Sustainability and the Environment: "To Trace a River"

It was Tuesday, February 23rd, and every time it is Tuesday, February 23rd, you really ought to go out and trace a river. That's what Adam decided on this Tuesday anyway, and for his Tropical Conservation Biology course, he created a water sampling lab adventure that would take the adventurers up into the forest far away from their cozy couches, and then all the way back down beside the study center.

The purpose of this little morning excursion was to sample the water of a single river in two different locations-- first, they would test far up in the thick folds of the forest, where the water would be pretty close to pristine. Then after a 20-minute sample there, the adventurers would follow the river allll the way down, fighting brambles and fallen logs, to sample it again downstream of town, in order to see what changed. 

I bet you're wondering what exactly the adventurers would be sampling in their samples, aren't you? Well the answer is little aquatic bugs! What better way is there to test the health of a water source than to see how many living things you can find in the stream?

The first step of this adventure, of course, was to hike all the way up to the pristine spot, which was a little easier said than done.  

Ian ponders how he's gonna make it up that thing 

When the adventurers finally made it up to their first sampling site, they set their watches for twenty minutes, and then started digging around in the water with their sweet trendy nets to see what they could find. 

They found a lot. 

Leah reacts to the little critter that Aislyn discovered 

What a little cutie 

Since there were seventeen adventurers, and that was kind of a lot, they split themselves up into groups of three or four, so they could try to avoid being too close to one another and accidentally whacking each other with the metal parts of their nets. 

Leah accidentally whacks Julia with the metal part of her net 

These crafty guys found an awful lot in those twenty minutes up there at the top of the hill. They even found a couple critters that they couldn't take back with them. 

Rachel poses with her new crab friend 

  Chandler made a smaller, but more antisocial, crab friend too 

After their twenty minute sampling session was up, the adventurers packed up their nets and little jars of alcohol and started heading down the mountain, following the stream like they were Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea or something. 

Even though they were intent on finishing this lab up before lunch, they didn't mind stopping every now and then to check out some cool things they found along the way. One time, somebody up at the front started shouting about seeing a snake, and Adam jumped down off the path into the river to run up and grab it before it slunk away to continue its snake day. 

 It's a non-venemous Black Milk Snake, and they mimic coral snakes when they're young. Copy cats.

So that was pretty cool. 

The hike downstream required a little bit of bushwhacking, but hey man, this isn't LA or something, this is Costa Rica. This is kind of what it's all about. So the explorers were more than happy to enjoy a little adventure.

  Here's Adam emotionally preparing the adventurers for the rough terrain ahead

When they finally made it through--stronger, braver, and more educated than when they'd started--it was time to test the water below the study center, the pizza place, and some questionable looking pipes that were feeding water and other suspicious products into the stream.

The stream is public property, so the adventurers were legally allowed to walk through it, but all the land around it is privately owned, so the team had to get a bit creative on their trek to their second sampling site. 

Angela seems less than enthused about entering this dark and sketchy pipe

Meg and Tessa, on the other hand, are straight up psyched 

They had to go right beside a bunch of houses with barking dogs and litter lining the banks of the stream, and suddenly they were all a lot more wary of falling in the water. It just didn't seem quite as nice and clear as it had been at the first little place they'd been. 

"No sign of intelligent life anywhere..." 

They also noticed a big difference in the amount of aquatic life down here. At their first site, they'd had no shortage of little aquatic critters to collect, but down here the party was kind of dead. 

Aislyn doesn't seem super psyched about the sort of stuff she's finding. I'd close my mouth if I were her 

Chandler and Tessa clearly prefer the first site 

But you gotta give it to these adventurers; a lot of kids could get a little squeamish with this sort of thing, but these tough guys did their job and didn't complain about it. See, even if the stream gets a little dirty at times, it's still way better than sitting in front of a computer or a powerpoint all day. If you don't get muddy or bloody, it isn't worth the trip. So it was definitely worth the trip for the adventurers.  

Emma managed to keep herself completely dry, without even a drop of water going down her boots...

... Not! She's probably still got some little fishies swimming around there in her boots. 

And wouldn't you know it, they were back in time for lunch. What a cool day that was. On Wednesday, they would do Part 2 of this little lab, where they would chemically test the water quality to find out just how much it differs before and after the interference of humans. All the adventurers went to bed that night dreaming of what they would find out. 

It was a good day in the woods, you know?