Looking south along Playa Norte at dusk. Our turtle experience occurred just south of the point where the palm can be seen at the edge of the tree line.

Thursday night (July 26th) was a night of firsts, lasts and records!  It was Josh’s first night patrol of the trip (after finally receiving his research assistant passport), Sarah’s last night patrol (after 3 long months of hard work), Kate and my first Hawksbill turtle and my first full night as patrol leader.  Josh, Kate, Sarah and I began our patrol at 8pm in high spirits with beautiful weather, a bright moon, shooting stars and great company.  I was so glad the moon was out for my first full shift as patrol leader because one of my greatest challenges here has been night vision.  I’ve gotten way more accustomed to the dark but it still makes me nervous at times.

As we reached the 0 mile marker, we saw our first set of tracks running parallel to the sea.  As Sarah and I worked on deciphering this Green turtle’s crazy path of loops, Josh picked it up further south and spotted the turtle body-pitting in the distance.  At the point where the Green turtle’s tracks moved further up the beach, we noticed another set of up-tracks, this time from a Hawksbill turtle.  So at 8:12pm we ehc0untered the Hawksbill turtle that made our night epic.  We split into two teams to keep track of both turtles – Josh and Kate focused on the Green while Sarah set up the kit and helped me with the Hawksbill.  While our Green turtle began digging her egg chamber, our Hawksbill continued to move towards the back of the beach.  At this point, there is probably about 100m between the sea and the tree line.  Eventually, the Green turtle decided to abandoned her egg chamber and she returned to the sea.

By this time, our Hawksbill had begun body pitting at the back of the beach.  Unfortunately, this area was very wet and her body pit quickly filled with water so she looked like she was splashing around in a kiddie pool. Despite all the water around her, she continued to try to dig an egg chamber.  Since there was very little cover around, we tried to keep our distance as she continued to dig but also anticipated her retreat to the sea.  Little did we know that the journey had just begun!  When she eventually decided to abandon this egg chamber, I quickly checked for tags.  I noticed, however, that she was still heading away from the sea, so I decided that we would wait to see if she tried to nest again, hopefully in a drier spot.

After a couple more of these attempts we decided to name this Hawksbill Patience.  Hawksbills are typically relatively quick nesters, in comparison to other species but not Patience.  It turned out that she attempted to nest several more times for a total of 7 body pits and 6 attempted nest chambers, each one unfortunately filling with water.  So by the end of the night, Patience had earned two more names - one for her consistency in picking spots that filled with water and one for her persistence in trying to nest even after we subjected her to checking her tags, measuring her carapace and conducting a body check.  She also demonstrated more patience by stopping each time I took a measurement.  She will forever be remembered by our team as Patience Constance Persistence.

By the time Patience returned to the sea it was 2:13am.  We had just spent 6 hours with one Hawksbill.  Josh is sure this must be a record.  Even though we spent our entire night waiting with one turtle, our night with Patience was anything but boring.  The weather decided to keep us on our toes, literally at times as we waited out the rain in big puddles.  It seemed as though each time we began to dry off, the rain would start again!  At one point it got so windy (the windiest I’ve experienced here) that the rain was horizontal.  We also met a dog that Josh has named Beanbag.  Mostly black, we finally noticed Beanbag hovering around the turtle and when we tried to shoo it away it just wanted to snuggle up to us.  You could literally try to shove it away and it would lie down at your feet.  At one point I even stepped on it by accident and it still wouldn’t go away.  Probably the best part of waiting with Patience was the company.  It was awesome spending this time with Josh, Kate and Sarah - sharing stories (even scary ones), laughing and building friendships.  I’m thrilled my team was so great.  This night will be one of my fondest memories from Cano Palma 2012.

We found this caiman while hiking the Raphia trail at the station.

