Sunshine = Adventures!

Hola mis amigos!

When you live on a tropical island during the rainy season, it rains. It rains a lot. For weeks straight. So when it gets sunny, it's time to go outside and go DO stuff. (It is of course, totally possible to do stuff in the rain here, because the rain is so warm, but there are pros to not consistently damp.) This last week it's been beautifully sunny almost every day, so I have several adventures to report.

I'm going to give you a map here, so you can get an idea of where I was going on all of these adventures. So, thanks to Google Maps and Paint, I give you: The Panama Adventure Map!

So, a brief orientation seems to be in order. I live on Isla Colon, close to where it says Bocas del Toro District. The little orange dot on the north east corner there? That's about where my house is. This part of the island is called Bocas Town, because that's where most people live. You can see the airstrip (just above the words, running right to left) on this map. On the isthmus (the narrow strip of land that connects Bocas Town to the majority of Isla Colon) there is a little blue dot; this is the Smithsonian. It's a little over a mile walk from the house to the Smithsonian.

The three islands to the south east of Isla Colon are Carenero, Solarte, which are both labelled on the map, and Bastimentos, which is the upper one with Wizards and Dreffle Beach. I haven't been to Solarte yet, but I have been to Carenero and Bastimentos! Things that are circled in red are locations of adventures I've had since I last wrote.

Well, mostly. I did tell you a bit about my afternoon on Carenero, so I'll start there. Picture time!

Can you see the little bridge behind the palm tree? This is the path we were following along the edge of the island.

This is Bibi's, which is supposed to be a very good spot both for brunch. This is definitely still on my to-do list!

Ok, I love trees like this. I've seen them in many of the tropical places I've been; the Daintree Rainforest in Australia and Hawaii. I don't know, however, if they're all the same tree or if there is some kind of convergent evolution happening here.

This is looking north east from Carenero. The land you can see here is the tip of Bastimentos. The real purpose of this picture, though, is to point out where I went surfing with Sarah! You can see the water taxi here, and beyond the boat there were several surfers out there.

So...I guess taking pictures straight isn't my strong suit. But you can see the point that Amber and I climbed from here. That's about as far around the island as we walked; we decided we wanted to lay on the beach more than we wanted to keep exploring.

This picture, and the next one, were taken from me standing at exactly the same spot which I think is crazy! The first one, above, was taken looking to my left, and it's a marshy swampy kind of ecosystem.

This one, on the other hand, is pure beach. It was interesting to me that they existed so close together, and with such a sharp boundary.

And here we are at the point! This is looking back at where the waves hit it. Maybe someday it will be a blowhole, but right now the waves are just eroding this cave way back into it.

This is taken from the same spot, but it's looking on down the island, to where we didn't walk. I guess that's an adventure for another day!

Last Thursday, another new assistant arrived from Stonybrook. His name is Alex, and he's a master's student studying the genetic heritability of resistance to ocean acidification in fish. On Friday Amber and I introduced him to the system and a typical work day for us, and then on Saturday we decided it was time to do something fun. We decided to rent bikes and ride to La Piscina, a natural pool created by an indent in the land and a barrier reef. It's also circled on the adventure map; it's the north-most circle on the large part of Isla Colon. It's nine or ten miles from Bocas Town.

This is looking inland partway along the road on the way there. Most of this land is taken up by fincas, which are sort of like little farms or ranches. Whatever they are, it was outlandishly gorgeous.

And this is La Piscina, looking out to the north east. There's a barrier reef just about where the horizon of this picture is which keeps the water in La Piscina calm and creates a lovely habitat for all kinds of fish. It also means you can't get here by boat, and that paired with the long (and very muddy) road we followed out there means it's rare to see another person. We had the place to ourselves all day long.

This picture is taken from the same spot, looking to my left. I loved how this tree hung down over the ocean.

Here are Melissa and Alex, where we set up our little camp for the day. Alex wasted no time stretching out in the sun, while Amber and Melissa and I went for a swim out to the edge of La Piscina.

Ok, I couldn't help myself. This was at the top of one of the little hills on the way back, and I immediately stopped to take a picture. I am the luckiest girl in the world to get to work in a place like this!

Hannah Limov, this picture is especially for you. Many times in all this wonderful sunny greenness, I found myself reminded of your house in Northern California and of the trail we hiked at Point Reyes.

After the ride, we had to stop at the Smithsonian to rinse all the mud off our bikes. This is Amber, posing with our trusty steeds. We were definitely all tired and sweaty and really quite pleased with ourselves at this point.

On Sunday and Monday we were good children and went to work (and did laundry and various other important housekeeping things), but Tuesday was July 2nd, and therefore my birthday! To celebrate the occasion, we all got up early, finished the system check-up as fast as we could, and then bolted to Red Frog Beach, which is Bastimentos.

If you're ever in Bocas and you want a gloriously perfect classic beach, go to Red Frog. There is a resort on one end, but it's pretty hidden and it's nice to be able to get cold drinks. At the other end of the beach is a tent lodge; it's a super cool spot to hang out. Alex met a ton of young backpackers to hang out (and flirt) with there.

So you see what I mean by perfect classic beach? The sand was soft, the water was clear and a lovely temperature. I proceeded to spend the next three hours alternating laying in the sun and playing in the waves. As much as I love swimming of the dock and La Piscina was beautiful, I love playing in waves. Perhaps it's the distinct lack thereof in Colorado.

