September Research Days

I found myself a research assistant for several weeks in September and had a very research intensive few weeks traveling around the western coastal part of Ceara, meeting many new people, finding loads of seahorses, and exploring some of the most remote parts of the state. So this is my research assistant Tom, he's from Sao Paulo. I met him in August and he had some free time in September before traveling to Chile, and since he was interested in my research, I convinced him to tag along for a coastal adventure!

Our first stop Mundau. About 4.5 hours to the north-west of Fortaleza by bus, Mundau had ripping currents and an estuary only traversable by motor-powered boat. It was also surrounded by sand dunes, creating beautiful vistas.

This is Raimundo, local fisherman, our guide and attempted boat driver. So we get in Raimundo's boat, pictured above, and ride for about 5 minutes until the boat engine dies. The current is so strong, the boat starts floating backwards. I toss the anchor, but it's not long enough and we keep drifting backwards! Finally once we are back to where we started, the anchor catches and we try and flag down another boat to come and rescue us.

Here is the rescue boat. So after this disastrous start to research in Mundau, things calmed down and we went with Raimundo and his brother in this boat and sucessfully completed research for the next couple of days.

Oh look at my new little research assistant. and look at what he found!

In one spot we found 19 seahorses! The second highest number I've found in one day! How exciting!

We also met some nice fishermen in Mundau, who said this area is awesome for catching shrimp. Interesting way to go fishing huh?

Here is Tom pretending he is a fisherman bringing home the big catch, even though he's never been fishing before in his life!

From Mundau, we traveled by buggy (see next blog entry) to Itarema, where we managed to get an invitation to stay with the President of the Fishing Cooperative there and got the royal treatment! We also go to do some research and go on adventures with her kids!

Meet Renata and Sabrina my tour guides and the President of the Fishing Cooperative's kids. I'm actually headed back in a few weeks to do more research with them! We paddled our way around Porto dos Barcos, Itarema hunting for seahorses.....

we toured the 6 different beaches of Itarema....

had some fun with the camera....

Next Tom and I moved to Amofala, home of Project Tamar in Ceara and a place with no internet and no cell phone service.

We made use of Furioso the Kayak, even though he still has a hole; and we found more seahorses!

The tide was in the afternoon and we enjoyed many a sunset kayak while doing research in Amofala and in Torroes (estuary near Amofala). However in between Amofala and our next destination, Patos we had a few setbacks. Tom got sick with fever and stomach bugs and I learned that Patos was ridiculously hard to access and spent several days trying to organize transportation.

Welcome to Patos. This is the sigh you see when the road ends, beach, barraca (bar/restaurant) and an abandoned soccer field.

Patos was a 45 minute motor-bike ride away from Amofala and with the little bag of research supplies on the back was quite a hike to get to. Patos doesn't have much commercial activity going on. It's mostly fishermen....

with some oyester farming.

Patos looked like the middle of the desert and in conjunction with the water running through it was quite an image to behold.

We talked to some friendly fishermen who said that sometimes on a good tide they can catch 50 seahorses per day! Wowza! I didn't bother asking if they had permits, or if they knew seahorses were endangered, etc. And after doing research here, I'd believe them. There was tons of awesome habitat for seahorses in Patos. Although interestingly enough despite all this awesome habitat, we were only able to see 2 seahorses.....hmmm.....

Anyway our local guide for Amofala, Torroes and Patos was this awesome guy named Cal-B. He's a passionate environmentalist and the vice-president of the fishing cooperative where the woman from Itarema is president. We couldn't have done the research without him. So thanks for everything Cal-B!

Caiman Hunting and the Walk of Wild Pigs

so one of the first things we did on our trip to the Amazon was go Caiman hunting! Caiman aka a little crocodile (?) that lives in the Amazon. There are three different types...but I can only remember two...the black caiman and the spotted caiman. One is bigger than the other, but I can't remember which!

Anyway the one which we are all holding here is the smaller kind of Caiman. Although my forest freak out for today was not actually in the forest but was holding this little guy here. While I was holding him, he coughed, and I got freaked out, thinking I was choking him and I dropped him!

hmm...so dropping a caiman in the bottom of a small boat at night, perhaps not the wisest of ideas....but thankfully our fearless leader was able to scoop him back up.....

we continued our hunt for the caiman's and Ananji picked up this big guy!

Here you can see how lovely his nails or his fingers are.....

look into his deadly eyes....did you know caiman's have two eyelids? One for light and one for water?

oh my what big teeth you have! the better to eat you with my dear!!

Here Ananji is showing us his ear flaps...

Before returning our new buddy back to the water we also sexed the crocodile! Done by yours truly.....it wasn't my first time....basically you have to stick your finger into the crocodile's uh, hoo-hoo to determine it's sex.....I did this once upon a time ago way back in Mexico when I was first getting into marine biology....anyway the opportunity presented itself again and I can confirm, it was a boy!

So the scariest/ most adventurist/most interesting part of the trip for me, was not dropping the caiman in the boat at night, nor was it being surrounded by trees, but was a hike we did, which I like to call the hike of wild pigs. Dean and I went on an extra hike one day in the late afternoon, in hopes of seeing some wildlife. The first thing we saw very early into the walk was a newly shed snake skin, which our guide informed us belonged to a snake about 2 meters long (about 8 feet).....and what kind of snake was it.....um....I don't know.....insert scary snake name here....cobra....python....I don't know all snake names are scary to me....

