Last weekend we arrived at Playa del Ostional and we immediately started the fieldwork on Sunday.
We start by taking the sediment samples from the different beaches we are going to investigate. Because this has already been done in the rain season, it is very important that we take samples of the sand at exactly the same coordinates. This allows us to compare the sand structure and grain size afterwards between the rain and dry seasons.
In addition, we will map the entire beach by looking at the parameters that can affect the sea turtles and the arribadas in which they come to lay eggs on the beach. For example, how wide the beach is, whether there are many birds flying to peck the eggs or whether there are large stones in the water that prevent the turtles from coming ashore.
We have split into two groups and walked the whole beach in three days and took sand samples in ziplock bags with us, which we then labeled with numbers.
In addition, we are also talking to the locals to learn more about the arribadas on Playa del Ostional. Fortunately, despite the language barrier, we manage well with our Spanish and Google Translate sometimes lends us a hand.
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Next week our team will be reinforced by two employees of the Universidad de Costa Rica, who will help us map the heights of the different beaches with their GPS equipment. This is made possible by the funding we received from S4S.
