22-01-15 Playa Hermosa
We made a good attempt today at seeing firsthand the plight of coral reefs and their many species, but nature and humans both conspired against us. Coral, an animal polyp that relies upon a symbiotic alga to survive, are sensitive to lots of conditions altered by a warming climate: temperature, sedimentation, more violent storms, more runoff from land, and dropping pH as more CO2 is absorbed by the ocean water (becoming carbonic acid). All of these are expected to eliminate most of Costa Rica’s corals in the next few decades.
We are staying at Playa Hermosa, a touristy beach town on the Guanacaste coast. Million dollar homes spring like oak wilt on the hills surrounding town overlooking the Gulf of Papagayo, and the International airport in Liberia was a parking lot of private jets. Not exactly the lifestyle lessons we’re seeking here on this course about climate change, but perhaps it can serve as an educational contrast.
Today was our day to get underwater. Nature conspired against us by blowing in a huge red-brown tide of dinoflagellates (“red tide”) that made our intended destination, the reefs around Islas Pelonas, a brown soup. So the boat kept going to a sheltered area behind some smaller islands farther north where the brown soup thinned to a gray-green murk. Humans, in the form of our outfitters, conspired against us by failing to have sufficient masks, snorkels, and fins for all of us, despite them knowing for weeks how many of us there were to be, and many of those that they did have were in poor condition. But there was no keeping us out of the water.
Collectively we saw interesting species and phenomena: a puffer fish, flashing schools of silver fish, some bright blue wrasses, lots of long-spiced Black Sea urchins, a few heads of healthy coral, and lots of coral dead and broken by waves, among others.
Though it wasn’t the experience I’d hoped for when planning this, we did come away with some appreciation of the threats to life underwater—and a fair amount of (not serious) sunburn.