Here are Amber and Alex, enjoying the sunshine as well. Somehow I managed to take most of my photos during the twenty minutes it was cloudy...but it was lovely and sunny most of the day.

 

This is looking the other direction (more south) and towards the Red Frog Resort. Really, it's too pretty for words.

 

And here is me! I've celebrated my birthday in a lot of really incredible places; Mt. Hood, Lake Powell, and Glacier National Park come to mind. Steamboat's not a half-bad place to spend it either. This definitely ranks up there as one of my best birthdays ever! Amber made me a cake when we got home, and Alex delighted in singing "feliz cumpleaños a ti" as off-key as possible. Thanks guys, it was a blast!

These next four pictures are for my dad. In this picture, Dad, are the boats we get to ride in. These are typical of the water taxis you use to get mostly anywhere. They're great for motoring around the different islands, and all the drivers I've met thus far have been friendly and helpful and only slightly solicitous. 

 

This is the Red Frog Marina, just beyond the water taxis. These are all the boats we DON'T get to ride in, sadly enough. We saw a sailboat from Oslo among this bunch!

 

Pretty, aren't they? Dad loves looking at boats like this.

There were a couple of catamarans there also. Amber's comment as we rode by in the water taxi: "I wish I had a big enough boat that I needed a little boat to get to it."

 On Wednesday we were good again and went to work. Amber left early on Friday morning to go to a cousin's wedding in Hawaii, so she was busy Wednesday and Thursday making sure everything was ready to go and that Alex and I knew how to take care of everything while she was gone.

Thursday morning I woke up and decided that I had way to much energy, so I promptly decided that my goal for the day was to wear myself out. To this end, I went for a run to Playa Ponch at about midday. If you scroll way back up to the adventure map, I circled Playa Ponch as well. It's along the same road that we used to get to La Piscina, but much closer! I ran to where the pavement ends, which is about a mile and a half past the Smithsonian. Amber and I had run/walked out there the week before, so I figured I could make it at least half-way without stopping. Remember, this is the girl who hasn't run for running's sake for at least two years.

But before I get anywhere, I see a group of people crowded around the Smithsonian gate. There was a sloth making his way along the fence! I promptly ran back up to get Amber and Alex, and we spent a good five minutes taking pictures of it. Then Amber and Alex returned to the lab and I proceeded with my run.

So I get about half-way, and I'm feeling good. Ok, I tell myself, let's run the whole way out there! So I did. Playa Ponch was beautiful; it was a gloomy could day and everything there was silvery and misty and lovely. I absolutely refuse to carry things when I run though, so there aren't currently any pictures of Playa Ponch. One day I'll ride the bike out there and get some pictures of it.

I hung out on Playa Ponch for a little bit, idly stretching and admiring the view. I was feeling pumped at that point, so I decided I was going to run all the way back. I managed it on the way out, right?

Two-thirds the way back, I wasn't sure about that idea anymore. Another couple of minutes down the road, my shoe came untied, and I wasn't entirely displeased with the fact that I had to stop and tie it up again!

The sun came out about an hour after I got back, and Amber, inspired by my energy, decided to swim out to the sea grass bed off our dock and look around. I went too, and we saw a lobster, a lot of starfish and sea urchins, and Amber was very excited about the mix of sea grass. Her lab at home does mostly sea grass research.

After about an hour's swim, we headed back to the dock and cleaned up, before deciding that yoga sounded like a great idea. The woman who runs the classes is completely crazy and completely wonderful. Amber and I've been going about twice a week, and it's a lot of fun.

It wasn't until I got home that I realized exactly how well I'd done with my goal of wearing myself out. I'd run three miles, swum for over an hour, and done yoga for an hour. Amber and I barely managed to watch fireworks across the water (Happy Fourth!) before we crashed into bed at 9:30.

Amber left early on Friday morning, and since then it's been pretty business as usual. The system threw a bit of a temper tantrum when Amber left, and we have two CO2 regulators that refuse to allow airflow, but other than that it's been two fairly normal days. It did start pouring rain again today, so we'll see when the next adventure is.

Hasta luego!
 

Semanas Tres y Cuatro

Hola mis amigos!

Wow do I have a bit of catching up to do. I'll start with last Sunday and work my way forward until I get to today, so I'll actually be writing for about two weeks.

Last Sunday was the last really gloriously sunny day we've had here, and Sarah and I decided to go surfing! She has surf boards, so the easiest thing to do is pull on your suit and rash shirt and walk to the water taxi dock. We definitely got some catcalls walking without pants or shoes, but it's better to not have anything to leave in the boat. We just told our driver to go to Black Rock, which is around the back side of Isla Carranaro, and asked him if he would come back in an hour. When we got there, he idled the engine while we jumped off with our boards, and presto! We were surfing.

Or I should say, Sarah was surfing. I had a hard enough time getting on my board the first several times I did it! All those people you see casually sitting on surf boards waiting for waves like it's the most stable thing in the world? LIES! Although I did figure it out after falling off about four times in a row, and now I too can sit on my board like a pro.

Turns out, though, that sitting on your surf board and looking cool does not actually constitute surfing. Nor does trying to paddle and realizing your arm strength totals negative five, and continually forgetting to get your feet out of the water and onto the board to decrease drag is also a bad thing. Eventually though, I figured out how to paddle semi-efficiently and to turn my board to face sort of the right direction as the waves were coming in. Success should soon be mine, right?

