Intertidal zone and snorkeling

One of the classes I took this summer was Tropical Marine Biology. For this class, we had two field trips. The first one we went to the Mangroves near Puntarenas, while for this final weekend long field trip we went to the Nicaraguan border to snorkel and to investigate the intertidal zone.

In class we had learned a lot about climate change and its effect on the ocean. Part of this effect of warming waters is that there can be an increase in jelly fish. This is both a problem to fish and beach goers alike. 

We experienced this first hand on our snorkeling trip, when in an area that usually is clear and without jelly fish, had a lot of sediment and enough boxed jelly fish to sting every one of us.

We thought that the jelly fish that we could see were stinging us, but it turns out we were actually being stung by much smaller, and harder to see jelly fish. 

This trip was also a chance for me to try and work on my skills with the waterproof camera underwater. It was a bit of a challenge to get used to, and with the sediment in the water the pictures I got were not great. 

A puffer fish!

Blue Tunicates

These fish wouldn't hold still!

 Stinging from jelly fish aside, it was an excellent time snorkeling. I have snorkeled before in a Maine lake, but this was completely different. There was so much diversity within the coral reef it was thrilling. We never knew what else we might see, or what might be hiding just out of sight from us.

The view on our way back

 That night Manda crashed, while Annie and I looked for bugs and talked about horror movies and what we're going to do with our lives.

We were served an amazing lunch on our first day, made by a friend of the instructor who does this every year. We stayed in a tiny fishing town, that was quiet and surrounded by forests. The only roads to get there was a tiny tar road.

Costa Rican food is AMAZING

This little guy was hanging out where we had lunch

Where we stayed for the weekend

On Sunday we got up early, and headed to a small fishery. 

Fish are being fed. 

We also came across another pair of mating black sea turtles.

 When we got to the intertidal zone, we had lots of rocks to turn over and tidal pools to look into, so we found a lot of cool things.

There was a problem with my camera, that I did't find out until near the end of the trip, and that was even though it was waterproof it had a leak somewhere. The first warning signs was condensation on the inside of the camera, and a slight fogging of the lens that you can see in the last pictures taken this day.

Brittle starfish

Sea cucumber

Sea anemone

I think these are more sea cucumbers?

Anemone

Sea Slug (My favorite, this guy was really colorful!)

Sea cucumber

I managed to further my reputation for finding unusual things this trip, as I was able to locate a rare sea urchin (below) and even found an OCTOPUS!

The rocks here had an amazing tidal molded and wind swept look that resulted in them looming over the water in interesting shapes.

We made friends with a green iguana before we left to go back to San Ramon.