Goodbye, Panama

Well, our time in Panama is over. As hard as we all worked and as tired as we all were, we were still sad to leave. Who wouldn't be, as it was in the 80's and 90's there whereas back up north we are just getting into the 70's if we are lucky. We picked the perfect year to go to Panama; it was a terrible winter in New England.

As for being the first Three Seas group to go to Panama, we didn't do too bad, if i do say so myself. We all learned so much and made some good connections while we were down there. I can't wait to see how next year's class does and what the professors all learned from our guinea pig class.

Now, we are all back home and on a break from studying for two weeks. Some of us are traveling through South America and others are headed out to the west coast early. On March 28th we will all be back together again in Washington! I am looking forward to Friday Harbor Labs and the classes we will be taking there, especially the marine birds and mammals course, guaranteed to be my personal favorite. I am sure I will have much more to talk about then. But for now, I will be relaxing and looking forward to getting back in the (much colder) water!

Back from Coiba

We’re back! Sorry for the lack of communication, but we were all away on the island of Coiba for a while. Now we have lots of fun stories for you. We left early last week to go hiking as part of our Tropical Terrestrial Ecology (TTE) class up Vulcan Baru, the tallest mountain, and - as you can guess - volcano, in Panama. We left for the hike around 11pm so that we could make it to the top of the mountain by sunrise. After 6.5 hours, we made it to the top, sore, tired and hungry. Well, most of us made it; a couple people had to turn back because of altitude sickness. We were able to see the sunrise over both the Caribbean and the Pacific! Then we started back down the mountain. After another 6 hours, this time with some daylight, we made it back and went to sleep for the rest of the day.

We stayed at a hostel for another night and we were able to go into Boquete, the town there, for lunch and some shopping. When we finally made it to Coiba, it was amazing! I have never been to the Pacific so that alone was cool. On top of that, on our first day there I saw three white tip reef sharks and a hawksbill sea turtle. I was finally able to confront, if not partially overcome my extreme fear of sharks. The white tips didn’t move much and would only swim away if you came near them. This definitely helped me to become a little more comfortable with the idea of swimming in the same waters as them. It was also made worthwhile since the sea turtles were in the same areas!

I was instantly amazed at the sharp contrast between the Caribbean and the Pacific. There were definitely more apex predators around Coiba; there was even a saltwater crocodile named Tito at our dorms. There was much less coral diversity, but substantially more and bigger fish! The water was so warm that most of us didn’t wear our wetsuits unless there were jellies in the water. Even when we were on the boats (missing Eric and Sebastian, our Bocas boat drivers) going from site to site, we were able to dolphins and sea turtles. One day, we even stopped the boats and jumped in with a pod of dolphins as they swam around the boat. Overall, it was a breathtaking experience. I won’t give away all the stories since I know many more people will want to share, but those were definitely some of my highlights.

R&R Trip

Here is a video of our R&R day trip to the banana plantation and Bird Island. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

Banana Plantations and Bird Island

On one of our reading and research days, David organized a trip for us all to go to the banana plantations. So, we all woke up early and climbed in our favorite boats and took off. We had a very nice boat ride up until we got to a tributary of the Changuinola river. The water got very shallow very quickly and we had to raise our engines to get through. Once inside the tributary we began winding our way through the dense undergrowth. At times this required turning around to rescue the boat behind us or practically beaching ourselves when squeezing through narrow pathways. The trip through the tributary was very beautiful with a multitude of birds and flowers along the banks. Eventually, we made our way out and into the Changuinola. After traveling the river for a bit we made it to the plantations.

We just pulled up along the bank and climbed out!

(our boats were tied to clumps of dirt to keep them from drifting).

There were some horses and dogs outside the plantation, and we named the dogs Dole and Chiquita! We then were allowed to go into the plantations (by climbing under barbed wire, don't worry we had permission) and wander about the banana trees. Little known fact, banana trees can only have one large bunch of banana trees in their life and then they are chopped down and a new one is allowed to grow in its place. Sadly, we did not get any bananas for our trip, but we did get some cool photos.

After we left we decided to take a side trip to Bird Island!

This was one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen! There were so many birds flying to land on the island, and the sound was so beautiful as all the birds sang! The ride there was real fun and well worth being a little late to lunch for. I will let the pictures do the talking for this one!

Overall we had an excellent morning and we were all glad that we woke up for it!

Moon Jellies Attack!

Lesson One: Don't always believe everything you are told.

Lesson Two: Don't ever play "Throw a Moon Jelly."

Sunday started out like every other R&R day in Panama. Breakfast at 7 a.m., reading on the beach, even an afternoon snorkel to practice fish I.D.'s. Well, that innocent snorkel was when "All The Evil" happened. 

From the very first day, we had been told the Moon Jelly that we see EVERYWHERE does not sting humans. They have nematocysts, but according to some genius somewhere, they are "only used to attack prey." The welt that starts on the back of my arm and covers my left shoulder blade says otherwise. I was viciously attacked by a Moon Jelly bigger than my head, and am seriously traumatized from the whole incident. Okay, that is not exactly how it happened, but I was in fact stung by this supposed docile invertebrate. Because we had been told they are benign little guys, a select few (names will not be released) thought it was a fantastic idea to throw them at each other under and out of water. The game ended horribly as you can guess. A bit of advice for future East West students/blog readers: animals the size of your face should be left alone. Good thing we didn't come up with the bright idea to play "Throw a Lionfish!"

Colors

One of the best things about Panama is the colors. From the second you leave the airport in Bocas del Toro, you are bombarded with every shade of every color you can imagine. Houses, businesses, and buildings are pink, purple, yellow, green, orange, blue, and any combination thereof.

The leaves of trees are enormous and all different hues of yellow and green. Birds fly by in flashes of red, black, and electric blue. Flowers are perpetually in bloom surrounded by irridescent insects buzzing about...

And that's just on land.

Underwater there are orange sponges and firecorals draped with brittle stars and jet black urchins.

Purple and blue tipped anemone sway back and forth with the current, and its easy to lose yourself looking in cracks and crevices of coral colonies.
Bottom line, where things at home (especially at this time of year) are dull gray and brown and black, everything in Panama is vibrant and full of life. I love it here.

Cowfish Chase

(thanks to Karissa Sciacca for video footage!)