Nope, not yet. Turns out you need to be moving fairly quickly when the wave reaches you to have a chance of catching it. It also helps if you're completely perpendicular to the wave, so it doesn't turn you sideways and tumble you. (My sinuses were incredibly clean by the end of the day though!) It's a fun but tricky thing to learn how to read a wave; will that one break over my head and spin me, or will it peter out into nothing? Where will the center of the wave be? You actually have to just get fairly lucky to be near the center when the wave gets to you; I at least cannot move quickly enough to read the wave, move into position, turn around, and start paddling.

After probably a solid half hour of watching Sarah catch waves and of me alternately getting tumbled and just chilling in the sunshine, something incredible happened. All of a sudden Sarah's jumping off her board to give me a push, shouting "PADDLEPADDLEPADDLEPADDLE!" and I start windmilling like a madman and then suddenly I'm not the one providing the momentum anymore. I'd caught the wave! After a delighted two seconds of realizing this, I remember that this is the point where you're supposed to stand up. So I put my hands by my waist, lever myself up, and plant my feet on my board.

Unfortunately I'd planted them far off of center, and I promptly sent the board flying out from under me and landed flat on my back. But no worries! I'd officially surfed!

Sarah and the other guys who were out there were stoked for me, and were determined to get me another wave by telling me when to paddle. I managed to get caught in a lot of white water and yanked around by my board and leash, and soaked up a lot of sun just laying on my board watching everyone else. (Only a minor sunburn resulted, with which I was also pleased.) I'd liked that feeling of catching the wave, though, and I wanted another one. So I kept watching the crests, trying to turn around and paddling.

Hard work does in fact pay off, and I did catch my second wave. I wasn't entirely sure I had it, so I popped to my knees first. That was quite fun, especially when I realized I was still moving. I pushed to my feet then, and I stood for a solid five second count before landing in the water again, this time on my face.

It was about this time that our water taxi came back, and Sarah and I climbed back into the boat (which is not easy to do from deep water, thanks!) Overall, I think it was highly successful and I can't wait to go again!

On Monday a scientist named Melissa arrived from Baton Rouge, where she studies at LSU. She'll be here until August, using Amber's experimental set-up for her own project. With her arrival, it was time to start processing all the corals. This meant we glued them to microscope slides, labeled the microscope slides, and weighed each piece of coral.

So let's do a little math here. Amber has six different treatments (no heat no CO₂, no heat moderate CO₂, no heat high CO₂, heat no CO₂, heat moderate CO₂, and heat high CO₂) which are each replicated three times. This gives us the eighteen rain barrels. Each barrel has twelve tanks attached to it, scattered randomly across the tables. Eighteen by twelve is 216 tanks. Each tank needs to have three or four individuals in it at the end, so we put seven pieces of coral in each tank to allow for the fifty percent mortality rate she experienced last time. Seven by 216 is 1512. Add corals for Melissa's experiment and we're closing in on 1600.

That's 1600 labels to cut out and glue to 1600 microscope slides. 1600 pieces of coral to chisel into the appropriate size, and then glue to the microscope slides. 1600 corals to weigh on a buoyant weight scale (which is actually super cool, and allows you to weigh something in water and then back-calculate the weight in air using a reference weight and the density of the water). It was a daunting task.

The first day, Sarah and I walked at 8am in with high hopes of knocking out 500 corals and surprising Amber with how successful we were. Turns out we were way overly-optimistic. We glued 210 corals that day, and once we were finished we realized that almost every single coral had already fallen over off the microscope slides. The glass slides were just too smooth, and the glue was peeling off. The fact that the corals can't be out of water for very long and we were putting the glue in salt water half-wet wasn't helping. (As a side note, salt water destroys everything it touches. Metal, wood, fabric, and apparently superglue. It's crazy.)

So...trouble shooting. The glue was sticking to the corals, and last time Amber glued the tags (which are a cool plastic-y waterproof paper) to the base of the corals and left them laying down. So the coral-glue interface was not our problem. The coral-slide interface, on the other hand, was a problem. So how to fix that?

Sand paper. And lots of scratching slides. Blergh.

Gluing I didn't mind so much. Cutting out the labels and gluing them on was good too, because you could watch the numbers go up. Weighing was my favorite job, because you got a sense of satisfaction (and a chance to walk around) every seven corals when you put them in their tank. But scratching slides? There was nothing good about scratching slides, apart from a sense of rebellion I got out of doing something that is totally forbidden in every other scientific endeavour.

But the slides had to be scratched, and we were the ones who were going to scratch them. So we brought home a stack of slides, a roll of paper, several tubes of Crazy Glue (Kola Loca, here, which doesn't actually translate for some odd reason) and the labels. And after gluing corals from 8 to 5, we sat there and prepped the slides for two hours.

Turns out scratching the slides made all the difference. We also got better at chiseling the bases flat, at gluing the max surface area with the least awkward pull against gravity, and at not bumping the already-glued ones. The next day we glued 298 corals, and on Wednesday we glued 378 (a table and a half!) Thursday we had to collect more coral, but we managed another 378 corals, leaving us with only one table (252) and Melissa's corals left to glue. We were totally going to finish on Friday.