So we first arrived in San Jose on July 4th and went for a site seeing tour of the city with Josh. San Jose contains 25% of Costa Ricas total population so there are a lot of interesting sites to see. While walking around we came upon a group of break dancers on the street. They were dancing on the cement, which was a great site for me because it showed hip hop is universal. The hotel we stayed at had a beautiful view of the mountains in the distance from the rooftop. The next day we had to make a quick detour to get passport photos for our research assistant permits before going to Cano Palma Biological research station. Even on our first day the country welcomed us with rain which has continued up until now.

Once we arrived, we had a tour of our new home for the next 6 weeks. We met Charlotte the station manager who lives across the canal in San Francisco. We also met Juancho who is about 6 feel long, and is an adult male spectacled caiman that lives beside the dock. We swim in the canal with him and he has no interest in us except when we feed him leftovers at lunch and dinner. Picking out the meet and eating the fish that come for the rest.

My first 2 nights of turtle patrol we found 2 turtles that had passed away because of poachers roping up their fins and somehow loosing them to the ocean, demonstrating the importance of patrols being on the beach as often as possible to detour them from taking the sea turtles for meat, shells, and eggs. It takes over 25 years for these turtles to reach breeding maturity so the loss of one adult female turtle means the death of thousands of possible eggs. Within the first 2 weeks we spent a lot of time training  for beach patrols which included triangulation training to find nests later, digging fake egg chambers to trick the poachers, excavation of egg chambers and tagging training.

In the first 4 days we had a boa that had been injured with a knife in multiple places. Educating the public on how to handle or who to call when a snake invades their personal space is so important.

Red-eyed Tree Frog

There are 3 types of monkeys around the station: capuchin’s, spider monkeys, and howler monkeys. I have been lucky enough to see all 3. The howlers however, seem to be around the most but that could just because of the constant monstrous sound the make. There are many different reptiles and amphibians to be seen on the close by trails and even on the station. The most common being dart frogs, bull frogs, various types of gecko’s and skink’s. On a night hike we were also fortunate enough to see a green-boned frog. Some of the snakes I have had the pleasure of seeing are blunt-headed tree snakes, cat-eyed snakes, coffee snakes, a bromiliad boa, snail eaters, and one tiger rat snake. The 2 most exciting have been the venomous Fer de Lance and eyelash vipers. Although you cant be guaranteed to spot anything while out, the night snake patrols are my favorite part of being here. I’m hoping to be able to get out on a caiman census on the canal next Friday if time allows it.

There are a variety of birds here including toucans, great kiskadee’s, tri-colored herons, bare-throated tiger herons, frigate birds and ringed king fishers. There is also a small group of bats that live on the dock that I enjoy watching fly around and catch bugs at night time. Now that we have received our permits as of yesterday I hope to be able to get much more hands on with the turtles, which should make up for constantly getting drenched during our 7 mile beach hikes. The last couple nights have seen a surge of green sea turtles coming to the beach to nest. I’m also praying for this constant rain to stop and give us a few days of sun.

The planting crew (Photo: Caitlin McManus)

There was an early morning flurry of activity in the kitchen on Friday at 5 am. Two of the three night patrols were just returning to base, the morning beach census crew was preparing for their shift and several of us rose early to plant trees and vines around the station with Mario. A few people from the night crews pulled all nighters and just stayed up to help. What I found amazing was that only one of the 7 or 8 of us was required to be on the morning botany shift…the other person scheduled had to do the morning beach patrol so the rest of us volunteered.

We planted about 40 trees/vines in total all around the station property, had a lot of fun, woke up every sleeping soul on base and got completely covered in mud in the process. Like most things, we took it too far and ended up having mud tosses, mud fights and mud slaps (all friendly of course – although that call may be ultimately up to Dan since he was the only one to eat any). We also dug through what we thought was a water pipe only to later discover (after partially sawing through) that it was actually an phone line. Luckily it was no longer in use and we all were soon washing the mud off in the canal.

All our adventures with Mario are fun and educational, this one was no exception. Hopefully in years down the line, the people eating the fruit from the trees will taste a bit of the enjoyment we all had in planting them and working together. We make a pretty damn good team.

Photos are property of Caitlin McManus and not to be shared or used outside of this blog.