My Trip to the Northside of Utila
By Jeremy Lourdes Arriola Oliva, Intern, Kanahau Utila Research and Conservation Facility
As a new intern at the Kanahau Utila Research and Conservation Facility in Honduras, Jeremy went with the team on her first field expedition to monitor Utila Spiny-tailed Iguanas (Ctenosaura bakeri). She shared her experience with us.
As my first experience in the field, I can say the day was a tough start. Mosquitoes were very insistent, and the heat was oppressive, even though it was only 8:00 a.m. But besides all that, I was very excited. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, I didn’t get the opportunity to make many field tours while I was studying at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras Tegucigalpa. So I was looking forward to getting a chance to learn everything I didn’t know about the professionals working in the field.
That day, they taught me how to upload the monitoring data in the database, so I kept the phone on the four transects we made. I noticed how the team was used to doing this—of the six people tracking iguanas, I was the only one who couldn’t find one on my own! The iguanas are very well camouflaged in the mangroves. I hope next time I will find more, now that I know the Swampers’ behavior and where to look.
I also learned all the steps of the capture and release procedure used to gather physical data about the individual iguanas. I observed how they capture and hold an iguana, how they measure and mark it, how they put a tracking microchip on, and how to release it back to the place the iguana was captured. I even got the opportunity to hold them!
The transect route we followed wasn’t large, but even so, you can’t separate from the group. You always need to stick with another person because you can easily get lost. The area is so similar every place you look. At only 50 meters in, it is too difficult to distinguish the beach shore. We left marks along the track so we wouldn’t get lost. Even so, we lost the marks for a bit! But we found them again quickly.
I’m now excited to visit other sampling areas in the future and see how different the mangroves can be on the island. It’s a great experience for my professional practice to graduate as a biologist!