Except...remember that first table where everyone fell down? They'd been lying down all week, and they were also from the first batch of coral we'd collected the very first week we were here. Turns out they weren't super happy with their lives, and finally we reached the inevitable decision. We had to replace them.

We managed to get about two thirds of the table done before the chichras became completely unbearable and we were too tired to do any more. An 8-6 day will do that. We'd come so far at this point that we were determined to finish, so we came in on Saturday (although not until nearly 11!)to finish up the first table and a half (also coral from the old batch). It was entirely the right decision in terms of the experiment, and it felt awesome to see the new super happy corals in their tanks.

In many ways our hours of gluing corals was an experience I was very glad to have. In no way shape or form am I saying I would want to do that every day of my life, but it gave me a bit of an appreciation for people who do mindless, repetitive tasks day-in and day-out. I saw some of the girls who work at one of the little grocery stores here labeling cans of beans, and it seemed completely on par with my job. Hers, however, lasts indefinitely, while mine had a very finite end point. I also thought a lot about how people talk to each other while they're doing things like that. Amber, Sarah, Melissa and I chattered a lot while we were working because while our hands were occupied, our minds certainly weren't.  We told stories about friends from home, about boyfriends, about our families, about adventures in science and elsewhere in life. It made me think about women who work in a kitchen all day, or about old-time quilting parties, and I wondered if the decline of labor like that (in groups, with the opportunity to chatter) had something to do with the difference in how we tell stories now. I also feel like it has to do with the different way we place importance on our reputation. Then, everyone in your little community would know every little thing about you, whereas now you have a much greater audience to worry about but that audience is also only privy to the biggest and most exciting things that happen in your life. I'm not sure exactly where this train of though was taking me, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless.

Saturday night and Sunday were for laundry, picking up my things, grocery shopping, and chilling out reading. It was very nice to sleep in and do nothing! It also poured all day, so it was a nice day for it. Sarah also flew out early on Sunday morning, and we were all sad to see her go.

This week has seen the last of the set-up work, so long as nothing now goes wrong! (Everyone, find something wooden and knock, hard.) On Monday we put in the air hose for all the CO₂ tanks, and on Tuesday we bought another 100 cinder blocks to build supports for the tables. As I mentioned earlier, the table legs are already rusting through, so we stacked four towers of cinder blocks under each table. It was quite an interesting job; each table is currently supporting about 400 pounds of water weight, and the cinder blocks need to fit pretty closely to the underside of the tables to catch them if they fall. It meant a lot of crouching under tables, lifting cinder blocks at very strange angles! Weirdly, I sort of love stuff like that. It makes me feel accomplished to get all dirty and sweaty and soaked with sea water (the tables drip) and sore.

After a bit of a break in the lab, Amber and I decided to run to Playa Ponch, which is about a mile past the Smithsonian. It was a really beautiful run/walk (neither one of us has run in a scary long time) and I can't wait to get out on that part of the road again. We searched for sea glass on the beaches on the way back, and as we rounded the corner to the Smithsonian we got probably the best surprise of the week. In one of the trees outside the guard house was a momma sloth and her baby! They are very, very high on my list of most adorable things I've been lucky to see. It was a great-after run treat.

Wednesday and today have been the beginning of our new post-set-up routine. Amber and I get to the Smithsonian around nine, take readings of fifty or so of the tanks, and come up to do data entry or in my case, write blog posts! Yesterday was a sort-of nice day, and we decided at one that we were leaving to go to Carrararo, the next island over, to lay on the beach and read. We walked along one side of the island, and found a beautiful little point that was maybe thirty feet above the sea level. (This is one of the highest bits of land I've seen since I left the States.) It was incredibly beautiful, and I have lots of pictures (that need to get uploaded and posted, of course). We did find a bit of beach and read for a while, and spent quite a bit of time laughing about how awesome our job was.

Today we'll not be doing any adventuring of the sort, however. It's been raining off and on all day today, and last night was definitely the biggest thunderstorm I've ever heard in my life. I woke up around 4am because the thunder was so loud; it was rattling the whole house and I could feel it resonating in my breast bone, the same way you can feel the bass if you stand in front of the speakers at a concert. It was completely crazy! I got up and watched the lightning for about ten minutes, but it was too bright and close to really make anything out. I have to say, I was certainly just glad that I was inside a house and that I've never been scared of storms.

The other bit of exciting news is that we have a new assistant arriving tonight. Alex is a master's student at Stonybrook (Amber's university) who does work with ocean acidification. He's coming so that there will still be two people here while Amber goes home and to a cousin's wedding in Hawaii for two weeks.

And with that, I think I've finally caught up on everything that's been happening! Next time I'll post pictures of Carranaro, updated pictures of our set-up (now that it's finished!) and hopefully I'll have some good adventure stories from my free time.

Hasta luego!

Picturas!

Hola mis amigos!

I decided that rather than write up the last week, I would upload the pictures I've been promising for a while now. No worries, you'll still get that adventure, possibly tomorrow. But until then, let me show you around my house and my work for a bit.

Of course I'll start with the best part of the house! This is the dock, which is built about one story above the water. The White family's boat is pulled out of the water underneath it. We absolutely love hanging out in the hammocks, day and night. Behind the hammocks you can see the house itself.

 This is the same view of the house, only without the hammocks in the way. Sarah's sitting on the step reading before work; she'd already jumped in the water and was waiting to get a little dryer before changing for the walk to the Smithsonian.

