The End of a Great Trip

 

Our week in Puerto Penasco has come to an end, but what a week it was! We started the week with some surveys of intertidal habitats and tidepools, with each habitat having a unique community. We found a myriad of organisms at the sandy shore with rocky reef behind CEDO, including octopus, crabs, fish, sea urchins, sea stars, snails, and lots of sea hares. The rocky shore behind Vina del Mar also had a high abundance of organisms, including apricot sea slugs, nudibranchs, brittle stars, snapping shrimp, octopus, sea cucumbers, and crabs. The students enjoyed all of the habitats we visited, but I have a feeling the Cholla Bay mud/sandflat may have been their favorite. It had considerably less hard substrate, but the animals took advantage of the hiding places that were there. We found a lot of crabs, octopus, clams, and hermit crabs, and even some penaeid shrimp, gorgonians, and a flounder. 

The sandy shore and rocky reef habitat behind CEDO. 


Students tidepooling at the rocky shore habitat. 


Dr. Bennett teaching the students at the Cholla Bay sand/mudflat.


Paloma (CEDO biologist) toured us around the CEDO facilities and showed us some of the endangered freshwater species they help recover. The biologists at CEDO gave some very interesting presentations while we were there. We learned about the natural history of Puerto Penasco, the Sea of Cortez, and marine mammals including the critically endangered vaquita. We also had the opportunity to kayak the Morua Estuary and learn more about it from David (CEDO biologist).  David also took us around Las Conchas to help with osprey surveys. We located the nests and then recorded the number of osprey (adults and juveniles) and activity at the nests. 


Kayaking the Morua Estuary with CEDO biologist David.


Helping with osprey nest surveys on Las Conchas. 


The highlight of our trip was a boat trip to Isla San Jorge, or "Bird Island". It was around a 3 hour trip to the island, and we saw some seabirds, including blue footed and brown boobies. The island is covered in urates from the shorebirds, which gives it the white coloration, and it is surrounded in sea lions. As we snorkeled and dove around the island, sea lions approached us and even nibbled on our fins. The trip also included a sighting of a whale shark, the largest fish in the ocean. A few of us jumped into the water with our SCUBA gear and got an up-close look at the sub-adult whale shark that was around 25ft in length. 


Isla San Jorge. 


The whale shark we saw on our boat trip. 



The group in downtown Puerto Penasco. 



Overall, it was a great trip with lots of field experiences, (mostly) good food, and fun! I hope everyone had as much fun as I did and came away with an appreciation for the marine environment. 

-Whitney


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Muddy Flats (Maribel)

Image
  On our fourth day here we went down to Choya Bay. I really enjoyed this exploration and the zone was by far my favorite environment to explore. It was still an intertidal zone, but the difference here was that much of the land was muddy. There many water and air sockets scattered alongside the terrain. Essentially we were exploring the bay at low tide, which was a large vast exposed area of muddy intertidal zones. It was very surprising to see the amount of life, and how they are able to survive under extreme conditions. We found a lot of snails, octopus, crustaceans, and my favorite, sand dollars. The challenges of many intertidal area are desiccation, or water loss, which causes many organism to station in small tide polls if available until the tide is high again. The temperature changes can be extreme, the salinity changes, there is interrupted feeding, limited space, and oxygen availability and build up of CO2 is limited at low tide. Regardless, the organisms of this terrain hav
Read more

Serenity- FYI

Image
  For Your   Information Or Fireworms Yare super Inot the move This is a PSA that I feel strongly about! If you go tide-pooling at any beach, watch out for these guys (pictured in red worm). Sometimes called a bristleworm, these friends will shoot out little bristles like a porcupine mixed with a desert tarantula’s leg hair mixed with a worm. They look soft, but those white marks on the edge are razor sharp and will lodge themself in the flesh of whoever winds up being their unlucky victim. Then, the excess of the “hair” breaks off, leaving the residue in the skin. The skin generally becomes extremely irritated, in some cases developing a rash. Because the hairs are small and clear, it’s difficult to pull them out with tweezers, and unsanitary to pull them out with tape. The best thing to do is to wear gloves and water shoes and stay away. The second best thing to clean the area well, rinse in hot water for 15 minutes, wash in vinegar, and to wait.  Fortunately, there’s some hares in t
Read more