On Monday, we were up and ready to go by 7am. We left the hotel and experienced Costa Rican rush hour on our way to la Universidad de Costa Rica. We were slightly lost trying to figure out which building we were supposed to find. Eventually we ended up at the right one, where we met the professor. He told us a little bit about the marine life (both plant and animal) of Costa Rica on the Caribbean coast, as well as the Pacific cost (where we are). Just a few of the things we learned about were:
-Costa Rica’s marine territory is actually much larger than its land territory.
-Millions of years ago Costa Rica rose up from the bottom of the ocean, along with some other land, which created a land bridge between North and South America.
-This land bridge caused changes in current and water flow, which eventually triggered an ice age.
-Characteristics of different habitats such as mangrove forests, beaches, rocky intertidal zones, soft bottoms, and coral reefs.
We then took a little tour of the science building that we were in. There were lots of different lab rooms that all specialized in different areas of marine related study. We also saw the research vessels (couple of boats and rafts) that the school had before heading over to another building. In this other building, we went into the Museo de Zoología, which had two rooms, filled with preserved/dried specimens. The first room that we went into was VERY big with VERY tall ceilings and VERY tall and long shelves. As we walked in, there were a few skulls (one was huge!!), but mostly there were jars of pickled specimens. About half of the room had fish specimens and the other half was full of invertebrates. The second room that we went into had more invertebrates, birds and some small rodents. The invertebrates were dried, and everything else was taxidermed. The whole collection was amazing.
The Unity College Marine Ecology Experience 