 This photo, and the next, are taken from the same spot just inside the door that was behind Sarah in the last picture, so my back was to the water in all of these photos. This is our lovely kitchen (note the surfboards in the corner!)

And this is our living room. Really, the living room and the kitchen are one big room, and this is where we spend all of our time. The open door you see in the back corner is my room.

 This was from the first collecting day; Amber and I are in the water here and Sarah took these photos for me. This is a short swim off the Smithsonian dock! The trees to the right are a mangrove island, and the real land behind us is the island. The water was shallow enough that we could stand up, which was fun! It took us about three hours to collect about 700 usable pieces of coral.

 Yay for the underwater camera! The water was a bit murky because we kept standing on the bottom, but I'm placing coral into Amber's collecting bag in this photo.

 This is our experimental set-up; you have to be this far away to get a good view of it! All of the blue barrels and the tables between them are ours. Six tables, each with three barrels; eighteen barrels in all. Each barrel has twelve tanks off of it, making the 216 tanks. This picture was taken from the main lab building looking down at the wet lab.

 This is just an example of exactly how beautiful the Smithsonian complex is. This is a brackish pond under the ramp leading up to the main lab building, and it houses birds, turtles, lizards, and a couple of caymens.

 This is the dock, and the building in the far right of this picture is the wet lab. You can't quite see the mangrove island in this picture; it's just behind the trees on the left.

 Now you can see the mangrove island where we were collecting. These little boats are the Smithsonian's, and we took one of them to collect the sponges. The farthest land you can see here is the mainland of Panama. These boats are also in the picture because they are more common on the island than the taxis, which are numerous! It seems every family has some kind of boat, and all the water taxis are this same model.

 This is looking back up at the main laboratory building. The pond you saw earlier is under that ramp. This is where the admin offices and our lab spaces is. From this picture, the dock and the wet lab are to the left.

 This is a close-up of our system. I laugh a little bit now; it looks a lot crazier now than when I took these pictures! This was before we got the tubing from the barrels to the tanks set up, and I'm sure you can imagine that craziness. If you look very closely, though, you can see the tubing running into the top of the barrels. The wet lab water system is all overhead so that it's all gravity-fed. These tubes are running across to a far line. (Amber's experiment is so big that we keep having to steal water!) Besides getting all the tubing cut and arranged, we've also turned on all the water and put seven pieces of coral in each tank. Our system is officially set up now (but more about that later).

 These are the boring sponges (as in erosion, not as in uninteresting!) That we collected. I put my hand in this photo for size comparison.

 Here are the sponges and some of the coral fragments together in one of the big tanks. We won't officially let the sponges start boring into the corals until August, after they have a chance to acclimate to their new conditions.

And this is one last shot of the lab (the dock is behind the wall you can see, and the lab building to the left, if you still want to orient yourself). Now you can really see the overhead water system and our tubing down from it. One of the cons about this system is that it's unfiltered water, which means sediment clogs the valves regularly. We clear them out by sticking a wire up through the valves about once every twelve hours.

That's all I'll write for now, but expect an update about this last week sometime soon.

Hasta pronto!

La Semana Andre: A Delayed Posting

I apologize for the delay in getting this post up! I actually had it written last week when I should have posted it, but this last week has been an insane amount of work. You'll hear all about it in my next blog post, which is not yet written but I hope to have up today or tomorrow. Now with that disclaimer, on to the rest of the story!

Hola mis amigos!

It's been another very busy week here in Panama! The first, and most exciting thing, is that we have the water turned on! After two weeks of building, this felt like a massive accomplishment. But let me start at the beginning.

 

Last Sunday one of Amber's friends, named Greg, arrived to help us for a week. He's a teacher at South Hampton High School, and he's in charge of the marine biology electives and the lab they have. He came down for a week to help us build gutters on the tables, figure out water flow, and organize all of the electronic measurement systems.

 

The gutters are necessary because each tank, to maintain water flow, has a tube going in and then just overflows onto the table. It's really not as much fun to do all the measurements and such if your feet get wet every time, and the salt water could easily corrode the metal table legs by December (which is the end date of the project). So to fix this problem, we tilted the tables slightly and screwed a PVC pipe with a slit cut out of it to each table. Now there are only minimal drips! This is the only part of the project we've had to re-do; the first time we cut the PVC pipes in half, and there was simply too much water and they were overflowing. The second time we cut about an inch- wide strip out of the circumference, and that worked much better.

 

I also spent a lot of this week labeling things. Each rain barrel and each tank got a color-coded label that was numbered, and we also wrote the tank numbers on the table so when we moved the tanks it would be easy to put them back. We also cut tubing of appropriate length to feed the rain barrels from the wet lab water system, and tubing to go from the rain barrels to the individual tank. Each one of the eighteen rain barrels feeds twelve tanks. All of this tubing also needed labeling; can you imagine the mess we would have if we got some of the tubing, cut to length, mixed up without a label on it?

Once we had all of this done (with the first round gutters), we got to turn on the water for one of the tables. This was when we realized the flaw in our gutter design, and we also realized that the tanks couldn't just overflow over the top; they were flowing into each other and would contaminate the different treatments. To rectify this problem, Sarah and Greg spent an afternoon drilling half-inch holes in the tanks. It's incredible how long stuff takes when you have to do it 216 times!

