The Causeway

Near the Pacific entrance to the Panama Canal are four islands. Well, former islands. When the canal was built, the islands were connected to the mainland by a causeway which serves as a breakwater and prevents sedimentation of the canal entrance. One of these islands, Naos, is home to a Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) facility. This was our destination today.

After a lecture on the role of parasite escape in invasive species by a STRI researcher, Mark Torchin, we walked down to a protected beach with some interesting wildlife. As we walked onto the beach, the most conspicuous wildlife were the pelicans. There were two of them fishing for food.

Scanning the water.

Both of the pelicans and an egret.

The next thing that caught my eye was all the subtle movement along the surface of the sand closer to the water. As it turned out, baby crabs had hatched and were covering the beach.

All those little white splotches are crabs that were scuttling around busily.

Adjacent to the sand beach was a rocky area with tide pools and a few mangroves. There were lots of snails, limpets, sea urchins, small fish, and crabs in the pools and it was fun to scramble over the rocks and explore the tide pools. There was also a cool flock of birds that was flying in tight formation, turning together on a dime with a flash of white as they banked and their undersides suddenly angled towards us.

The flock.

The white flash of the same flock.

Interestingly, before the building of the canal, the island was used to quarantine victims of malaria and yellow fever. Some of the pillars of the buildings still remain out on the rocky area near the tide pools.

It's been pointed out to us that it is particularly interesting to study parasites in Panama given the history of malaria and the Panama canal. When the French tried to construct a canal through Panama from 1881 to 1889, they failed in part because so many workers died due to malaria. The identification of the role of mosquitoes in the life cycle of malaria, however, helped in the implementation of appropriate preventive measures. (Which also means that malaria isn't a problem here and I don't have to take hallucinogenic malaria medicine, yay!)

The last two interesting sightings of the day were up from the beach in STRI's protected area. First, was an iguana:

One of my classmates tried to feed it a flower (which we saw it eating), and it moved remarkably fast. Then, as we walked out of the protected area we saw a two-toed sloth hanging upside down in a small tree. It was doing some interesting gymnastics and was very cute.