June 19th

Today we woke up to a overcast but sweltering day at Los Colibris Hotel. There was a little bit of sadness in the air because we would be leaving our hotel but many were quickly excited for the day during breakfast, because Bernardo had mentioned that we would be participating in a beach cleanup similar to a Big Sunday service event. We took a pit stop at a beach during our drive up to the northern parts of Baja. We met with Pablo, who ran Rescatando Nuestros Arrecifes y Manglares, and  talked to us about the beach cleanup organization he and his friends had recently formed. Each person grabbed a black trash bag for non recyclables and a clear for recyclable trash, split into two separate boats, and traveled to a secluded and uninhabited island that was surrounded by stakes and now old and useless piles of plastic netting. Many shorebirds have been using this tiny island as a home for many generations, so as soon as we pulled up on our boats, we could see tons of birds circling the land and protecting this young.

After just a few minutes of picking up trash, Stephanie immediately realized that we might have been doing more harm than good. Our presence on the island during their nursing period had caused many mothers to take flight, leaving their babies alone in the sand to overheat. Some babies had started to take shelter in the shade of our empty trash bags or the abandoned netting. The kids and adults all worked together to get rid of as much netting as possible without interfering with the babies too much and loaded as much as we could onto the bow of each boat. Stephanie said she would take some groups back in a few weeks when the babies will have grown up to get rid of the rest of the netting and trash.

We then piled back into the van to travel through the desert and all the way up to La Paz for a quick one-night stay at an Eco-retreat center called Rancho La Duna. We were greeted by our hostess Gabriela and her kids Rebecca and Nathan, who made sure our lunch was ready at our arrival. After chowing down on a mango coconut soup and triggerfish ceviche, we relaxed in the main palapa with three other university students and learned about some of the ocean creatures we might encounter later that day during our snorkeling session.

Stephanie had invited three separate professors to talk to all of us about algae and turtles. She also personally talked about the types of fish we would be seeing and showed us a way to participate in biological counting and studies as citizens.
Soon enough, we drove down to the beach, strapped on our snorkeling gear, and dove into the ocean and identified and counted hundreds of sergeant majors, two balloonfish, rainbow wrasse, graytail grunt, and barberfish.  Some kids also collected some samples of the red, green, and brown algae that had we learned about an hour earlier.

When we returned back to La Duna, the wind had picked up so some installed drapes on the sides of the palapa for us. Some of us then identified each species of the algae we had collected and others worked together with some of the university students to find some tiny invertebrates in a sample of ocean water we collected.

Once the wind died down, Alan and Bernardo showed us where we would be setting up our tents in the sand amongst spiny cactuses and scary choyas. We spent the night enjoying the cool air and exploring the sand dunes with Rebecca.
Robyn

Loading the netting onto the boats