 

Once we had the drilled tanks back in place, the tubing labeled and put in the right tank, we turned the water on for the whole system. It was a really fantastic thing to watch everything fill up! But then, of course, came the adjustments. This is going to be my life for the rest of my time here, I think.

 

Because the whole water system for the wet lab is based on tides, you get varying water flow depending on whether or not it's high tide or low tide. You also get sediment and shells and things flowing through the system, which can clog the valves. For Amber's experiment, we need about 0.5 liter per minute of water flow in each tank, which means we're pretty much maxing out the water we can get. Also, because the flow from the rain barrels to the tanks is driven by gravity, we need to have enough water in the barrels to maintain pressure so the water keeps flowing. When there isn't enough of this pressure (called head pressure), the tubes can get air-locked, which is when the water doesn't have enough pressure to push the air in the tube out. Each tube, also, has a slightly different flow rate due to how long it is, what side of the barrel it's on, and basically just the tricky nature of the thing.

 

Greg and I spent nearly two days adjusting each of the 216 valves, and we definitely don't have them all dialed in yet. Maintaining head pressure in the barrels is quite a balancing act; you have to give the animals enough water to live but you can't use more water than is coming in. We're also going to have to clean out the eighteen big valves at least every day to make sure we're getting enough water. But despite all of this fiddliness, I'm still excited. At least we have a system to fiddle with!

 

The other accomplishments for this week include getting all the CO₂ tanks secured and tubed and wired with the pH monitors, and setting up all the outlets and extension cords for the pH monitors and the heaters. As soon as we got it all set up, of course, we had to waterproof the whole thing as best we could, which in our case meant using zip ties to secure zip lock bags over everything. We'll see how everything holds up as we go.

 

On Monday, another scientist named Melissa is coming who will be using our system to do molecular work with sponges. She'll be bringing a million and three microscope slides, which will mean the beginning of our last big project; preparing the corals. Each coral needs to get weighed, tagged, and then glued to a microscope slide so it stands upright in the tank. However, each tank is going to get seven corals. 216 times 7 is 1512 pieces of coral, so we'll be busy for a while. Fortunately the sponges don't need any preparation before we put them in the tanks!

 

And lest you all think I'm a total biology dork and all I do down here is talk about marine ecology, I'll tell you a little about our afternoons and evenings. Normally we knock off work around three, before the chichras get too bad. When we get home, we all kind of lounge and read and swim and shower. Because Greg was here this week, we took the opportunity to go out to eat several times. Amber's favorite restaurant is called Ultimo Refugio, and it's absolutely fantastic. We also took Greg back to our sushi place from last week, and one night we simply went out for brownies at a boat-turned-bar called Riptide. After dinner we'd hang about again, watching the sting rays swim around (there's a group of about seven that are here every night) and enjoying the breeze. The nights here are absolutely glorious.

 

This weekend thus far has been pretty mellow; it's raining today so I took the opportunity to do laundry, clean up and organize all my stuff, and catch up on writing. My next project is uploading pictures, so hopefully the post after this will explain the experimental set-up much better than I've been able to in words!

 

Until next time,

Hasta pronto!

Mi semana primera en Bocas!

Hola mis amigos!

It's been a very first week here in Panama, and I've been loving every single second of it. I'm also currently entertaining thoughts of living abroad a couple of months every year...always a crazy new location...Mom's not pleased with the direction of this thought, I can tell already. I also might end up missing Colorado summers like crazy. Bike rides and peaches and bbq and long summer nights are all just as amazing as the things I'm seeing here in Bocas.

Traveling here was fairly uneventful; I flew to Houston (you can now buy access to satellite TV on domestic flights, which I thought was crazy) and then to Panama City. If you ever do fly into Panama City, sit on the left side of the plane! We landed just as the sun was setting, and the whole city and the canal was lit up red and glowing. It was incredible.

Immigration showed me exactly how well my high school Spanish is serving me, and it's not well! I managed to explain that I was staying for seventy-six days, and that I was going to Bocas del Toro, but my explanation for why was something like: Quiero a estudiar el mar y los animales en el mar a “Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.” (I want to study the ocean and the animals in the ocean at Smithsonian etc.). Finally I think the person took pity on me and just stamped my passport. Customs was even better. The girl was highly puzzled by the crazy amounts of tubing I was carrying down for Amber, and my explanation was something like: es plastico, para más...uh...bolsas...para pescado (It is plastic, for more...uh...bags...for fish). I've since learned the words for tubes (tubos) and aquariums (aquarios), but the customs girl laughed at me and gave up trying to understand what I was saying.

At least I didn't make the mistake that Amber did, when she was trying to explain the tubing was cheap. Instead of saying “Es muy barrato” she said “Es muy barracho” which means “It's very drunk.” I guess the customs people laughed their heads off about that one!

Sarah White, whose house we're staying in, flew down with me and we shared a room in Hotel Santana in Panama City. I wouldn't recommend it for anything besides a single night stay like ours, but the AC worked and the beds were comfortable. The next morning we flew to Bocas del Toro in a little airplane. I don't know much about planes, but there were propellers on the wing engines and there was one seat on the left of the aisle and two on the right. My dad might be able to tell you from that information what it was, but I just know it was small. I would again recommend sitting on the left side of the plane, because you get to watch the coastline the whole way up to Bocas. Our flight was super quick; only thirty-five minutes. The landing strip is cut straight through a bunch of jungle and what looks like sugar cane plants.

