Packed Like Sardines

Hola!

Though I have been taunting many of you with the fact that I am living on the beach while you're digging yourself out of the snow, let me let you in on a little secret: the beach I can see from my window would make most of you cringe and none of you reach for a bathing suit and towel.

We cannot swim at the beach directly adjacent to the center--it is contaminated by effluent from the cannery, and is covered in a thick layer of algae (sea lettuce, or ulva lactuca for those of you who care about these things) that has taken over the beach because of excess nutrients emitted in that effluent. It smells of dead fish, and due to the number of fishermen using this point as a launching point, is home to significant numbers of dead fish, stingrays, and other bycatch. The cannery is not permitted, under Mexican law, to dump any waste directly into the bay, and it has an expensive chemical filtration system that is supposed to purify the water up to 95%. However, the system is expensive, and the only times the company uses it is when the inspector is coming. Somehow they always know when the inspector is coming, and can then turn on the system and pass inspection. 

The system was on when we had a  tour of the cannery, possibly because we were coming through, but none of us was comforted by the cannery's gesture towards environmental resposiblity. What is essentially a large, round, slowly turning strainer spins over a large concrete pool, removing large peices of fish (or who knows what else) from the dark brown water cascading to the pool amidst a pile of tan foam. This water is then pumped  into a large holding tank before being piped into the filtration system. In a large stainless steel vat, chemicals cause the fats in the water, which still contains fish viscera and who knows what else, to float to the top in a dirty goop. Paddles skim this fatty foam off the top of the vat, pushing it to a collector to be taken to the dump. The water leaving this is still the color of iced tea and is piped directly into the bay on a daily basis. 

Those of you who are very attached to sardines or tuna may not want to continue reading this article. Though our tour of the CalMex cannery in Puerto San Carlos was almost two weeks ago, my memories of the experience are still vivid, and we witness (and smell) the effects of the cannery  on the surrounding environment on a daily basis. The CalMex cannery provides jobs for about 25% of the town and has been a significant part of the local economy since it opened in 1969. 

Our tour began on a Monday morning, when the smell of dead fish had not get began to drift towards campus on the wind. We walked through a parking lot and down a narrow road between the docks and the actual plant, weaving around machinery and men working as we went. It is sardine season, which means that tons (literally) of sardines are brought directly from the boats and dumped into holding containers that let a steady stream of fish onto conveyor belts below. 

At the first stop, two rows of women working on either side of the belt take the whole fish and line them up in notches along the outside of the conveyor belts. Their hands worked fast, the sound of machines leaving no real opportunity for talking or communicating while doing the automatic work of lining up fish to be beheaded. The conveyor belt brought the neatly lined up fish to a point where their heads and entrails were removed automatically. The exact mechanism used to do this was not visible from outside the machine, but a concrete channel underneath rushed with water, carrying away what had been removed. 

In the subsequent steps, the fish were packed about 10 to a can by women working equally quickly and silently as the first group. Men put still open cans of whole fish onto large trays and carry them to the ovens, which they take 25 (45?) minutes to move through. When different men remove the trays from the other end, the fish are cooked and ready for the sauce to be put on. The same machine that fills the cans with sauce seals the lids and moves them to a pool of water where they wait to be sterilized in giant autoclaves. (Which use high heats and high pressure to kill of any bacteria inside or outside the can.) 

The tuna cannery was not operational, as it's not tuna season, but we were also able to see where fish meal used in agricultural feed and pet food is made. Past the waste treatment system described above is another cement pit, this one full of fish that did not make the cut for canning. A huge pile, pecked at by  few pathetic looking pelicans, also contains fish entrails, heads, and who knows what else. When the fish meal is being made, this whole mixture is ground up and baked until it is a fine brown powder. It is this process that creates the rank smell that drifts over our campus every afternoon. 

I promise that a less graphic post about whales and research and without even a hint of my environmental food dork bias will come very soon. I'm spending the day tomorrow with 5 and 6 year old brothers and their wonderful grandfather, who comprise my host family for the weekend, so I'm sure I will have lots of stories!

Love and LOTS of hugs, 

Emma

Aquí estan las Tortugas!

