What’s A Whale Fall?

(Feb 6, 2016) View of horizon at the top of Irazú.

First images of creatures from Antarctic depths revealed

Photos by Christian Åslund / Greenpeace

Marine Life of the Maritime Provinces, Canada

After months of work and waiting, here is at long last the full MARS commission. MARS (Marine Animal Response Society) is active in the Maritime Provinces of Canada, and is called upon whenever a marine creature is found dead or in distress. These illustrations will be used to educate their volunteers and assist in making species identifications during strandings or at sea.

With 42 separate illustrations, this is my largest project to date - quite a load of work! But it was an absolute pleasure to do. I got to paint animals I have never painted before, as well as revisit some old friends. The diversity of species found in this one area is impressive and made for varied painting.

I’m pretty pleased seeing them all together like this, and I hope you’ll enjoy them too! 

Very cool. My lab group also works with Emiliania huxleyi and EhVs.

(Feb 6, 2016) Photos from Volcano Irazú in Costa Rica.

Semana Santa

Tortuguero

Puerto Viejo

Beach

Other exchange students

This past week was Semana Santa, so in other words, it was spring break for us. Everyone in our program (there are 14 IFSA students in Costa Rica for the semester and two more that are in their second semester here) had travel plans. A few people went to places alone, one group traveled outside of Costa Rica, and I went with a group to Tortuguero and Puerto Viejo. There were six of us total, and the initial trip to Tortuguero lasted half a day.  

It concluded with a one hour boat ride to Tortuguero, which speaks to how secluded and isolated it is. The main road is a large sidewalk and there were no cars. The beach was never crowded, although the ocean was too rough to swim in. After a few days, I recognized people as we walked around the town. Tuesday morning, I unfortunately woke up with a headache due to a lack of food the day before. So I missed the beach day by trying to sleep it off, but after lunch, everyone else wanted to take a nap. Since I was feeling better, I decided to go to the beach alone (which was less than five minutes from the hotel- and it took less than 10 minutes to get from one shoreline to the other). It was so relaxing since there were not many people and at one point, a dog decided to hang out with me for five minutes. On Wednesday, we went on a canoe tour in el Parque Nacional de Tortuguero. We saw lots of birds and a two different points, we were a few feet away from caimans.  

We left Tortuguero Thursday morning and spent half the day traveling to Puerto Viejo. Puerto Viejo was basically the opposite of Tortuguero as far as tourist destinations go. Tortuguero was secluded, very little people (even though there were tourists), no cars. Puerto Viejo was crowded and is a popular destination for Semana Santa. And while I think the beach in Tortuguero was more beautiful than any in Puerto Viejo, the ocean was nicer in Puerto Viejo because it was relatively easy to find a good place to swim.  

Now, going into the trip, I thought that our group was probably relatively cohesive. But as in all groups (even small ones) there were tensions that slowly got worse as the week went on. First, let me give a little context. Out of the 14 of us, there are very clear tensions in the group. It is easy to tell who does not get along with someone else. Lines and groups formed relatively quickly since we spent so much time together in the beginning. But for Semana Santa, it seemed that the two main groups had divided. However, even within ours, there was tension. It was mainly little stuff that slowly increased as the week went on, but the important thing is that it did not prevent anyone from enjoying themselves on the trip.  

This is also kind of a teachable moment as well. Some people think that when they go abroad, they will meet and become great friends with awesome people. While this is not necessarily wrong, I think it is important to realize that just because you are abroad, it doesn't mean that people will leave stuff that leads to social problems and tensions in the U.S. My advice? Don't force friendships, especially if you don't make friends right away anyways, like me. Be yourself and focus on enjoying your time during this awesome experience. Chances are you will develop friendships and they will be natural ones since you have not forced anything (this is what I have done, and I have become friends with other IFSA students). And if you don’t, that's okay too. Remember, you only have a few months to take in as much of another country as possible and that may mean you don't have enough time to develop very strong friendships. And instead of trying to build friendships with other exchange students, try to build relationships with your host family and with native students. They are the ones who can really show you what their country has to offer.

Phot by Jero Prieto

To post about the miniature melo (Micromelo undatus) may seem a bit odd, as it is not a nudibranch but a closely-related sea snail! Its thinly-calcified shell is easily seen covering half of its back and is patterned with dazzling brown-red lines, a stark contrast to the blue, white-spotted body below. It lives in many tropic waters, whether that be Japan or Florida, and reaches about 3cm in length. It eats polychaete worms, and uses their toxins as its own.

Trip to the Osa Pennisula

Trip

Rocks

Mangrove

Stolen

On Friday at around 5:50 am., we left for our first IFSA-Butler organized trip. The bus drive was hours long, but we made stops for breakfast and to see indigenous artifacts. We stopped at the Parque de las Esferas. Here, we saw large spherical rocks that were shaped by Costa Rica’s indigenous peoples hundreds and thousands of years ago. They shaped the rocks by placing them in streams or rivers and used smalls rocks of different shapes to hit them. They were used to make maps of the stars, commerce, and many other things. Unsurprisingly, over the years many myths have been created about their origins and purposes. Some people say that they were made by UFOs or gods.

Later after lunch, we got a boat tour of the Térraba-Sierpe Mangrove, the largest mangrove in Costa Rica. We saw many species of birds: Baltimore Orioles, turkey buzzards, woodpeckers, various species of herons, and many more as well as more wildlife like a Jesus lizard (but we did not see it walk on water as it was on a tree branch) and different species of mangroves such as the red and black mangroves. After about an hour and a half boat ride, we got to the resort called the Corcovado Adventure Tent Camp. After we were settled in, we went to the beach for a little bit. After dinner, we were told to go back to our tents and make sure that everything was still there. All of my stuff was still in our tent, but when I returned to the central pavilion, I learned that the guys in the tent next to ours had both of their bags stolen, including a wallet, a laptop, an EpiPen, and most of their clothing. After about 45 minutes, a group of us went on a night walk that lasted about an hour. When we returned, Rodney, our program director, had an announcement to make. He decided that since one of the thing’s stolen was an EpiPen for an allergy to bees and the student did not have another one with him, we would leave on Saturday right away breakfast, instead of continuing with the rest of the trip as planned and returning to Heredia Sunday night. On our way home Saturday, we stopped at a bridge over el río Tárcoles to look at the crocodiles that gather in the river below.