Sarah and I took a taxi to her house, which is beyond incredible. It's around the corner from main street and backs up to the water. The back of the house is the combined open kitchen and living room, and the back wall is all windows looking north over the water. Behind the house is their dock, which has a deck built over the top of it for jumping off of and for hanging hammocks in. It's easily one of the most beautiful places I've ever stayed at. Next door on the east is a small garden and then several hotels. Next door on the west is a dive shop run by a Dutch man and his five-year-old son Shane, who likes to come over and play with us. It's fun to watch them manage the dive gear and take people out, although I've heard the diving here, while fun, isn't outstanding in terms of diversity of coral and sea life.

Myself, I feel like I've seen an incredible amount of sea life so far! I've been astonished by the number of animals we've seen from Sarah's dock; lots of little fish of course, but also probably a foot-long needle fish, an octopus, several rays, and a large starfish. Sarah's also seen pufferfish and eels here before. All of the houses along the water have decks, and it seems that every family has a little motor boat they use to get around. Water taxis are as common as car taxis (which are absolutely everywhere; I think they outnumber personal cars). The ocean is clearly a big part of life here, and I've been swimming every single day. It's just so lovely to get in the water when it's so hot out!

It's not actually been brutally hot, but when it's also super humid the heat takes it out of you. No one here moves at all quickly, which I'm finding it very easy to settle into. Most days have been a mix of sun and clouds, and the last two days have been full of heat lightning and pouring rain. This is, however, the wet season!

But I got distracted describing the house and the ocean and weather. I was talking about Sunday, when I got here. Mostly that day we lazed around the house; we also went grocery shopping and walked down main street a ways. The last three days we've been working at the Smithsonian, which has been really fun. It's been a pretty lazy schedule; we leave the house around 9:30 or 10:00 and we finish up whenever we get too hot or the wet lab gets too full of chichras, which are tiny evil biting bugs.

On Monday we spent a long time talking to Gabriel and Plinio, who got us all set up and registered. Gabriel is the administrative head of the institutue, and Plinio is an ex scientist who makes everything happen. After listening to all the rules and regulations, we started building the experimental set-up in the wet lab.

The wet-lab is a concrete deck with lots of drains and a corrugated plastic roof. There are overhead pipes that carry seawater that you can then tube down into tanks for any experiment that requires running seawater. For our experiment, we set up six tables, which will each hold thirty-six tanks for a total of 216 tanks. We also unpacked all of the supplies Amber had shipped down, which included a lot of tubing, valves, pH regulators and monitors, electricity timers, heaters, vials, and of course all of those tanks. They're small “KritterKeepers”; plastic tanks without lids, maybe twelve by eight inches or a little less. We unwrapped all the tanks and discovered that far too many of them were broken. The last thing we did were get the eighteen rain barrels, which will act as water reservoirs, in place.

By the time we had everything unpacked and sorted, it was about two and we were all too hot to do much else. The rest of the day we swam and attempted to cook dinner, which was aborted when the stove wouldn't light. Turns out the propane to the house wasn't actually on, until Wumpi came over and fixed it.

A minor aside about Wumpi – his family is the local family that takes care of the house between renters. Wumpi is a professional surfer, surf instructor, taxi driver, and jack-of-all-trades it seems. I've only met him briefly, but Sarah treats him like an older brother.

But for dinner that night, since we didn't have the stove, we made rice in the rice-cooker and mixed cheese, black beans, and hot sauce into it. I normally don't like beans a ton, but this was so incredibly tasty! I've decided it was a mix of better beans in Panama (not as mushy and more flavorful) and the fact that I was super hungry.

I spent most of the day on Tuesday using a large amount of duct tape and silicon to try sealing all of the broken tanks, some of which had gaping holes in them. I haven't tested any of them yet, but hopefully they all hold water! While I was busy with that project, Amber and Sarah cut holes in each rain barrel and bought cinder blocks to raise each one up. This was a great example of how I never want to plan a project like this; while Amber shipped most of her supplies here, she couldn't possibly plan for everything and she has to rely on getting some things down here. That being said, this is a tiny island and we weren't sure any of the hardware stores even carried cinder blocks, or if we would have to get them shipped in from the mainland. Like I said, I'm glad I'm not the one planning this whole thing.

Wednesday morning I put another layer of silicon on my tanks, and then in the afternoon we all swam out to a mangrove island off the Smithsonian dock to collect our first batch of finger coral. The coral is considered a weedy coral because it grows in lots of different water conditions and grows relatively rapidly. The best part was getting to swim around with Amber, who named nearly every species of sponge, coral, and algae that was present.

Thursday we spent setting up the rain barrels, which included drilling holes in them, teflon-taping the nozzles, wrenching them into the valves, and wrenching that whole setup into the rain barrels. It was an especially exciting job because the drill bit we had was ever so slightly too small, so we had to use a square head hammer to enlarge every single hole. A lot of sweat, grime, and blisters later, we were all quite pleased with ourselves. This is really what it means to do science, especially on a budget; we just kept trying contingency plans until something works. It's a great way to stimulate problem-solving, creativity, persistence, and a lot of work ethic, and it makes it even more clear to me how unrealistic labs are in high school, when kits lay everything out for you.

