told that the weather was going to be too bad, so we were going to a reptile house instead. But come Wednesday morning, the weather was beautiful, so we got on some glass-bottomed boats (not as cool as I expected) and drove out to the bay at La Paz. And we found one! It was huge, and swimming fairly slowly. We had to limit how many people were in the water at one time so we didn't stress it out and cause it to dive deep, so only five people went in at once. But we got to swim with it a couple of times each. It was a little scary, even though they only eat krill (tiny shrimp-like crustaceans), just because it was soo big. But it was awesome, just watching it swim. I stayed near its head the whole time and just watched it.

After that we had lunch in La Paz. My group found a restaurant with some really good tacos (which are basically the Mexican version of sandwiches-everyone eats them for lunch) and a trampoline! Expect trampoline pictures eventually.

Then we drove to UABCS (Universidad Autonoma de Baja California Sur) to have a lecture with someone from a Cabo Pulmo NGO. It was weird being on a college campus with kids our age, most of the people in San Carlos are either high schoolers or 30yr olds, or kinda sketchy. But it was funny, the classroom looked like it was straight out of Pitt's Cathedral of Learning (no, not the Nationality Rooms). Found out an interesting fact from Vero-La Paz is the highest educated city in all of Mexico, meaning it has the most PhDs per capita in the entire country, higher than Mexico City. It's a relatively small city and there's a ton of research centers that take advantage of some really cool ecological features of the area, like the bay, the Gulf of CA, and the deserts.

We then drove another two hours to Cabo Pulmo Marine Park and set up camp on this deserted beach. The road to Cabo Pulmo is a fairly long bumpy dirt road, so we were happy to get there.

Day 1 of Camping

So I kept a mini-journal of our camping trip because we've done a ton and I wanted to make sure I remember everything.

So on Day 1, we left early in the morning and drove four hours to La Paz. We stopped at CIBNOR, which is the main research facility for Baja California Sur. There are various CIB centers throughout Mexico, each specialized on area-specific subjects. We toured the facilities and saw agriculture experiments on desert farming, aquaculture experiments which looked at conditions for raising different types of fish and crayfish (which are blue in warm waters!), massive pools set into the bay for shrimp aquacultures, and typical labs that look at water quality, tissue studies, etc. We also looked through some of their specimens, which included a talk with a spider/insect expert (some people held a tarantula) and their stuffed bird collection. We also saw their Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) which science nerds will know is a really cool piece of equipment. Instead of using light as an energy source, they shoot electrons at things and can see very tiny images-like the hairs on a fly's body. That was awesome, and equally cool was I understood the guy's Spanish pretty well. In general, CIBNOR has a really pretty campus-lots of white buildings. They offer MS & PhD programs, and that's where Vero got her PhD, so she knew just about everyone.

We camped at a beach on La Paz, best part was the most awesome bright red sunset which my camera didn't even begin to capture.

New Pictures!

Old Album


New Album

We had a ton of DR days this past week. We've been out to Isla Magdalena twice so far, and got stuck at the center for a couple of times as well. I hate getting stuck here, because it means I have waaay too much time on my hands. I end up using a small portion to get things done, but most of it I end up sitting around thinking "ugggh I have so much to do." I'm much more productive if I only have like 3 hours to work.

This morning Kay & I got up early to interview an agricultural extension agent for our pesticide project. He brought up some really good points about pesticides boosting productivity, and how we still can't feed everyone. He also pointed out that pesticides are expensive, so most farmers will try other methods first, and if they do have to use them will limit their use and try to do it in a way that keeps as much of the chemicals on their crops as possible. He's exactly the kind of person we wanted to talk to, besides the EPA. I'm just going to call them soon, I haven't heard back from half the sources we emailed.

Got the morning off (during which I did very little), then went to the island at one. We had three interviews with coop members, including some good ones. One guy told us a lot of people were worried about the NGO that's working with them, COBI (Comunidad y Biodiversidad) because he doesn't know what they want from the coop. A lot of these people aren't familiar with NGOs, so he thought that COBI would want a percentage of profits or something, he didn't realize it's totally free. Even (actually, especially) the government here wants a cut of everything.

