Day 6 of My Pantanal Adventure

Helo! Hola! Olá! This morning I ventured out with Karen, Heather, and Ellen Wang. We drove the jeep to the rain forest to close the reptile and amphibian pitfall traps. Pitfall traps and drift fence are survey tools. We closed the traps by covering the pitfall buckets with lids and securing them with heavy logs. We also covered the rolled up fences with branches and leaves. It was raining very heavily, but it didn’t stop us from continuing the job. It was quite labor intensive to put all the traps down and secure them all. We closed a total of six long traps – each one was about sixty feet long. According to Ellen, we closed them because the research period is over. In April, Ellen and her research team will open the traps we closed today to collect new samples.
In the afternoon, I had the choice to go looking for ottesr with Manuel or go turtle hunting with Ellen. I decided to join Ellen and five of my teammates in the search for turtles. We searched for the creatures in two salinas, which are salt lakes. I got very scared when I almost stepped on a caiman’s tail. Other than that, it was a peaceful task as we had to quietly walk in the water for over an hour stepping on soft sand. It was hard to look for turtles since the sand was squishy. Mary and Michelle caught one turtle each. Along the road, we saw many animals and birds. Upon arriving at the fazenda’s main house, we learned that Manuel and Heather had seen an otter during they boat trip on the bank of the Rio Negro. We all celebrated their lucky day. It was another adventurous day!