Paperwriting => Playa

Only a handful of days left in Palo Verde before we head to San Jose to take intensive Spanish classes and live with host families. Between now and then, I will be finishing up my paper on the Ipomoea carnea project, taking the midterm, and identifying some bugs and plants. Today everyone was very studious; I’m sure that pattern will continue until we leave.

After we turned in our papers, we took a day and a night to drive down to Punta Morales, a little beach town on the Pacific side about an hour from San Jose. It was a lovely break from the furious fieldwork and paper-writing of the last week. We hiked into the mangroves, a neat ecosystem right on the salty edge of the sea. It is “species-poor,” meaning that the area is dominated by one or two species of mangrove trees instead of the hyper-diversity in the forest and that it’s much quieter—fewer birds and insects around. The mangroves have some fascinating adaptations that allow them to survive soil conditions with high salinity and low oxygen levels. The roots have lenticels, or stomata like pores for gas-exchange, and peak above the soil either as pneomophores or stretch out from the trunk of the tree as prop roots. At low tide, the forest looks like a living jungle gym with arched roots to scrabble up and climb over. A lot of fun.

This ecosystem is really economically important to Costa Rica because it creates a safe refuge or nursery for most of the economically important fish species. As these areas have been damaged either by pollution at near-by shrimp farms or cut to make room for tourism, the fishing industry—and of course the marine life—have suffered. So fishery projects are now focusing on maintaining and expanding the mangroves as a way to increase the profitability of fishing. It’s wonderful when economic and environmental interests mesh together like that.

Now I’m off to play soccer for my study break. That’s become a regular routine in the evening with Ben, other students from the program, and Ticos working at the station. I have absolutely forgotten any of the coordination and finesse I learned in middle school soccer. So I am slow and clumsy—but it is lots of fun and good excuse to take a break from science to run around.