Wednesday May 21, 2015
Today was very tiring but fun. We captured 110 iguanas in an
area about 8 acres. It is a U-shaped island: two rocky strips with a beach
joining them. The rocky strips running north-south are like Jack’s island at
Pike Bay… limestone or fossilized coral with lots of holes and sometimes part
of it is underwater. The east-west beach is about 500 yards long and 500 yards
across to the south ocean beach. It is
flat and covered with cabbage palms and sea grape bushes which provide food and
shelter ad nesting areas.
At night the iguanas are dormant: they have a very low
tolerance for cool so as soon as the temperature goes below about 90 they slow
down and sleep…in the rocks, which hold the heat of the day or
underground. They are most active when
the sun is high and hot. Today was very hot which is why we caught so many.
We had dinner with the crew on the boat. Bruce and Sheila
cooked deep fried turkey which was delicious! There was rice and vegetables
with it. And stuffing and gravy neither of which I could eat. We sacrificed the
3 dozen oatmeal cookies Rick had made a few days before and the kids were all
over him about how good they were. Sheila had made a peach cobbler and Rick
said it was good. I ate a peach out of his dish, and wished I could have had
some more.
These kids are a mix of student goals and directions. Some
of them are going into environmental sciences when they have graduated; some
are heading to medicinal fields. Two of the teachers are from Peru and are
heading home when they leave: Wendy is an ornithologist and her husband, Jose
is a biologist whose last field work was done in Mongolia! He also teaches
science teachers how to teach their subject…an educator of educators!
Laura is a microbiologist who studies pencil urchins, so she
was combing the tide pools on her breaks looking for them, and some of the students
[and Rick, of course] were helping her.
Lin was a Chicago zoo curator for 20 years and also one of
John’s graduate students and comes on these trips to help out and renew her
research skills. She is going back to grad school to move back into the
research field.
Thursday,
We continued our efforts on U-Cay and came up with enough
iguanas to surpass the second place count in the 30 year study. Nothing like a
little competition to motivate!
Unfortunately some of the counts were bodies, because the dead ones are
just as important as the live ones.
It was a stinking hot day with no wind and climbing over the
rocks through scratchy bushes took its toll on everyone. Pretty cranky by 6:30
when the day was over. My feet were burnt and sore from walking back and forth delivering
the processed ones back to their homes. But I also got to do some data
processing and recording and ‘painting’ the toes where the nails were moved and
the spots where the PIT tags were injected.
We came back to the boat for supper and after dinner we went
over to Beacon Won to download all of our photos and I let Laura use our hotspot
to contact home. She has 2 boys 7 & 9. Sam wanted to check her email to see
if her application for grad school had been accepted.
Friday
John decided that we should try Leaf Cay one more time and
see if we can get a more results. There are ore iguanas on Leaf. We got to the
beach at 8:30 and Rick left me on the west side and went over to the east
beach. I was going to walk through but I couldn’t find the path. SO I started tracking
on the west side. I caught two!!! Ok, well Lin helped and we made a really good
team. By noon we had caught another 25 on the west beach and I think we made
the quota we needed.
Unfortunately there were a bunch of the island tour boats ho
come over, throw people on the beach for 15 minutes, to feed the iguanas and
then leave, but they don’t all come at the same time and we can’t capture when
they are around.
We are all finished with the group. They have all headed back
to Nassau to catch planes home and we are going over to Highborn Cay to restock
and head to Abacos.
This was the best experience of the whole trip! We had such
a great time and everyone was happy to have our help. Lin says I am a natural
iguana catcher. Maybe if I come back to help next year I can be an iguana
whisperer. I got them to come pretty close to me!
If anyone is curious about the study check out this: www.earlhsm.edu/~johni
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| it's very tricky to hand one off and not get bitten |
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| They re not aggressive until you piss them off! But they are beautiful. This one is shedding |
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| Harold and friend |
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