EcoClub 3: Birds with a Side of Ham-and-Cheese Sandwiches

This Friday we took EcoClub on a special field trip to the Jocotoco Bird Reserve in Ayampe. It was a blast hiking through the dry tropical forest and playing in nature with fourteen elementary and middle school kids. 

We learned about the Esmeraldas Woodstar, the world’s second smallest hummingbird and the reserve’s most famous resident. We debated the colors and diets of numerous birds, pondered the absence of panda bears despite the plethora of bamboo, and consumed 40 ham-and-cheese sandwiches.

On the way back, we detoured through the nearly-dry Ayampe River where we chased fish and examine tadpoles in a plastic cup. It was a great day for environmental education and plain old fun in nature!

Setting off.

Trying out the equipment.

Our first spotting, a gallinazo negro, black vulture.

New birds and new friends.

The ever-present soaring frigatebird.

Many of the town's adults joined us and had a great time.

The volunteers got a little silly, too.

We watched wildflowers when we couldn't find birds.

A young EcoClubber models a painted Jocotoco bird sign.

This independent birder, Rene, showed off his book to a couple boys...

... and soon was entertaining a mob!

The one hummingbird we didn't frighten away with our noise.

A tadpole to bring home to Mom and Dad.

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EcoClub 2: Kids, Turtles and the Race to the Sea

Today we took the kids to Playita for a special Sunday EcoClub. We were planning to excavate three nests, and I thought it would be cool for the kids to see the dead fetuses and the bacteria and fungus inside the unhatched eggs. In fact, the kids got to see so much more!

All three nests erupted with healthy hatchlings as soon as we started digging with our hands.

Excavating the first hawksbill nest by hand.

We began handing the kids baby hawksbills by the handful.

The first baby hawksbill to emerge.

After measuring the first ten hatchlings from each nest, we asked the kids to line up the turtles high on the sandy beach. The kids were eager to plop the baby turtles straight into the water, but we explained how each baby turtle needs to make its own way to the ocean so that in fifty years, when it is ready to make its own nest, it will be able to find this exact beach.

On your mark, get set.... let those turtles GO!

The kids “raced” their turtles and picked favorites, though it was more of a slow-motion struggle than a race. Everyone cheered when a turtle was finally carried away by a high-reaching wave, and moaned when a wave pushed a turtle even farther from the ocean or flipped it onto its back.

It is a long journey for the little turtles. First, they must break out of their eggs and dig through a foot of sand. Normally the turtles hatch at the same time an escape through the collective digging effort, but late-bloomers are often left to die under the weight of the sand.

Once on the surface, the turtles can be dehydrated by the sun or burned to death by the sand. They can be picked off by birds or crabs. They can become disoriented and crawl away from the ocean by mistake. Even when they finally reach the ocean, they are at the mercy or predators and the cold water, and they must find their own food. It's no wonder fewer than 1% of hatchlings make it to sexual maturity.

I got down on my belly in the sand to photograph the journey from this baby turtle's perspective.

From down here, the crashing waves look like tsunamis.

I was a little fretful, trying to keep the kids from stepping on, dropping, or otherwise damaging the little turtles in their excitement. I let one precocious eight-yet-old boy use my camera to photograph the adventure, hoping he would not drop my $400 camera in the waves. Luckily he did not.

A photo taken by a talented (and persistent) EcoClubber.

I hope these kids will remember this afternoon with the baby turtles forever, because it is often a loving memory of nature from childhood that inspires the naturalists and conservationists of the world.

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EcoClub 1: Blue Paint Gets Everywhere

Every Saturday, Equilibrio Azul welcomes between five and thirty kids to the house for EcoClub. The kids show up in motorcycle taxis or walking, from next door or across town, holding a parent's hand or a little sibling's hand or all alone. One thing all the kids have in common is they just can't wait for Saturday mornings!

My first EcoClub focused on painting the house's newly-erected bamboo fence royal blue.

I was dubious at first. The fence was very dirty and we didn't wash it, so I though the paint might peel right off. I was also concerned when the kids started painting the poles of the street signs and making blue hand prints on the walls of the house.

I soon realized that, like many things in Ecuador, a successful outcome would emerge from the chaos. The kids worked hard and took their job seriously. Within an hour, the fence had been transformed into a vertical ocean.

In a few weeks, we'll get the kids back out here with paint to create a colorful underwater mural!

After the painting was all done, we still had an hour left, and the kids were certainly not going home early. We dragged out wooden stools and low tables onto our concrete front porch. Within minutes, the porch went from hammock napping territory to kindergarten craft center.

When the kids got tired of drawing sea creatures, we made puzzles by cutting up pages from teen fashion magazines and letting the kids piece them back together.

I thought the magazine-puzzle idea was ingenious, but I was also flabbergasted at the choice of magazine. The little girls would beg us to make puzzles from the prettiest models, and the boys wanted muscular, tattooed men.

In our modern world of photoshopped models and makeup and eating disorders, I believe we should set an example of healthy realistic bodies, especially to young children. Instead we were promoting the worst kind of unrealistic body image. I wish we could have promoted the ocean instead -- that is the goal of EcoClub, after all.

