Porto Seguro, Belém, and parts unknown
Hello to all my supporters!
This last week has been a whirlwind of new friends, new research, and potential collaboration. I spent the last week in Porto Seguro, in the state of Bahia, at the 22nd Brazilian National Ichthyology Conference (XXII EBI 2017) getting a feel for the state of Brazilian fisheries research and meeting researchers from around the world.
The original intention was that I would meet Tommaso, my collaborator, thee. Unfortunately he came down with a bad case of rotavirus and wasn't able to attend. Despite that the meeting was excellent. I presented our prior work using the isotopic signatures in catfish otoliths (those are the fish ear bones I'm always talking about) to track their migration through the Amazon basin. This was the first time that there has been a symposium on otolith research in Brazil, and I'm glad Dr. Cristiano Quiroz de Albuquerque organized it. It was eye opening to see examples of work being done across Brazil, South America, and as far away as Portugal being done with otoliths.
The campus where the meeting was held was very pretty...and provided free hammocks to take a siesta under the palm trees. In fact the whole area is simply gorgeous. If you are ever looking for a great place to vacation outside the usual tropical places, Porto Seguro, and especially the neighboring town of Arrial d'Ajuda, are incredible. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who speaks English, but a working knowledge of Spanish or Italian will get you bye even if you don't speak Portuguese, especially in Arrial where everyone seems to have seen the world. Seek out the Italians (there are many of them here) if you want to find where the really good food is. Apparently the tiny nearby town of Trancoso is stunning...but when celebrities are in town they buy out all the good bars and nightclubs for private use, which can be a pain according to the locals. Leonardo DiCaprio was the latest culprit of this according to the word on the street.
Yesterday I landed in Belém, the capital of Pará state and at the mouth of the Amazon River, to meet with Tomasso about research. The size of the Amazon river is almost impossible to describe. The picture below was taken while we were circling to land. Despite being only the "smaller" outlet of the river I could not fit the width of the river into one picture...it was about 2.5 frames wide!! But, keep in mind, this is not even the Amazon river proper, it is the southern outlet of the river called Baia Marajó, which contains some water from the Amazon proper flowing south around Marajó island through the Canal de Breves, combined with the water flowing from the Tocantins river.
Tommaso is great! I'm so glad that you all were generous enough to support this travel. In one day we've been able to make more progress toward planning new research than we've been able to in months over email and Skype. We know for sure now that we have the ability to run a small, exploratory, study of sawfish teeth to try to understand when, where and why they move into freshwater using the chemical traces left in the layers of these growing teeth. So, we've already nailed down one productive output from this trip and have several other promising project ideas.
We will drive to São Luis tomorrow, an eight hour drive, to meet with another collaborator who has funding that might be applied to sawfish research or to other projects. I'll take pictures of the drive so you can see what the interior of the Amazon region looks like. We won't be driving through any pristine rainforest, this area has been heavily logged and settled for many years. São Luis is an island city on the Atlantic coast south of the Amazon River in the state of Maranão. I'll be sure to post pictures so you get to see that as well!
Thanks so much,
Jens
Below I'll post a few more pictures, just for fun.
The beach in Arrial
More beach in Arrial
Lotus flowers in front of a shop in Arrial
Moqueca is as specialty of Bahia, a fish stew made with coconut milk. It is served while still boiling very fast.
My new friend Miro and his drummer playing a gig.
...yes, I stepped in for a couple songs.
More of the rivers surrounding Belém from the airplane.
The city of Belém has improved the waterfront with a pretty impressive building that incorporates the old cranes.
The first thing we did when I got here was go to Cairu, They have many, many flavors of ice cream from forest fruits, most of which I have no idea what they are.
I got Bacurí fruit flavor, which I've been missing since I was last here. You can't really get it outside of Amazonia.
Sunset from the docks in Belém
The beer in Brazil is universally mediocre to bad...at least by Northwest standards (Imagine Mexican beers, with a trend toward sweeter and lighter). So, I was amazed to find that the new dock building has a brewery with an IPA that is quite good. It is brewed with a traditional Amazonian medicinal herb called Erva Chama.
This porter was very good. Cupulate (pronounced ku-pu-la-chi) is chocolate made from the seeds of the cupuaçu fruit, which is closely related to cacao. So, the beer is flavored with the cupulate nibs. It was very well done and the flavor is engaging and complex.
Today's sunset over the Baia de Guajará from the docks