Hola!

This week was our first camping trip, a turtle monitoring trip to Banderitas, an estero north of Puerto San Carlos in Bahía Magdalena. (An estero is like an estuary, but without a freshwater input.) Half the group took the boats to the campsite; I rode in the van, though only half of our route had a road. Off-roading in a 15 passenger van loaded with camping gear is quite an experience, though not for those with weak stomachs...

Our campsite was beautiful, on the dunes, perched above the ocean; the desert reached down to the water, with only a narrow band of mangroves acting as a transition zone.

Sea turtles, as you may remember from Finding Nemo, live a very long time (>100 years!) Age is determined based on carapace (shell) length, and they're not considered adults until they have reached about 75 cm (about 2.5 feet). At a growth rate of ~2 cm/ year, turtles do not reach maturity until they are in their 30's. As juveniles, they live in bays like Bahía Magdalena and feed on sea grasses and algae for 20-30 years. For years, SFS has been monitoring the sea turtle population in the area, working with other organizations and research institutions in Baja to gather as much data as possible for the species. The more we know, the better we will be able to protect the species and their habitat, which is threatened by by-catch in fisheries (see post about J. Nichols' work with Grupo Turtugero) and illegal poaching.

In order to monitor the turtles, we set up nets to catch them. We then measure, weigh, and take a small skin sample from them, note any identifying characteristics, and photograph them before tagging their back flippers with a small metal tag containing a unique number. Tagging allows us to measure turtle growth over time and see how long the turtles stay in the bay. The tags go through the back flippers, and are no more intrusive or painful than an ear piercing. Basically, they are a piercing. Often, SFS will also be given the tags of turtles that have been killed, which is sad but also gives us information about the turtles.  On this trip, the nets were set up for 12 hours--from 6-ish pm to 6:30ish am, and checked every two hours to make sure that the turtles don't drown or hurt themselves.  In small, sleepy groups, we left camp for 4 hour shifts throughout the night: from 8-midnight, midnight-4am, and 4-6:30am.

Though the hours sound grueling, the monitoring shifts were a lot of fun. My first shift was 8-midnight on the first night. The 4 of us on that shift tore ourselves away from the warmth of the campfire and an upcoming game of mafia, the taste of s'mores still fresh on our taste buds, and boarded one of the boats with one of our professors, a research intern, and a panguero, the local boat drivers who work for SFS and know the area incredibly well.  Chilaco, the panguero, guided the boat slowly in the dark as we sat there, excited. Two nets were set up across the estero, and we pulled them in, slowly and carefully, as soon as we found them. In the first two hours they had been up, the first net only caught 2 sting rays. The first fell out of the net with a little help from Chilaco, but the second was much more tangled, and needed to be cut out of the net. We had to put him in the bottom of the boat until the nets were pulled in so that he wouldn't get hurt or hurt any of us. It was tough to watch, but he ended up being OK.

The next net was more successful--we caught our first 2 turtles! We pulled them out of the water and put them at the bottom of the boat, between the bench seats. Once our turtles were safely in the boat, the ray released, and the nets reset, we had an hour and a half to spend in the boats before we could check the nets again. As it was only 9:00, none of us were tired, and we spent the hour talking about bio, ecology, turtles, and other less dorky things. We looked at the stars, which were as clear as I've ever seen them, we found the big dipper and made up our own constellations. At some point we designated the boat the "Spanish panga"--the first person who spoke English was going to be thrown overboard. It was fun, relaxing, and exciting. The two turtles sleeping and occasionally moving around in the bottom of the boat were a constant reminder of what were out there to do.

The second check brought one more turtle, and we hung out some more until the next group came for the 12-4 shift. The bow of the boat is a very comfortable place to nap. The next morning, we got up to measure the 5 turtles that had been captured overnight. Working with the turtles was amazing. I've seen turtles before, but the closest I'd ever gotten before (aside from Myrtle the Turtle at the Aquarium) was when Rebecca and I followed one around Salt Pond Bay on St. John at some point during high school. Up close, they're beautiful and SO cool to work with.

