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Fish team student, Alberto Marcano, dives in to sample in
the creek. Photo Credit: Jensen Montambault |
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This spider, with a four-inch leg spread, hangs out on the
rocks in the middle of a rapid.
Photo Credit: Jensen Montambault |
"All off for crocodile beach!" shouted our boat driver. I assumed that he was joking until I saw two small, seven foot, alligators slump off into the backwaters behind the island. Apparently they are delicious grilled or stewed, but I am trying to avoid them in any form.
Not our fish team, however, who cheerfully dragged a seine net through the water in which the reptiles had disappeared.
PEOPLE: Meet Angel Rojas, cast-netting specialist.
TOOLS: Milky? Green? Cloudy? Scientists use a secchi disk to sample water clarity.
We spent six hours in the boats traveling up the río Nichare and its tributaries. For the first time on this trip, we traveled along meandering waterways that loop back and forth.
As the bird flies we only went a few kilometers, but between river curves and beaching on rocks, the trip felt more like twenty.
These meanders will become more and more curvaceous until the river seeks a short cut and turns what was a peninsula in the river into an island. The ends to the curve will choke with sediment and an ox-bow lake will form.
Time is limited in the tropics where the sun sets at 6 PM sharp and rocks are very dangerous to navigate after dark.
SPECIES: Colaroja: this little fish teaches scientists a thing or two!
ISSUES: 20 permits were needed for the AquaRAP expedition.
When we made camp two days ago there was a giant rock submerged in the water. When I stood on the end of it, my head was barely exposed. The water level has dropped so radically in this short amount of time, despite persistent drizzle and downpour, that the rock is now completely exposed.
— Reported by Jensen Montambault
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