After spending the week at Wilson’s paradise, we got back to our hostel in Bocas el Toro and spent two days there. We had a Winterline core day where we went out to lunch with our mentor group and then started planning our ISP (Independent Student Project, it’s a week during third trimester where we can go to any country in Europe and learn the skill of our choice). The next day we had nothing programmed so the Field Advisors made an optional trip to Red Frog Beach (Yay!). We took a water taxi to an island called Bastimentos and spent the day there jumping over waves and enjoying the warm weather. It was so nice; the sun was out, the water was clear, and the beach was beautiful. That afternoon after having lunch at the beach we came back to our hostel to pack our bags and head out to our next location: ITEC, which stands for Institute for Tropical Ecology and Conservation.
At ITEC we learned about field biology while using the rainforest and the ocean as our classroom. We worked on two biodiversity projects: Red Poison Dart Frogs and the coral reef. In the morning we split up into two groups and went out into the field to catch frogs (literally). We named each frog with weird names, determined their sex, measured them, and took pictures of them. After catching all the frogs that we could, we released them all. We did the same thing the next morning, at the same time and place, in order to compare our data. The first day my group caught 9 frogs and the second day we caught 21 frogs. So our skill level went up, or maybe it was just our competitive side that came out since the other group caught 21 frogs the first day. Oh well. The next day we studied the data collected and determined our answer for the project. It was actually a very fun project. I usually don’t like science, but learning it hands-on on the field is a totally different thing. I really enjoyed it. Studying the coral reef was also very fun but more challenging. The first afternoon we went snorkeling on the coral reef just to see the marine life there. Then we got to the house and classified what we saw into categories like fish, sponges, corals, crustaceans, mollusks, and echinoderms. I really liked that because now I know the names of the fish I see in the ocean and can classify them. The next we went out to calculate the biodiversity of the marine life there. We divided into two groups and each worked on different areas of the reef. We counted the species and individuals of each classification and then used that data to calculate the biodiversity. The last afternoon at ITEC we had nothing planned so some of us went to Starfish Beach. We had a nice afternoon there to relax in the clear water with starfish in the sand. It was a nice way to end our stay there. The next day we left Panama for Costa Rica. What on EARTH are we doing next?
