Students worked hard today on getting their reports prepared. There is still more work to be done, but they’re all in pretty good shape. They’ll present their projects to the group on Saturday. We took time off today in the mid-late afternoon to take a boat trip the Soropta Canal. This canal, now in disuse, was built in the late 1800’s into early 1900’s to ferry bananas from Changuinola to the deep water port of Almirante. It was built by the Snyder Brothers on behalf of the United Fruit Company. Now it’s a great place to see wildlife and birds. At one point we got off our boats and walked 150-200 yards to a high impact beach that parallels the canal. We saw remnants of recent leatherback turtle egg laying. Click on Soropta Canal to see photos. Tomorrow we’ll be gone from the field station most of the day. We’ll be visiting a cacao plantation, planting some native trees on a property ITEC is trying to restore the original native forest. Finally we’ll visit another nearby reserve before heading back to the station for dinner.
-Steve
