Mamíferos Marinos

The past week felt like I ran a marathon. Up until Monday the pace had been pretty comfortable, but my work really got a jump start this week. In addition to Abram (the research fellow who I will be taking over for) arriving to help train me, Lorayne and Ed (the two directors of the station) came back to meet with everyone, as well as brought along Eduardo (a member of the Waterbird Monitoring advisory board who works in La Paz, Gulf of CA). I spent the week visiting field sites, absorbing all I possibly could from Abram, meeting with Lorayne, and having intense discussions with all involved parties about our current monitoring protocols, goals, and what needs to be revised, etc. The program is really intense for one person, but there are so many amazing opportunities to study various birds. I am currently coming up with a work plan for the year to organize what research will be happening when, my other responsibilities, etc. Eduardo was very generous with his time and would even like to collaborate on some research projects! One of them being banding Reddish Egrets, which would be really cool!

After such an intense week, the day out in the boat today was a much needed break. Most of the staff, in addition to some local students and NGO partners, took to the seas to look for marine animals. We filled the two station boats and headed west, past Isla Tiburón, and eventually circling the area around Isla San Esteban. The first creatures we came across were a pod of common dolphins. I had never seen so many of them at once, and there were many calves in the group. What was even more amazing was that when the boat was close enough, you could hear their calls coming from underwater! It was surreal. Next, I got to see a species I had never seen before, a ballena cachalote (sperm whale), which is the largest toothed animal in the world! After that, we headed to a small inlet beach area on San Esteban where we stopped for lunch and to snorkel. The water was amazingly clear. Not only could you see many species like manta rays, but the highlight was swimming with lobos marinos (sea lions)!