So the guide starts walking slowly forward, clearly looking for this gi-normous snake and he informs us that is quite dangerous. We are proceeding cautiously along the path for about 5 more minutes....I would say adrenaline is elevated....I mean this snake could sneak up behind us and eat us in one bite! (or atleast in my mind it can.....)....then all of a sudden Ananji stops. Picture Jennie and I almost bumping into each other he stops so abruptly. We all listen intently. Now if you ask me what we heard, was the sound of a jungle cat rising from the sitting position, sniffing the air to find some prey, and making a low growling noise. However if you ask Jennie, she'll just say there was a rustle in the bushes. Next Ananji turns around and says, do you know how to climb trees? Now take a look at this tree....

and tell me if you can guess what my answer was.....

Anyway we listen quietly, not moving for the next few minutes and Ananji says we need to turn around, because he's afriad for our safety if we go any farther because we can't climb trees. Several minutes pass on our hike back to the boat and Ananji stops abruptly again to listen. Finally Jennie and I gather up the courage to ask what's out there. Ananji says wild pigs. There is a pack of 30-40 wild pigs feeding in the area. Jennie and I exchange dubious glances, wild pigs? This is why we can't continue our hike? Seriously? But we're not talking about Wilbur on the farm pack of pigs. We are talking about vicious, will destroy anything in their path, 1 foot long tusks type of wild pigs. Ananji sees our dubious looks and says they are one of the most dangerous animals in the Amazon; people get killed each year by wild pigs. So I found this google article about a new type of wild pig in the Amazon, and while they don't look scary, it does say you have to climb a tree to avoid them....

Anyway at this moment, adrenaline is rushing. We are walking back towards the giant snake skin, we are being hunted by a pack of wild pigs, my tree climbing abilities- I have just found out- appear to be lacking....and all I can think of is hunting pigs in the book Lord of the Flies. Needless to say we got back on the boat, all in one piece, without having to climb a tree. And nothing really happened, but in my mind that was the scariest, wildest adventure of our time in the Amazon!

The Crew, The Food, The Wildlife....

So this is the crew. Obviously the crew of friends that came together from far away places to have an adventure in the Amazon. The boat crew consisted of the captain (Vaudinho):

the cook (Cristavo, his name is written conveniently on his arm in case you forget):

and this is our fearless leader and guide: Ananji

The food was excellent, which was surprising to us.

On the boat we ate fresh fish almost every day.

and here's a photo of my favorite food item: Tapioca!

in Manaus, we went to a juicebar and tried lots of different type of juice. The best Acai and Cupuaçu.

The worst: Jeripapao (gross!)

after the eating and adventures for the day we did a lot of relaxing and soaking up the atmosphere......

we enjoyed many a lovely sunset......

and saw many a wild animal....

a wooly monkey? but not a spider monkey....and I'm pretty sure this wasn't a howler monkey....sigh....you know me with non-ocean animals....

ok so I know this blog is entitled the crew, the food and the wildlife. and I apologize for the lack of more wildlife pictures. but we saw lots of spiders, and forgive me but I hate looking at those photos so they are not included.....we saw lots of birds but sadly I can't tell you what any of them are.....and we saw lots of pink dolphins....but we never got a really good photo of one..... but we stopped in this one place and the water was so still and so calm, the trees were reflected perfectly in the water. it was amazing.

Amazonian Women

I had my first two friends from the states come and visit for almost 2 weeks. Our destination: The Amazon. And while it’s no big surprise that I had hesitations about a) wanting to go there, I mean it’s far away from the ocean, and b) if I would have fun being surrounded by trees the whole time, I was able to limit my forest freak outs to one per day and in the end was pleasantly surprised with the trip. (The look of the forest freak out below:)

First let me just say the Amazon is huge. It has many tributaries, which feed into it and little did I know in one spot it also has surfing! A place called Porrorroca, has at certain times of the month, the longest wave for surfers to ride. Surfers can ride for more than 20 minutes on a single wave in this part of the Amazon. Sadly, our itinerary did not include this spot, next time.

We boarded a houseboat in Manaus, and were pleasantly surprised to find out that we were the only ones scheduled for the week, therefore we had our own private cruising boat!!

Our first stop, a place called meeting of the waters, where two tributaries of the Amazon come together, but because of differences in temperature and current speeds the two rivers do not mix for about 15 miles. You can see each of the two rivers distinctly side by side, one a light brown color the other a dark blue brown color.

Next on the day 1 itinerary was a stop at the Lily Pad Pond. These Lilly Pads reminded me of the ones in fairy tales; they were so big and so green I could just imagine a frog jumping right off one and into my hand. If I kissed it would it turn into a Prince?

Next on our first day of the adventure, was Piranha Fishing! We used bamboo fishing rods andchopped up pieces of meat to fish for Piranhas in a tributary off the Amazon, while also seeing lots of birds.

Jen and Jennie were really good at spotting birds and me, well, I claim my marine biologist eyes couldn’t adjust to seeing non-salty wildlife. Weaver got really into the Piranha Fishing and within minutes had caught her first Piranha.

I struggled and first caught some algae and then finally caught a Piranha. And Jennie eventually, right before we left caught her very own little guy.

Aww Dean's cute little Piranha....isn't he vicious?

Other activities included on our trip in the Amazon, lots of kayaking and canoeing through flooded forests, hikes through the rainforest, caimon (crocodile) hunting and seeing lots of pink river dolphins! Once back on land, we took a few days to hike the waterfalls at Presidente Figueredo and then came back to Fortaleza to enjoy a few days at the beach! One nice side note, the bugs in the Amazon weren't bad at all. We spent most of our time on a smaller river that lacked sufficient oxygen for mosquitoes. So thankfully we kept the bug bites to a minimum! More photos of the Amazon and more stories in the next blog. BJS to both Dean and Weaver for venturing into the Amazon with a marine biologist with dendrophobia (fear of trees).