After they were measured, tagged, and photographed, it was time to release them. This was the moment we'd all been waiting for, the moment we'd been told we'd get to ride the turtles! There were 5 turtles and 16 eager students, so a lottery was held to see who got to release these 5. To my surprise, I was one of the 5 winners! We scrambled into our bathing suits and ran down to the beach to choose our turtles. We each carried our turtle into the water. The sand sloped down steeply, so the water got deep only a few feet off the beach. As soon as the turtles realized that they were back in the water and were free to go, they took off, their powerful flippers pulling them away from us. All we had to do was hold on, and they pulled us for a few exhilarating feet. Yeah, it was short, but have YOU ever ridden a turtle?

The next night, I was one of 4 to volunteer for the 4am-6:30am shift. Three of us who were on that shift sat by the campfire until 12:30, talking to some students from a university in La Paz, an Ecuadorian born in the Galapagos, and a guy from Columbia, both working on turtle research and conservation as well, then pulled ourselves out of bed at 3:30 to get in the boats. The second shift was as amazing as the first--1 ray, 1 turtle, 1 beautiful sunrise. We got back to camp with half an hour before everyone else woke up, so we walked down the beach, got first dibs on the cereal, and enjoyed the cool, fresh, morning air. The next 5 turtles were as wonderful to work with as the first. We let them release themselves, pulling themselves slowly down the beach with their front flippers until they hit the water. Once they were submerged in the water, their natural grace came through and they flew off through the water, free, with only small silver tags to show for their experiences.

Check out the Picasa album for photos of the whole trip, including lots of turtles and class/a walk through the desert. I also took a series of photos of the turtles who released themselves, which if you scroll through fast enough kind of looks like a flip book. It's towards the end of the album if you want to see it.  It's pretty sweet. http://picasaweb.google.com/Emma.RachelKanji/BanderitasCampingTripSeaTurtles#

Amor y Abrazos! (love and hugs)

~Emma

P.S. I banned myself from facebook until I decide to unban myself. I'm still on skype all the time and have to check my e-mail for school stuff. I still want to hear from everyone, but I'm going to see if I can do it without facebook. At least until there are interesting pictures that I need to tag people in...

Language Exchange

Hola a todos!

Dia de San Valentino feliz! [Happy Valentines day, for those of you who are more spanishally challenged than others.]

Tuesday will mark the beginning of our third week here, though it feels like we've been here much, much longer. It's strange to think that 2 weeks ago today I was rummaging through REI's garage sale and procrastinating packing on a cold January day in Boston.

It's been interesting stumbling around with my Spanish. When I have time to think and translate everything I want to say, I can work it out in my head pretty well and come up with something close to correct. But when I actually need to use my Spanish, I almost never have the luxury of a minute or two to work out my sentences. Instead, I stumble through and use a lot of sign language and Spanglish. It's definitely getting easier with practice, but as soon as I stop thinking about every word and things start to flow better, it starts coming out in Hebrew.

On Friday morning, we did a trash clean up in town. The streets of Puerto San Carlos are lined with trash--plastic bottles and bags, cigarette butts, half eaten lollipops, bits and pieces of unidentifiable broken plastic, foam, or other material, and in preparation for the whale festival in march, we do weekly clean ups of town. As we walked down the streets with our garbage bags, a man sweeping out his coffee shop asked us if we spoke Spanish. We gave him our standard response: un poquito ("a little") and he began asking us when the English classes that SFS runs were going to be happening this semester. We didn't know,and were looking for one of the people who would know. As we were explaining this to the man in Spanish, I thought we were doing pretty well. As we looked, I tried to explain that we were "buscamos a alguien que..." (we're looking for someone who...) and as I paused to figure out how to say "knows when the classes are," he interjected with "who speaks Spanish?" ... oh well, we tried. We found someone who knew the answer to his questions, and went along our trash cleaning way.

Later in the day, we went to a technical school in Ciudad Constitucion, which is the closest city (about an hour away from Puerto San Carlos) and had a "language exchange" with English students there. It was SO much fun! Basically, we sat in little groups (one of us to 3ish of them) and spoke Spanglish. We attempted to speak Spanish to them and they attempted to speak English to us. They ranged in age from 13-21 (ish) and though their English was definitely a lot better than our Spanish, I think we all came out of it better off.