Our last interview of the day was a knockout. The guy worked for CONAPESCA, the fisheries management/enforcement agency, and was also a member of the coop. He had some very different answers about how much people obey the rules and what needs to be done to improve enforcement. Everyone has been saying that they don't want outsiders watching the area, because they don't trust them. But this guy said that he does want an outsider, because half the time the coop members go out and the guatero (theif/bandit) is their cousin, or their brother-in-law or something, so they pretend they don't see them. This guy thinks that if it's a third party they won't be swayed by connections.

In general, this guy was very knowledgable and very dedicated to conservation. As just a normal fishermen, no extra education, he noticed that the fish stocks were going down and decided that they had to be protected. So he started patrolling the area. At one point, with CONAPESCA he completely cleared out the bay of guateros in fifteen days. Within those fifteen days people burned out his car while he was out patrolling. On the 18th day they beat the shit out of him. In that month he was driving down the highway and got chased off the road. And the worst part is that it's so hard to get anything to stick to anyone, he sends people to court and they just pay off the court and are back out in a few days. He knows one guatero that he's caught three times named his boat after him as a joke. But he keeps at it, because he says that after years of doing this, even with little judicial backup, he's seen results. Talk about amazing people. He's facing all kinds of challenges, literally risking his life to protect the bay, and didn't even go to high school.

Also! Turtles!

Almost forgot!

Last night I joined Eduardo's DR group for a turtle monitoring camping trip. We packed up and had probably a 45 min boat ride (and a bouncy one at that) to a mangrove island. Set up camp, ate some dinner the cooks had made us, and I had my shift at 8pm. Nicki, Eduardo, AJ's friend Erik and I went out on one of the pangas to pull up the turtle nets. We didn't have any in ours, but one of the morning groups did catch a rather large turtle. I'll get pictures up sometime, I'm overdue but I can't seem to coordinate my memory with my internet service. But anyway, around 7 the turtle DR group measured the turtle's shell and head, weighed her, tagged her, took a skin sample and set her on her way. They have one more turtle monitoring trip left, which I may or may not do. I'd like to actually catch a turtle one of these times, but on the other hand I got like no sleep last night because it was so windy.

Aaand I´m an idiot...

I just realized that I do not, in fact, have my account set up to let me know when I have a comment on a post. So for everyone who´s been commenting, sorry for never replying! I didn´t even realize I had comments!!

Today wasn´t horribly exciting, but not bad. Started out with Eduardo´s class, which was pretty much analyzing labwork from the bird exercise and a mangrove thing we did earlier in the semester. The mangrove one is fairly cool-I forget if I mentioned it, but we went out to this area of mangrove forest that was dug up for a pipe. The center had put in permanent quadrant markers (PVC pipe stakes) and we laid out the square and took a picture of the area. The point is to see what kind of colonization mangrove has-does it sweep across an area gradually or does it get picked up by the wind and "jump", are there some plants that prep the area? So we have the pictures and there´s a computer program (Vidana) that´s a lot like paint. You color different areas (in our case, different plants) colors, specify your quadrant, and it calculates percent cover. For anyone who´s ever tried to estimate percent cover (coughWillcough), you know it´s VERY hard to get repeatable data. This program still isn´t fantastic, but it´s much better than eyeballing it. We don´t have to write up the data, but we do give to Gustavo because it´s a project he´s been running for awhile.

After lunch we had site cleanup (boys bathroom...yay...actually literally yay, it´s a lot nicer than the girls!). Then we went into town to do prep work for the mural we´re painting. We´re doing it on the side of the recycling center, so we split into shifts and painted the wall white, as much as we could reach until our paint ran out.

Not much else going on today. Found a calendar template online so I could have a copy of due dates on me...oh my god our schedule is horrifying. We have at least two reports or papers due every weekend until the end of the semester. And the end of the semester is less than a month away! When did that happen??? Just when I was starting to get a little homesick (or at least "ready to go home") I realized that. It makes me feel like a little kid hanging on to my blanket: "No! You can´t make me leave!" And it´s terrifying that I have so much to do in such a short time. A short paper and a large paper (+ interviews) for AJ, two reports for Eduardo, one report for Vero, and the laaaaarge DR paper which involves not only doing more interviews, but sitting down and translating those interviews, which will take at least as long as the interview itself, which is running 30-40 minutes.

