Bull Sharks, Turtles, and Trash

So about two days ago, Wendy (an American that lives down the street) told us that she saw a shark about 3 meters long earlier in the day.  She said it did not look like it was swimming aggressively but she got out of the water.  Yesterday while we were with Eric (Lotti's, my boss,  husband) it was brought up, apparently we had a bull shark swimming out in front of our house.

It amazes me, especially after a storm, how much trash washes up on our beach here.  I'm learning everyday how luckily I am to live in California and have such clean beaches.  This picture was taken after a storm (or maybe before I can't remember), but the amount of trash that washes up on our beach just astounds me each time. Courtney and I plan on doing some tie dying with the kids, and now we are thinking that the project will be an incentive for doing a beach clean up.  I mean yesterday Victor came to get the bike to help him pick up a computer monitor! And we are not talking about the nice flat screens we have everywhere these days, but a big boxy desktop computer.

Yesterday we went to the boat to go out with Eric but I didn't really know what we were going to be doing when we went down.  I was nervous I might get sea sick but decided that it would be okay because, no matter what, it would be something different.  The PRETOMA truck came and picked us up at 7 and we got a ride down the Coyote Estuary. This is the estuary that we patrol to in the south every night and we've been told by locals this one is not safe to swim in because of sharks and crocodiles.  

The boat came across the estuary to get us and bring us to the dock to get ready to go out to do some research.  Now we aren't talking about the boats we see in San Diego when we go on Dave's boat; no, these fishing boats were so small almost like dingies with a motor (the Titanic lifeboats might have fit more people).  Needless to say, on a boat this small sitting just outside the surf I got sea sick.  It wasn't unbearable, I had Dad's voice in my head the whole time telling me to look out at the horizon and sit up straight, which I did and was able to keep my breakfast.
We put out a net looking for Hawksbill turtles.  These guys rarely come up on our beach to nest so it would have been really cool getting to see one.  We dropped the net and had to jump in the water with snorkels to make sure that the net was all untangled, but we were also warned that there were jellyfish out.  At one point my leg started stinging.  I've been stung before and it felt similar, but I don't think I was actually hit by one because I never saw the mark on my leg.  So we escaped crocodiles, sharks, and jellyfish!

Our search for Hawksbills was not successful.  We went back twice before deciding it was time to pull up the net.  But when going back to pull up the net we see we have a turtle! We had a Olive Ridley, which is what we get nesting up on our beach most frequently. They were actually recently taken off the endangered list and put on the threatened animal list.

After untangling the turtle from the nest we were able to get it on the middle bench in the boat.  And she wasn't very happy about being on the boat.  Turtles have an instinct to flap their flipper when on their stomach and trying to get away, she didn't realize that she was suspended in air by a bench.  They flap pretty hard, there were these loud slapping sounds coming from her trying to get away until we put a shirt over her head to get her to go to sleep.  Victor held the turtle, Courtney grabbed the measurements and Eric tagged her.  I haven't been able to tag a turtle yet, in fact,  I haven't even seen the whole nesting process. And while Eric offered to teach me how to tag there I didn't feel comfortable tagging a turtle while on a boat and feeling not so great.  So I opted to be the photographer of the event.

She had a cut on the side of her mouth, we believe that it was from a fishing line.  It is really sad to see how beaten up these turtles can get, and we don't always realize what we are doing to contribute.

These were a little bit smaller than the boat we went out on but these are the Costa Rican fishing boats.  They don't use fishing poles but just throw lines out.  Hopefully sometimes soon, when the fish start biting again (we have had big shrimp ships out front that take all the fish and turtles) I will get a chance to go over and help at the fishery some more.

After we got off the boat we went to drop off a new research assistant at the Caletes project.  This project is known as the camping station; they are very secluded from the rest of us and they have made their whole camp.  It was a really cool camp, they had iguanas running around everywhere.  But, I was really glad that I have walls and a ceiling that keep out the mosquitos at night.

Things are about to get really tiring around here. Matt is leaving us tonight and Victor is leaving for his visa run later this week.  Courtney and I are planning on going into Coyote Thursday or Friday to try and gather up some locals to help us patrol.  Girls cannot be alone on the beach so really Courtney and I count as one person together so we really need to find people to walk with us.  This way the whole beach can be covered, but we figured we will probably become vampires staying up all night with nesting turtles and turtle babies about to start hatching! Hopefully when Courtney goes on her visa run it won't be so bad, since Victor can be on the beach alone and we will either have some volunteers or Ingrid (who works for PRETOMA) will be with us.

Probably will have an update tomorrow with babies! They are hatched in their nests (two nests) but we just have to wait for them to come up.  We went and took a look at the hatchery with Lotti when she came by today.  We had to fix the nests, the sand was not packed in tight enough and we weren't sure if this is from the earthquakes, rain, or just not being renested right.