My first official round of fieldwork took place this week, and it went amazingly well! We left San Jose at 5am to make the trek down to Chomes, one of the areas where Fundacion Neotropica works. Chomes is a small fishing village about an hour north of the port of Puntarenas on the Pacific coast. For the most part, the people of Chomes make their living as fishermen or by working in sugarcane plantations – two income sources which may in fact be at odds with one another..
Sugarcane is a very water intensive crop, and the use of pesticides in fields adjacent to the mangroves can negatively impact mangrove health. But in a community with few options for livelihoods, it’s difficult to navigate the topic when cutting off one source can mean no food on the table for an entire family. Hopefully the reforestation efforts in this area can provide a stronger incentive to make decisions that keep the mangroves healthy while allowing for the proliferation of sustainable livelihoods!
We went to two different sites within Chomes to take measurements. The first was an abandoned shrimp farm, which had patchy natural regeneration of mangroves. This site had really variable salinity, and will be the target of some future restoration efforts with Fundacion Neotropica. It’s pretty exciting because they are planning to go beyond their normal reforestation approach and tackle some of the underlying ecological issues causing issues in this site. Secondly we went to the site of FN’s reforestation in 2016. To get to the reforestation site, we had to take a boat ride with some of the local fishermen, and it was a gorgeous ride down a channel lined with mangroves. While there was a pretty high mortality rate, some of the little baby mangroves were doing alright, which is always nice to see! In both sites I took soil samples to measure for soil carbon, as well as in-situ salinity and pH measurements. These measurements were the first diagnostics ever taken at these sites and the results are already looking to be very informative for the reforestation efforts!
After doing the field work, we also managed to get in an interview with Aracelly, President of the all-female mollusk collection cooperative in Chomes. She is an inspiring woman, working to better her community and the environment. We learned a lot about what the mangroves mean to her and discovered that she’s a big fan of Colombian novelas! We discovered two puppies in her backyard which was the best kind of reward for finishing fieldwork in the hot sun.
I’m looking forward to more work in the Chomes community!
Liz Guinessey: A Gringa Living the Pura Vida 