Here’s a ‘Audio Boo’ to start the day….for those uninitiated to techy talk thats a sound recording. Just Click this link.
….yes no cars just glorious bird song.
But there was no time to enjoy and relax, there were earthworms to catch and catalogue. Again we needed to split the man power. Luis would would take one team down to the fumarolic fields of Furnas to catch the worms that were amazingly surviving on the active caldera whilst Marta, Mike, Hugo and myself catalogued the Day 4 worm haul. Unlike the apartments we had at Ponta Delgaro there was no space in side the hotel we could set up a cataloguing table….so we step into the sun and established home base on the varanda.
Yes it was a glorious location to sort worms even if some of the worms had died and smelled putride…yuck!!….it’s not all fun and games. But we were all a well oiled machine and have the sites catalogued before it started to rain. It is quite amazing just how quickly the whether changes from sun to rain and back in minutes here. I did receive a text from Luis say that they had >200 worms fro the transplant and need the Marcena worms to start the transplant.
So we went the caldera….it still amazes me that its so embedded in the town of Furnas but it also excites me seeing those gases being driven out of the earth with such a frightening force, truly natural power at its extreme.
But when we arrived there was another volcano erupting….it was the experimental design debate, where, how many worms how many replicates. I was perturbed, why was our team so fractious….then I clocked that the time was fast approaching
13.00…..people needed lunch, brains don;t work when bellies are empty so we adjourned to local restaurant to have the local delicacy a stew slow cooked in the calderas themselves.
After eating all things fell into place…..well I also threw my penny worth into the ‘debate’ 🙂
So we would do 6 replicates of each population at the 2 sites each replicate with 10 worms…..we had worms to spare !! Also after Caterina and Fatima had mapped temperature and gases at the transplantation site Luis, John, Hugo and Marta would build the mesocusums mean while a second team would go into action and make phylogeographic sampling from the south east of the island.
After a single NO worm site the worm collecting went well and we finished that day at an magnificent site next to the whale spotting station with a full 360o panoramic view of the south east of the island.