Grey beaches

Today is our first day back in Curitiba after a long and epic week in Pontal do Sul, a small and beautiful beach town. At first, Pontal is very eerie, and reminds me of a Twighlight Zone episode. There are tons of closed restaurants and icecream and hotdog stands all along the main strip- waiting to reopen in the summer when all the tourists come. Everything is painted bright pastel colors that has faded in the sun and salt. For the first couple days, the beach was grey and dismal. Walking along in the grey watching the water roll onto the light sand, one couldn´t help but feel thoughtful and isolated. But then the sun would peak out and dazzle the sands and the water, making it blue and white all around. In either type of weather, it was amazing.
At the CEM center of the University Federal do Parana, we got to do all kinds of amazing things- visit the wildlife rehab center and feed the birds, penguines and seals, disect a sea turtle, study burrowing owls, and take long walks on the beach searching for beached animals. Everywhere there was life (or what had been) and it was so unlike anything I had seen before in the midwest. Frigate birds and brown boobies flew overheads, and everyone must always watch out for the small, but very aggressive, Queiro Queiro. One of the days we had off and rented a boat to go to the famous Ilha do Mel (Honey Island). This place was my absolute favorite. We walked the trails and got to explore Forteleza, an old fort that was built during the colonization era. I saw giant lizards walking lazily around and saw magnificent white egrets among the ocean edge. In the afternoon we got to relax with some cold drinks and swim in the ocean. The waves and currents are strong and unpredictable, once I ended up too far out and realized how exhausted I was. That moment was a bit terrifying to me, realizing I was at the mercy of the sea. Making it back was no problem however, and once I was back to shore, another burst of energy came forth, inspired by the sun and the open beach before me. I ran to where the sand met a huge outcropping of rock, where I could climb up and lay about 50 feet above the water and soak up the sun. Looking around me at the Island mountains and trees, my vision slightly blurry from the salt and humidity in the air, I couldn´t help but imagine that I was in heaven. The raw beauty that surrounded me was breathtaking. To the east I could look out and see nothing but ocean, and I was in awe at the thought that it would only end once it hit Africa.
The most amazing thing about the trip though was me finding a fantastic internship. I was able to meet with a researcher named Camila (who is absolutely stunning), and find out about her work studying marine mammals (mainly dolphines) and sea turtles and how they are affected by human influence. What her group does is a variety of data collecting, from interviewing fisherman to disecting beached animals and monitoring behavior or the estuary residents (dolphine families!). I will be helping with all of this, and got great practice watching and helping her undergraduate students dissect a juvenile sea turtle. Forget the fetal pig I dissected in high school, this was the real deal. No preservatives, just the dead, bloody turtle. The most heartbreaking thing though, was inspecting the stomach and intestinal contents. This was where we found how the turtle died. Tons of pieces of plastic were inside the stomach, blocking it from digesting its real food, which is sea grass. One shocking discovery was a hard piece of plastic that must have come from the rim of a container (similar to what you get yogurt or sour cream in). The undergraduate students told me that this was very common, these turtles smell the algae on the floating garbage so they eat it.
Seeing hte beauty of the blue sea, it is hard to believe just how much crud there is in it. But looking at the once beautiful and graceful sea turlte in front of me on the table, I felt so guilty, knowing that it could just as easily been I who killed it by my wastefulness or accidental littering. Everything we do has a consiquence in one way or another, I can only hope to do the best I can in giving back and helping these animals survive to see another day in this polluted world.