Costa Rica 2022: Field Day 6

The Harvey Mudd, CSU Long Beach, and University of Costa Rica research team had the amazing opportunity today to help with Vanessa, who is a masters student at the University of Costa Rica. Her project, working under Professor Espinosa, requires tagging turtles in Playa Matapalito which is at the Northwest edge of Costa Rica.

Some of the beautiful scenery near Playa Matapalito and Santa Elena Bay

First, a line is set to capture sea turtles (and apparently some eagle rays as well!). Then as we waited, all of us hopped out the boat and snorkeled to see if we could find turtles and grab them by hand.  

A line was dropped and we started snorkeling right away

A little bit later,  a ray was caught (!) and we released it after a few pictures. After an hour or so, a bit distraught, we hopped onto the boat and started reeling the net in thinking we would have to move to another location to tag turtles. Then suddenly, as the net was being pulled in, a turtle was spotted! 

The turtle's head was wrapped in a wet cloth to keep the turtle calm

Chris helped out with measuring the turtle's width and length. We also measured the weight as well with a spring scale. I got the opportunity to hold the turtles flippers while we measuring and their flippers are much stronger than you would think! 

Chris is measuring the width of the turtle

Weighing the turtle with a spring scale

Turtles, as the one you see in these pictures, will have barnacles attached to them. Barnacles tend to adhere to the shells of the sea turtles due to their hard shell. 

Acoustic transmitter attached to the exterior, backside of the turtle

Then, the turtle was released! It was an exciting day of tagging turtles and the Harvey Mudd research team got to learn so much about turtles from the University of Costa Rica research team. Thanks for reading and that's all for Day 6! 

-Yoo-Jin