From left, Gloria Sihezar, Yelba Vega, Elda Araya, Lucía Ríos, Carolina Cano, Petrona Ríos, and Dinia Martinez on (a cleaner!) Playa Nancite. Photo by Roberto Fernández.
This past weekend, a new group of parataxonomists made the trek to Playa Nancite in Área de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG) to help with beach cleanup. This time, the group was all women. Following an all-male trip earlier this year, these women wanted a chance to see the beach and help with ongoing cleanup needed due to Tropical Storm Sara last November. Coordinated by GDFCF Science Advisor Roberto Fernández, the trip started with a night in the Santa Rosa dormitories and a talk by ACG Research Program Coordinator Róger Blanco on the history of ACG. The next day, the group — Petrona Ríos, Lucia Ríos, Elda Araya, Gloria Sihezar, Carolina Cano, Yelba Vega, and Dinia Martinez — hiked into the station (with a tapir sighting included!). Bright and early the following morning, they began the hot and tiring work of cleaning up the beach. They were dismayed by the amount of plastic waste they encountered. Considering the pristine nature of this beach, all the trash — a seemingly limitless amount — is washed up from the ocean. In the water, and on the beach, this plastic poses a significant threat to the environment, harming wildlife through ingestion, entanglement, and the release of toxins, while also contributing to climate change and impacting ecosystems. The team collected bags and bags of trash. You can watch a video of their reaction to the amount of trash here. This work at Playa Nancite is part of the overall effort to evolve the role of parataxonomists beyond the bioinventory work and align it even more closely with the ongoing and future needs of ACG.
Cleaning the beach early in the morning. Photo by Petrona Ríos.
Some of the mounds of collected trash. Photo by Gloria Sihezar.