When I asked Caro (the head of EcoClub and our mentor as Equilibrio Azul) about the magazines, she told me the fashion magazines were the only ones available. I thought of the surplus of old National Geographics in the United States: dusty stacks in the basement, unwanted copies in the recycling bin, ten-cent issues for sale at yard sales.

I want to start a campaign to collect and mail those unwanted National Geographics to Puerto Lopez so the kids of EcoClub will fill their minds with inspiring photos of nature instead of unrealistic images of made-up supermodels. Who's in?

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Turtle Captures

Once a week we capture both green and hawksbill turtles for tagging and monitoring.

To catch green turtles, we hang carnada, or bait, over the side of a boat right here in the harbor. For bait we use fish heads from the morning market. The big, oily forehead of the dorado (common dolphinfish) is the green turtles' favorite.

Arica prepares to go turtling.

A dorado head.

Waiting around for green turtles to show up.

Workers in the water and on the boat haul in a mature green turtle.

To catch hawksbills we have to put in a little more effort. We snorkel along the rocky coast and sandy beaches, and when someone spots a hawksbill, she keeps her eyes underwater while raising her hand in the air. The boat comes over to help out.

This male hawksbill must have weighed hundreds of pounds.

Vanessa and Cory measure a hawksbill while Arica records data on a plastic cutting board.

In both cases, the turtle capture itself is quite a sight. Our turtle-catching extraordinaire, Luis, leaps onto the turtle from the boat, mask and snorkel already on his face. He uses his left hand on the front of the shell, directing the turtle's movement upwards, and his right hand on the back of the shell, pushing the turtle up into the boat. Depending on the size of the turtle, this maneuver can be simple or extremely difficult.

Dean, an Equilibrio Azul worker, demonstrates the turtle-catching hold.

Once the turtle is on board, we move through our steps as efficiently as possible. We cover the turtle's eyes with a wet cloth to keep it calm, and take measurements of the carapace (top shell), plastron (bottom shell), head, and tail.

Amelia measures the plastron length.

We record the GPS coordinates of the capture.

The GPS lives in a waterproof sleeve.

We check for metal ID tags at the base of each back flipper. If we find tags, we record the numbers to keep a log of where the turtle has been. If there are no tags, we sanitize the flipper with alcohol before attaching some. We also take a small DNA skin sample from the neck of new turtles.

If the turtle isn't yet tagged, we add a metal tag to each back flipper.

We photograph both tags and both sides of the turtle's face as a backup identification method.

You can identify an individual by its unique facial markings.

Finally, we take note of damage, illness, or epibiont organisms before scraping any adhering barnacles off the body and head.

This turtle has a barnacle hairdo.

I'm fascinated by the idea that the turtle's shell constitutes an entire ecosystem with substrate, nutrients, climate, bacteria, plants, and animals. Last semester I completed a research project on the epizoic algae of Galápagos green turtles. I compared carapace algae to the algae which grows on intertidal rocks: in both cases, algae alters the habitat and allows other organisms, including animals, to move in. I wanted to find out how carapace algae relates to cleaning fishes, barnacle load, microbiota, and turtle health. During that project, my partner and I also discovered a previously unrecorded green turtle epibiont species, the Galápagos pencil urchin. Suffice it to say I am interested in sea turtle epibiota!

So, I have been intrigued by the various epibionts we have pulled off green and hawksbill turtles during our captures. We found this little crab hiding under the back lip of a green turtle's carapace, and once we discovered a baby octopus lodged under the shell!

An epizoic crab.

It's a common assumption that barnacles are bad for turtles, and that's why we scrape the bothersome crustaceans off the turtles we capture, but I have never found a scientific paper linking turtle health with algae or barnacle load. I would love to see (or write?) a study on the specific effects of barnacle removal.

This morning before we snorkeled for hawksbills, Luis taught me the art of the turtle capture. Alas, we found no turtles today, so I have yet to try out my skills.

A western painted turtle I caught while camping in Washington State.

As a kid, I proudly earned the nickname of "turtle whisperer" for my ability to catch western painted turtles in the lake where my family went camping every 4th of July. Granted, painted turtles are about 1/700th the size of mature sea turtles (a painted turtle weighs around 1 pound, whereas a green turtle can reach 700 pounds), but I still hope to try my hand as a sea-turtle whisperer one of these days.

The Turtle Whisperer.

In response to my dad's comment... Here are a couple modern examples of turtle whispering.

The upside-down turtle we rescued along the Tiputini River.

I was studying abroad at Tiputini Biodiversity Station in the Ecuadorian Amazon. On our last day, the whole class was moving by motorized canoe to catch a flight, but of course we stopped the boat, backed up to shore, and saved this upside-down river turtle from death-by-dehydration. I love Ecuadorian Time.

My first wild Galapagos tortoise friend.

Here I am with a giant Galapagos tortoise. I had seen a several of these huge reptiles in the Galapaguera, or hatchery, but this was my first sighting of a wild one. (She was surrounded by broken glass, plastic, and a tire. And as you can see from our bus in the background, she was right by a parking lot.) But she was a giant tortoise! IN THE WILD! I was more than a little excited.

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