For the last week we have been working as a group to catch and sort our fish. Dr. David Schleser and Dr. Devon Graham have been ID´ïng the thousands of fish we caught. At this point I don´t know how many species we caught, but if you look through the photos, you can get a small sampling of all the different types. We tromped through knee deep mud, swam through the rivers, hiked though the jungle, and dug through the hiding spots in the small streams. That all in itself was so much fun, and to find these diverse creatures living in their natural habitat was just spectacular.

Each day we would go out multiple times. Usually, we started with a seine net (what you are seeing me hold here). As we get a chance we will show better photos as well as video on how we did this. The amount of life in the river was just amazing.

The silty, soft water is the run off from the Andes mountains. This acid water is called black water. Visibility is about 2 inches. Fortunately, this water does not support mosquitos well, and thus we had very few bites.

I spent most of the week wet and muddy, but my clothes were perfect. They met the goal of being comfortable wet. Often we were not out of the water long enough to dry off, especially with that level of humidity. It is winter now here and even still we definitely got lucky on the weather. It was much cooler than usual often ranging between 70 and 80. A couple night I suspect in got into the high 60´s. However, the river water stays warm, and its a good thing because we were showering in it unheated. (Say what you will about that possibly being dirty, but my skin loved this acid, soft water).

I have to say, I enjoyed it all. I enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere. All of us big kids played in the mud and got so excited when we were finding our treasure. One week of this was not enough for me. I would very much enjoy getting to spend more time doing this.