Steady steps: strength in numbers

We just came back from the third maintenance trip to the smart mooring system in Bahia Tomas, Cuajiniquil! We are stoked because the network is slowly expanding!

This was a very special ocassion as we were invited by local citizen-science organization CC-MAR, to participate in a workshop for the local communities. Finally we were able to have an official presentation of the project to a broader local audience, with confidence that the smart mooring system has been gathering data for over two months now, meaninng it is going well during a critical period in the success of our operations, the first 3 months.

 

Presentation at CCMAR workshop, October 6th 2023

 

We had a 10 minute presentation to talk about the project and technologies

The project received a lot of attention and interest from the community. We were able to talk about the project's mission and vision, how to acces data and about preventing vandalism to the technologies. A very promising and important suggestion is to develop a data camp workshop with high school students from the local communities, in order to expand the impact of the project and have a direct application towards education and awareness, especially around the local youth.

 

Participants of the workshop, representing different stakeholders such as tour operators, fishermen, coast guards, park rangers, researchers and children.

A secondary but not less important mission of this field trip was to give a profound (level 2 we call it) maintenance to the smart mooring system. This time we went with captain Keylor a good friend resident of the area that has evolved his business Ocean Dreams from sport fishing mainly. We rented the scuba diving gear to our friends of Cuajiniquil Dive Center, key partners of the project.

There were great conditions overall, great visibility, no wind, no rain. We encountered with the pleaseant surprise that the bottom temperature sensor was not completely overgrown by biofouling (biological communities growing on surfaces) as some of us suspected.

 

Cleaning the bottom temperature sensor

 

Cleaning the surface temperature sensor

We plan to return to this site in January 2024, hopefully with data of the cooling of waters that is common to this area, as a result of the influence of the Papagayo upwelling system associated with the dry season wind patterns.

We are soon to organize a level 2 maintenance for the system in Cahuita, within the next weeks. We are also very close of consolidating the first exchange of the network, there have been many contacts around the project, the interest is building... Stay tuned for more updates soon!

Pura vida