18:20 Today
has been interesting (of course), it started with the lads cleaning the lodge
under watch of the park guard whilst I ate watermelon and pineapple to try
catch up on missing breakfast - doesn’t sound too fair at this point does it!
One of my aims
for today was to read most of the fish behaviour book, though I kept getting
interrupted by somewhat random phone calls - Costa Ricas phone numbers are
short and can be easily similar so got quite a few 'wrong numbers' just seemed
more apparent today, although some calls were for the park guard.. who was not
around whenever it rang.
.JPG) |
| Also Unimpressed With Random Phone Calls (D.Philpot) |
At lunchtime a
baby Coati ran across the yard area by itself randomly and ran up the path
towards the dorm house. Howler Monkeys
kept making brief appearances to the area every few hours.
When it came
for the volunteers to leave some tourists appeared from the trail but not a
single person saw them come along the beach.
Right after the park guard left there was a couple more however my
Spanish is good enough at this point to hold conversations as to why they need
to leave. Luckily both groups of
tourists were respectful and left easily, as they should do if they care about
nature. There was even a paraglider
flying around like an annoying fly that wouldn't leave you alone, such horrible
noises those things make and I don't imagine he saw much from above the tree
tops though it appeared like he crashed in some instances. A very odd situation as I couldn't flag him
down though I felt that it would have been good to have a megaphone or flags
for enforcement - and I didn’t know if the air above the park was protected
also. Once the racket died down I
gathered some coconuts and put them in the fridge.
I am now
pondering about what to have for dinner and as to how much I want to go snorkelling
again, with Howler Monkeys crying out in the distance. One of the female park guards I have never
met before arrives tomorrow so it will be great to finally cross paths with her
and formally introduce myself. Just when
I was wondering what else could happen here… wham! Some more interesting
interactions.
22:00 I
decided to just "go look at the beach," for no real reason, and there
was a large Fishing Bat (larger than the normal Sapwing Bats I see about) which
kept swooping down under my torch light and grabbing what I were I presume
Mullet from the surface waters of the lagoon.
I didn't see him for too long though, as I think it became aware of me
lighting up the area, along with some other animals…
There in
shallows I noticed the light caught a brown surface sticking out from the water
like a fin, I double-taked just to be sure and there was most definitely a fin
sticking out of the water only 3 metres at most from the beach and my
toes. What I was looking at was a tan to
beige coloured Nurse Shark, and a small baby one at that! I couldn't believe
what I was seeing so I questioning myself for a second "is it actually a
fish…" hmm "nope, most definitely a shark." I then noticed what it was doing which is
hard to explain in words.
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| Shallow Shark (D.Philpot) |
With a tide the
waves you get on a beach follow a cycle so you have 5 small waves followed by 2
larger waves coming up the beach for instance, correct? What the shark was
doing was coming closer to the beach sensing for fish (these sharks have
undeveloped vision) and with each set of the bigger waves it would swim right
in the surf where the waves were rolling back from the beach into the sea. The shark swam along the shoreline a couple
of metres where it was so shallow his pectoral (side) fins were sticking out of
the surf waves into the air above the sand of the beach. Now because I was amazed to be watching a
shark in the surf for about 20 minutes I eventually realised that it was using
my light as a guide so it kept repeating the same thing in a cycle, swimming in
a circle away from the beach with smaller waves and swimming towards the beach
getting ready to swim along the beach with the bigger waves, the whole time
staying more or less in my light - even if I kept it in one spot. I was so amazed that there were in fact TWO
baby Nurse Sharks :-)