It was fun trying to explain where Maine is (above Florida, close to Canada but not in Canada) and talking about American movies, actors, and TV shows with them. I got to talk to 4 different groups, which was really cool. Each of the groups had a different feel and talked about different things. We talked about siblings, travelling, our best friends' names (they kept wanting me to point out my "mejor amigos" and were sad for me that all of them are in Maine...), what we do for fun, and lots of other things. A group of 14-16 year old girls that reminded me of my sister wanted to know why I don't have a boyfriend, a group of boys was shocked that I have never been to Disneyland or Disneyworld and that I didn't really have a favorite soccer team, but I explained ultimate Frisbee (or at least, I tried to) and we had fun talking about baseball and the World Series. They wanted to know about snow (I told them about how my friends at home like picking me up and throwing me into it, which they found very entertaining) and I wanted to know what their favorite thing about Baja is.

Though we live in very different places and lead very different lives, getting to know these kids was pretty much the same as getting to know any other kids back home. We giggled over our language mistakes, made jokes, talked about things we had in common and asked what we were curious about in each others lives. For some reason, a lot of people get this idea that people in different places are different, but I don´t think that´s true. Yeah, we've had different experiences, hold different points of view, religious beliefs, and are parts of very different cultures, but at the heart of it, kids are kids and people are people, and I'm pretty sure that any two people, anywhere, could find something in common, something to talk about if they just took the time to look.

Next week we're off on a turtle monitoring camping trip from Tuesday-Thursday, which I am SO excited for. I can't wait! It may involve riding a turtle! More on that later, and more photos on Picasa as soon as the wireless works again.

Love and hugs!
Emma

On Being an Ecology Dork

Hola! 

After a relaxing day off at the beach, I go back to class tomorrow. Classes are great so far--they're wonderfully interconnected, hands on, and all really relevant to what I'm interested in and what makes me happy. 

The 4 classes I'm getting credit for this semester are Coastal Ecology and Conservation, Principles of Resource Management, Economics and Ethics of Sustainable Development, and a directed research project that we'll start soon. 

We had our first field lectures for the ecology and management classes on Saturday (yeah 6 day a week classes!) in a mangrove forest that has been repeatedly destroyed for the construction and maintenance of a pipe that brings fuel from the docks to a power plant nearby. We first spoke about mangrove ecosystems, adaptations, ecosystem services provided by mangroves, and threats to mangroves. Then we explored the area to identify black, white, and red mangroves. The exploration was followed by a lecture about possible ways to evaluate the health and recovery of a mangrove ecosystem and ways to work with governments and other parties to protect mangroves. 

It is amazing how much easier it is to absorb information when you are immersed in it.  Hearing about the different ways to tell mangrove species apart, or talking about the different ways they get excess salt out of their systems is one thing, but exploring and touching the mangroves is a whole other thing. It just sticks better. Looking at photos of mangrove trees is one thing, taking them is a whole other picture. [No pun intended. See picasa for my mangrove pictures. http://picasaweb.google.com/Emma.RachelKanji] This is why I love ecology so much. It's thrilling to look around and be able to understand the way the various pieces of world around you fit together and see the cycles and pathways that connect everything. 

We also saw our first whales on Thursday, on our way home from a swim test in the mangroves. We saw them spouting water and the next thing we knew, we were surrounded by 5 or more whales--including a calf. It was so exciting--it felt like we had finally reached the moment we'd been waiting for, sitting in boats in the middle of Bahía Magdalena, not 10 feet away from these huge, mysterious animals. For some, it was the first time seeing whales. For me, it was a different experience than any I have ever had on a whale watching trip. I can't wait to work with them, to see them all the time and learn from them. 

This is the most excited I have ever been about my academic situation. Though I've loved many of my classes at Colby, this new environment is just what I needed. I know I will learn SO much this semester, then be ready to get back to Waterville and apply it my senior year and into the future. We are all so passionate about what we're doing here, and it's contagious--our enthusiasm builds off of eachother and we all are so engaged in what we're doing. 

On that note, I should probably go finish my homework...

