So, as you can tell, I am about week behind in getting my posts up. However, in retrospect, this day that I am currently writing about has to be the highlight of the trip. First, we met up with this very cool guy, Barry, and some of his assistants and he explained to us how the Sea Turtle Conservation project was started and what. They had found what they though was a nest by the little tracks to the water. On Morgan Lewis beach, the nesting turtles are the Leatherback turtles.
So, as part of their efforts, every nest they find is excavated, and every non hatched egg is opened to see what stage of development it was in. The picture shows an egg, and you can see the embryo and yolk sack. When they are fully developed, they use their egg tooth to get out of the egg. They then manage to get out of the sand (the females lay their eggs in nests that are a couple feet deep), and using the light reflected from the ocean, they make their way to the ocean. While they were digging out the nest, they found a coupe that hadn't made it, but we did find one live one. The group named him Zeus, and at dusk, we put him in the sand and cheered him on as he made his (roundabout) way to the ocean. Because of the tourist development on the west coast of Barbados, the turtle project get calls from people saying there are a bunch of baby turtles in the lobby. The bright lights of the hotels disorient the baby turtles, so they think they are heading to the ocean when they are in fact heading the opposite direction.
So, after a BBQ on the beach - nothing like sand as a condiment to the burgers - we accompanied tome volunteers on the turtle walk. Female turtles come up at night to lay their eggs. On the way back, as we were literally ready to head back to the cars, someone found some tracks. We were luck enough to see two of thes HUGE turtles. The carapice (shell) length on one of the females was 1.67 metres long! It was very cool. If you ever have the chance to see these guys, I highly recommend it! June is apparently peak hatching season for the beach on the side of the island where the research institute is located. Can't wait to watch the babies!
We thought yesterday was a mucky, swampy day. This one was just as bad. First, Dr. Kramer, or OMS (old man of the swamp) shows us how to get through the sedge habitat by wading waist deep in the sludge. Dr. Buddle in the mangroves showed us what the new fashion is - mud covered pants. He did keep his camera nice and dry, though! Today was a field day for our group to do insect collection in our focal habitats: mangrove and sedge. We mostly did it through opportunistic collection. We had a great time collecting our focal taxa, though we fell seriously short on one of them. We didn't get very many coleoptera (beetles), since it seems they are most effectively caught through flight intercept traps, which brings us to the malaise trap we set up. Malaise traps are designed for diptera and other flying insects that when they encounter something, they fly up. The only opening at the top is into a jar of ethanol, so we were able to collect flies, bees, wasps, and other things like that. Flight intercept traps are designed for things that fly and go down, such as coleoptera, and we all realized if we were to try and sample them, we would need a flight intercept trap. Next time! So, while slugging through the sludge in the sedge, while waist deep, I did manage to find a spider that had not been previously recorded on Barbados before. I found a dock spider, with an egg sack, which was pretty cool. Very large and hairy!
Today is first field collection day. The beginning of the day was dedicated to game plan and out collection techniques. I may have my days mixed up, but there was one day where everyone had to go out in the field. Now, in the what to bring list - they said bring some clothes for Graeme Hall that you won't mind getting muddy. When they said muddy, they meant muddy. As you can see, the boys demonstrated proper swamp fashion. Tyler also demonstrates the art of zen lepidoptera and odonata collection. Or as he calls it: Oh-no-data.
So today was our introduction to Graeme Hall and decide on a project day. We were meeting various government people, so were instructed to dress semi decently. First was Graeme Hall - a nature sanctuary owned by a Canadian. In this reserve there is the last remaining mangrove habitat, and we were told of a petition to make Graeme Hall a national park. The problem is a developer wants to put a water park right next door to Graeme Hall, and so some people got together to form an NGO designated to make Graeme Hall a national park. Due to the political implications and complications, our project ended up being very information based as opposed to actually making a recommendation. However, I do think we gathered some interesting information through this project.
