• Day 062: Friday March 2nd

16:00 Said goodbye to Evergreen College today, which was a really sad departure and they also kindly left me a lovely handmade card:

Words Of Appreciation (D.Philpot)

DL, ML and I went down to the beach to look for signs of Leatherback Turtles as one of the students had found dried out carapaces/bodies of baby turtles in the strandline of debris on the beach. This student was doing an interesting project looking at seed diversity at the point where all the seaweed collects on the beach at high tide mark:

How Many Types Of Seed Do You Think Will Be On One Beach? (D.Philpot)

We found a couple more dried turtles looking about on the beach and then could make out where a body pit was likely to be so we dug up the nest before the tide came in to find a lot of egg casings as well as the odd unfortunate turtle that didn’t get a chance :-( There was also a Ctenosaur carcass nearby which we plan to boil up to obtain the skull, which I found strangely interesting… after all, the poor creature was no longer with us. 

DL and I tackled the ‘last’ of the inventory for now until I discovered bazillions of vicious Army Ants upon moving a parachute bag full of ropes in one of the air-conditioned labs.  We therefore took a break where we had literally a 2 hour battle with them, tossing all the bag contents up along the path and I was bitten fairly frequently half regretting that I moved that bag in the first place.  It literally came alive! You can make out some of the ants here (about 10% visible).

Army Ant Base Removal (D.Philpot)

 My laptop already seems to be on the brink of death, I hope it remains useable till August but if it fails there shouldn’t be too much of a significant loss as I backed everything up.

Later on we went for a snorkel even though the red tide conditions seem to be present once again, so it meant we saw a variety of things including: a Jeweled Moray, Green Turtle, a lot of Chancho Surgeonfish, schools of Azure Parrotfish, and a Porcupinefish to say the least - None of which I managed to get photos of, of course ¬¬

Mr Lobster Posing (D.Philpot)

Banded Wrasse Caught In The Spotlight (D.Philpot)

 Well… it seems my laptop is actually dead, which I have worked out means I have lost the data logger data only and so I am left with the message of ‘No operating system/drive found” which is therefore bad news.  Good news however is that I am confirmed to leave for Monte Verde tomorrow so really excited for that!

I spent a little of the evening contemplating at one of my favourite spots:

One Reason To Become Lost Here (D.Philpot)