(Yeah, I haven't changed THAT much.) 

Love and hugs!
~Emma

P.S. I'm updating my picasa albums almost daily. http://picasaweb.google.com/Emma.RachelKanji, click on whatever album looks newest, most interesting, prettiest, whatever. Enjoy!

An Ocean Revolution (and intro to Puerto San Carlos)

We started exploring town yesterday, which was a lot to take in at once, but really great. I need to use my spanish more, and then it'll start coming back, I hope. Puerto San Carlos is tiny, which means that 16 americans are very noticeable, but the center has done a good job of keeping good relationships with people in the town. It's not perfect by any means, but it's improving all the time and there are a bunch of people in town who we know we can go to whenever we need something, want to practice our spanish, need some help, or whatever. There are a bunch of opportunities to do environmental ed, teach english classes, help with recycling, or lots of other things with the town, so i'm planning on doing a lot of that. There are apparently thousands of people coming to PSC in a couple of weeks for a whale festival, which should be really cool--we get to do a bunch of environmental ed there too. 

Parts of the town are REALLY poor (as opposed to the rest, which is just pretty poor), and the whole place is really undeveloped, so it's kind of hard walking around knowing that most of these people have a whole family living in a house smaller than the foss 6-man. It's hard not to feel really separate from the community, which I'm hoping I'll be able to work on by getting as involved as I can and meeting lots of people.

Today we had our first lecture, which was also our first guest lecture. It was from Wallace J. Nichols [www.wallacejnichols.org], who basically started turtle conservation in Baja and across the world [www.grupoturtuguero.org]. He spoke about the trouble our oceans are in, stemming from 3 main problems: 

Too Much In: huge volumes of plastics floating in the ocean in what have been named garbage patches, the effects of global warming on our oceans, the effects of sound pollution from fishing, ships, sonar, and more on marine animals, agricultural runoff, erosion, dead zones... Basically, everything ends up in the ocean at some point. 41% of the ocean is "highly impacted" by human activity, and pretty much nowhere is unaffected.  

Too Much Out: We're overfishing our oceans, and doing it in unsustainable ways. Fishing used to be powered by humans using natural, biodegradable materials to harvest fish for thier own consumption. Now its dependent on gasoline and plastics, and most ocean species are being "eaten into oblivion." Huge numbers of animals are killed as bycatch every year, with the larger animals, the top predators, being killed first and most often. In shrimp fisheries, 90% of what's caught is often bycatch--stuff that isn't shrimp that's ususally shovelled overboard, already dead. 40% bycatch is considered "clean" for a shrimp catch. Much of the bycatch ismade up of turtles, sharkes, large fish, and other things that need protection. [www.shrimpsuck.org].

  

Destruction of the Edge: High levels of coastal development, shoreline fish and shrimp farms that destroy mangroves, erosion, and so much more are destroying the vital edge habitats of the ocean. (Has anyone seen those islands Dubai is building on thier shoreline?)

The thing that was so amazing about J.'s talk was that he spent the whole second hour talking about what we can do about it. Most simply, we need to put less in, take less out, and protect the edge. He's started a bunch of organizations and done a ton of amazing work. One of his organizations, which is kind of the big one that the other ones come off of, is called Ocean Revolution [www.oceanrevolution.org] The three main things that are required for an ocean revolution are this: 

Unprecedented Knowledge: this is where the science comes in. The ocean was once thought of as inpenetrable, mysterious, and boundless. We now know better, and the more information we can gather about the ocean, the better we'll be able to protect it. New technologies are allowing us to study the ocean and marine life in more in depth ways (literally and figuratively) than ever before. We saw video from "crittercams" mounted on the backs of turtles and penguins (!!)  that gave new insight into the life and feeding patterns of these animals. We heard about the first sea turtle ever tracked electronically, with a transmitter on her back. She was released off the coast of Baja in 1996, and was tracked via a website that J Nichols and his collegues set up by scientists, kids and thier teachers, and animal lovers with internet access worldwide. This stuff gets me excited! That first turtle made the trek from Baja to Japan in just over a year, which changed forever previous understandings of turtle and marine animal behavior. One of the important things about science, which J pointed out, is that you have to be ready for your ideas to be totally wrong--that just means that science is working. 

