Rainy, Rainy Days, BUT the First Satellite Transmitter is Installed
We had some very rainy days these past weeks we were left in not doubt that La Niña has arrived as predicted.
The August arribada was marked by insane thunderstorms and interrupted most of our nights rudely and we had to seek shelter (Not a good idea to be with an antenna on the beach while lightning strikes only a few meters away, and also not a great idea to have an expensive ultrasound drowning. Our scale gave up on us during these days.). We still managed to gather a decent sample size, though far from what I had hoped for. I am still incredible grateful for my incredible team this season.
After the arribada, a huge part of the field team departed, because school started again beginning of September and I had to say good-bye to Marcus, Brie, Kim, and Hunter. We had a nice good-bye party with home-made pizza and beer.
Luckily I am still left with Derek and Erik, who will be helping me till the end of September.
After a short pit-stop in San Jose to drop off samples at the Universidad de Costa Rica and to refill our liquid nitrogen tank we once again drove down to the Central Pacific coast. Unfortunately, the season there seems to be very slow, and prime nesting beaches haven’t seen a single turtle in over three weeks. We decided to cut our sampling efforts there short and rather head back to Rio Oro, where they had up to 40 turtles in recent nights.
Though it hadn’t been raining much in Rio Oro before, the rain has travelled with us and it has been raining cats and dogs the past days. We were still able to go out in the early morning hours, and last night we finally installed our first satellite transmitter onto a beautiful female we called “Eva”. She weighed 39 kg and measured 69.4 cm. Quite a big girl! We already got a first location from her today, hopefully many more to come, so stay tuned!