Which reminds me! We went to Isla Magdalena yesterday and got a FANTASTIC interview with this one fisherman. He was very eloquent, seemed like a very kind man (or at least came off that way, since he has both puppies and a kitten right now lol) and gave us a lot of information. He also started tearing up when we asked about why protect the area. He said "Our fathers gave us this island and said it´s yours now, you´re in charge. It´s our duty and responsibility to take care of what they gave us" He started choking up and Guadalupe (Eduardo´s wife and our translator) and I almost lost it. I´m loving these interviews for those awesome moments when you get to see someone else´s life and stories.

Went kayaking for real this time today, out in the lagoon behind the school. I'm fairly tired, because paddling didn't really click until about 15 minutes before we left. I was having a hard time and pulling at the paddle rather than pushing with the other arm. Finally realized that if I think of it like pedaling something with my arms, I could get the feel right. Saw some more birds-pelicans, great blue herons, a White Ibis, some small shorebirds, lots of gulls, and an osprey. And then once I got back to school I saw a great egret.

Before we went kayaking though we watched this documentary called de Nadie (Nobody). It was about central americans going through Mexico to get to the US. Getting through Mexico is the most dangerous part for these people, there's a gang called the Mara who target immigrants and will rob, beat, kill & rape immigrants. A lot of people try to jump on the trains (immigration doesn't really check them), but sometimes the Mara will be in control of a train and require payment. If someone doesn't have the money for the Mara they'll throw them off the train. And the Mexican police are just as bad, robbing people and beating them. A lot of the people they talked to were leaving because they couldn't earn enough money in their country to feed their children. One man had a distended stomach-literally coming out of his abdomen-and was trying to get to the US to get an operation, and then send money home to his children. Brady told us about how she's helped some of her Mexican friends apply for visas. Her one friend paid over $2000 on applications, got to the interview and was turned away. When she asked why, the guy told her "no reason." The people who want to, and need to, come to the US can't afford to do so legally and by the time they get to the US border they've already come through 4/5 of the journey and have probably gone through worse than most of us could imagine.

Today was the first day this week that I've done anything more than sit in class or work on my directed research paper (hence no blog posts, I hate writing a post "I wrote a lot today..."). We have three sections of our research paper due on Sunday, including a literature review which probably took the longest time as I had to find articles that applied and then read them and pull out the important parts. I wasted a lot of time looking at papers that ended up not having much to do with my project.

But anyway, we did some fun stuff today! We had two quick lectures in the morning, one from Vero on tourism and one that an intern Nicki taught on birds, mostly on the main types of birds and how to identify them. Then we got into pangas and had a bird field exercise, where we drove around the bay counting the different species we saw. I actually liked it a lot more than I thought I would, I may have the potential to become a "bird nerd" as Nicki called it. I also somehow knew all the random silhouettes she used in her powerpoint (stuff like herons, warblers, swallows). We saw the obvious ones, like gulls (no such thing as a seagull!) and brown pelicans, but we also saw Brant geese, cormorants (diving/fishing birds), 2 American Oystercatchers (largest species of shorebird), Royal Terns, lots of Magnificent Frigatebirds (which also do this and I think what Nicki decided was a Least Sandpiper which were little tiny birds on the shore. I liked birding, it seems pretty easy to get started in, and you can do it wherever you go. I may pick up a bird guide when I get home, I already have a pair of binoculars.

We were supposed to go kayaking in the mangroves for more birding after lunch, but we all decided that the water was too choppy for it to be very enjoyable. So instead we had more time to write (which I happily wasted) and are tentatively rescheduling for tomorrow afternoon. It should be fun, I've liked kayaking when we've gone, even if I'm still not very good at it.

Oh! I almost forgot to retell my April Fool's successes. I really love April Fool's day, probably too much. I got both my postdoc Rickey and my mom. I've spent probably the last three months designing my own project with Rickey for the summer, and we've gotten funding for it and everything, so I sent him an email telling him that I got offered an awesome job in Mexico for the summer and couldn't pass it up. I was already planning on doing it, then Rickey sent me the perfect entry in an email confirming my summer start date. Mom also gave me a perfect opportunity when she sent me the usual "I haven't heard from you in X days, are you ok? Are you still alive?" So of course I sent her an email that casually mentioned I had typhoid and that if it didn't get better in the next week I'd have to go home. But don't worry. I let Rickey sweat it all day, but Mom would probably have a heart attack and die after news like that so I killed it within the same email.