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Boat trip July 8, 2018

July 8, 2018

I played hooky for a couple of hours this morning to go on a boat tour along the Rio Puerto Viejo—the river that runs through the station. It was neat getting to see the river up close, since the banks are generally high and steep, and we saw all sorts of birds and other animals. But the absolute highlight of the trip started when we passed another boat going in the opposite direction. One of the other researchers on our boat called out Algo caiman? (Any caimans?) The captain of the other boat replied No, nutria. This sounded exciting and a bit odd, since I thought nutria were only native to South America. I discovered my mistake when we saw a river otter swimming alongside the bank in quick arches*. The captain swung our boat closer to the bank, and as we watched, we realized there were two of them.

They headed towards a large fallen snag near the bank, and as we watched, one of them surfaced with a fish and proceeded to eat it while sitting at the base of a tree just above the water.

* The big semi-aquatic rodents known as nutria in the US are apparently called copyu in Spanish. In Spanish, nutria usually means otter but can also refer to the fur of the rodent. I suspect this means the latter was marketed as an alternative to otter fur at some point.