Friday was a pure collection day; we spent the morning gathering more corals and then in the afternoon we took a forty minute boat ride to Isla Pastores, where the sponges grow. On the way there we saw several dolphins, which was exciting! We were all exhausted when we got home, after all of our swimming and hauling buckets full of seawater and critters around. I also managed to completely fry my back, despite the sunscreen I put on. I knew I was going to do it at least once while I was here, so I'm hoping that now I'm good and I won't have to deal with that again.

My first full weekend in Bocas has been pretty mellow; Saturday was a downpour and so we spent most of our time laying on the couch reading. It was nice for me, especially, to let my sunburn recover a little bit. That night we went to the Sushi place on Main Street (fabulous; I highly recommend!) and then took a water taxi across to the Aqua Lounge, a club and hostel on the next island over. It seemed like a pretty equal mix of locals and backpackers, all enjoying their Coke-and-rums (which were at least 75% rum) and the electronic mixes of American music (LMFAO was highly prevalent). My favorite thing about both European and now Panamanian clubs: people actually dance!

Today I did all of the little chores I've been meaning to do all week; folded laundry, washed my socks, and organized my things a bit. There was also a lot of reading, a bit of writing, and a leisurely dip off the dock. It's nice to never have to rush while I'm here; everything is on island time. Even our four-to-six hour work days garnered Plinio's admonition that we were working too hard! So for now I think I'm going to keep lazing about town; tomorrow we'll get back to the work of building and setting everything up. Hopefully sometime this week I'll also get around to taking pictures, and to stealing some of Amber's, so I can show you exactly where I've landed myself this time. According to that saying about pictures and words, even this minor novel is only worth about two pictures!

Until then,

Ciao!

Introduction (or: what on earth am I going to Panama for?)

Hej min vänner!

Seems sort of odd that I start off my blog about Panama with a Swedish greeting, I know. My second attempt at blogging, however, wouldn't be what it is without my first attempt at blogging, which happened during my study abroad trip to Uppsala, Sweden. I learned a lot in Sweden; northern European history, neuroscience, self-reliance, Roman history, packing lightly, Swedish, and how to bake yeast breads. I'll warn you right now that I never finished documenting my travels through Helsinki and St. Petersburg, but if you want to read more about that six-month adventure, you can find it here.

So now that I've been home from one of the more northern bits of the world, I've taken it into my head to go south and HOT. In ten days I'm getting on a plane that will ultimately land me in Bocas Del Toro, Panama, a tiny town on Isla Colón just south of the Costa Rican border. I'll be there for two and a half months, assisting with a project on the boring sponge and its interactions with corals in changing ocean temperatures and acidities. I'll explain a lot more of the science behind what I'm doing in future posts, I'm sure. I'll be working under Amber Stubler, a PhD candidate from the School of Oceanic and Marine Sciences in Stonybrook, New York, and I'm thrilled that we'll be partnering with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, or STRI. (Now if only I could get good at saying Smithsonian.)

But...I'm a molecular and cellular biologist, and this project sounds way more like an ecology project. Well, it is. Marine biology, officially. My only experience with marine biology is three days snorkling with Dr. Michael Grant at the Great Barrier Reef, and various other ocean adventures with my family. Here's the thing though; your mommy is always right! My mom has degrees in evolution and ecology, in alpine botany, and in environmental sciences, and she's always made fun of me (in the most loving of ways) for choosing the "small bio" end of things. After four years of proteins, I've finally been able to admit that ecology is fun too. I took the introductory ecology lecture and lab this last semester at CU, and I had a blast. So there you go, Mom. While my love for proteins is forever undiminished, ecology can have a bit of my heart as well!

The more professional-sounding and rational reasoning for this project is that I plan to be a high school biology teacher (yes, my mother and I are the same person, I know) and I want to get a broader background in biology to help support that goal. I've participated in lab-based research, but field-based research is an entirely different game. This will also give me an opportunity to apply some of the ecological principles I stuffed into my head during the last semester.

And the other reason: it's an incredible opportunity that the universe dropped in my lap. When the universe drops things in your lap, you don't say no! I love telling the story of how I found out about this trip: turns out Amber rented the house in Bocas Del Toro from a family who I used to ski race with. The mom, Katie, remembered that I was a sciency-person and passed the information for the assistant position along to me. I applied and, lucky me, ended up with the job!

Like any good adventure, I only have a sketchy outline of what it's going to be like when I get there, besides brutally hot. (The snow here in Steamboat yesterday morning is not helping my cause!) But I can pass along what I do know: the month of June we'll mostly be building the tanks and hooking them into the STRI's water system and then collecting the sponges and corals to be our samples. Most of the sponges only live about ten feet underwater, so we'll be free diving for them. In July we'll be taking observations and letting the sponges settle in, and then in August we'll start manipulating the water temperature and acidity.

I'll fly home on August 16th, exactly one week before the orientation for the School of Education at CU. Luckily I'm living in the same house as I lived in last year, so it should be a relatively simple matter to unpack my boxes and be ready to go.

As for right now? I'm lazing about a bit in Steamboat, setting up roommates and Internet for next year and drooling over long-sleeved rash shirts for when I'm spending long days in the ocean. It's going to be a good adventure that's for sure! I'll post again before I head out, and give you a little more background on Pamana in general and Bocas in particular.

But until then,
Adiós mis amigos!