Today was an exciting day, we had the opportunity to learn new material regarding Tortoise preservation in the Galapagos. We began with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in the local national parks. Unlike the majority of visitors to the Islands, we were able to work with the tortoises directly in order to measure crucial data and used to monitor the tortoise populations in the El Chato and La Torta National Parks. This data will be used by the national park rangers to track migration patterns and population data. At the start of our adventure, we worked with park rangers – Manuel and Freddy – to learn more about the landscape and how to handle the animals during the measurements. With each giant tortoise, we learned about tortoise anatomy and we documented curve length and curve width of the carapace – top shell, aperture – distance between plastron (shell-like material on the stomach) and carapace, length of the plastron, and learned to identify gender based traits such as the tail length and curvature of the stomach. While in the parks we collected tortoise dung samples so that we can learn more about what they eat in their ecosystem. In preparation for analysis tomorrow, we prepared our dung samples by rinsing and sifting the dung through a set of strainers so that we can ultimately identify seeds and small pieces of plastic. As a group we looked at and discussed the data, comparing the information from the two locations and possible implications. We concluded our day by learning more about the geographical and ecological history of the Galapagos Islands.