Global network of activists: we have easy access to more people in more ways now than we ever have had before. (Excellent example: sitting in a town in Middle of Nowhere, Mexico, with wireless internet, updating all of you in the snowy north of my every day activities with the repeated pressing of a few buttons.) This makes it easy to build huge networks of communities, scientists, social scientists, and activists from all over the world, who can work together to create real change. Using the power of community and grassroots organizing!

Creative communication: this one is very connected to the last one, but think about how effective a great website, some flashy stickers and posters, and mass facebook groups, e-mail lists, blogs are. There are now many talented artists, graphic designers, musicians, and more, who are devoting thier talents to creating social change. 

Some of the take-home messages were this:

Build social networks and communicate with spirit, innovation, creativity, and love for the world around you and for what you are doing.  Lots of things seem impossible, but aren't. Don't let anyone stop you. 

 I loved hearing all of this from a scientist, a man who devotes his life to (successfully) saving a group of species and using science to do it. I hope that in 20 years, I'll be able to look back and say that I took these lessons and used them, and that I have been able to make real change with them. 

We all walked away from that lecture so inspired and excited, armed with stickers and postcards, along with a long list of websites (see below), and the knowledge that we get to apply what we just learned in that lecture immediately. We have the next three months to do it. 

Don't get used to these daily posts--for now we have a LOT of spare time, and everything is so exciting that we all walk around going "Oooooh I have to go put this in my blog," but I'm sure that as time goes on, we're going to be much busier, with papers, camping and turtle monitoring trips, and things in the community. For now though, check often, comment, and I'm going to go to my first "official" class now. 

Love and hugs!
~Emma

Bienvenido a Mexico!

I'm here!

After leaving Boston midday on Sunday, I finally arrived here at the Center for Coastal Studies at midday today, Tuesday. We stayed at a hotel in La Paz last night (see photo) so that we could rest and get to know eachother a bit before the 3 hour drive across the peninsula to Puerto San Carlos. 

The drive was long, but went through very interesting desert landscapes. See the picasa album for pictures. 

The center is beautiful, with lots of hammocks (see photo), very fine sand that's incredibly soft. I'm sure that some of you will be able to feel it as it pours out of everything I own when I get back home. Each cabin has 4 sections, each with two levels. The top level of each is a bed, below which we each have a desk space and shelves. It's great--we have our own space, which is nice. 

So far, we've just had some basic orientation things. Risk management, policies, etc. Fascinating stuff, really. Classes start next week, which I'm really excited for. Everyone we've met has been great. The weather is also pretty perfect--"skin temperature," pretty dry, but not too dry, cool enough at night that I get to cuddle up into my sweatshirt and sleeping bag and be comfortable.

I'm excited and a bit nervous to start getting involved with the local community. My spanish is kind of failing me-I know I know it, but it's all a bit fuzzy at the moment as I'm adjusting. Our Student Affairs Manager, Brady, told us that students studying abroad have the local and cultural knowledge of about a 5-year-old when we arrive, and I feel like that's pretty accurate. It's kind of intimidating being so clearly an outsider in a tiny little town. We have a homestay for a couple of days in a few weeks, which should help. Hopefully I'll at least reach double-digits by the time I leave. We have a lot of interaction with the community, so I'm optimistic that that'll all change with time. Especially as I start getting more confident with my spanish. 

At this point, I'm keeping myself busy getting to know my group. There are 16 of us--15 girls and 1 guy--on the program, almost all from up and down the northeast and midatlantic states. I think we're all going to get along really well. We watched Finding Nemo on a projector set up outside today. It was pretty sweet. (The AMS quad projector set-up definitely has competition.) 

I can't wait to find some whales and turtles, and get classes started, and to explore the local community. More stories, and photos, as they happen. 

Photos so far are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/Emma.RachelKanji/BienvenidoAMexico#

I promise there won't be this many from every day.... 

Love and miss you all, and a tiny little part of me is jealous of the snow you're all getting at the moment. (But only a tiny little bit.)

Adios!

Emma