Third week in Chile_Sarah Margolis

Sea lions in Tomé

This week I had a few new adventures. Over the weekend, I explored some places in/near Concepción. First stop on Saturday was Desembocadura. This is where Chile’s second largest river, the Bío Bío, meets the Pacific Ocean. On the drive there, we stopped on the side of the road for some bread, of course, and a local drink called “mote conhuesillo”. It is a sweet, cinnamon drink with a dried peach floating on top of a bed of cooked husked wheat. Why yes, it IS as odd as it sounds. Not exactly my cup tea, or should I say ‘cup of mote’ haha but it’s an important drink to the culture of Chile, so let’s just say I enjoyed the experience more than the taste :P. Desembocadura was very beautiful with many rocky outcrops and a steep drop into the ocean, making it a popular spot for surfers. Right now it is the beginning of winter because I am in the southern hemisphere, so I imagine Desembocadura gets a lot more crowded than how I saw it. After a quick visit there, we went to a fishing town along the coast called Tomé. The streets were lined with vendors selling fresh fish, crabs, sea urchins and more! My favorite part of Tomé was the gigantic blobs of blubber, the South American seal lion, laying on the beach and sitting in the waves. Adult females can reach almost 800 pounds!!

A view from the Parque Isidora Cousiño

On Sunday I travelled to an old mining town called Lota. My host mom used to take my sisters there almost every weekend when they were young, so I enjoyed sharing this experience with them. In Lota, we went to a park called Parque Isidora Cousiño. The park is the property of a very wealthy family that owned coal mines in the city back in the day. They had extravagant gardens with many exotic trees, plants and animals brought back from their worldly travels. Much of the park is along the side of a cliff overlooking the bay and ocean, but also extended down to sea level as well to incorporate a private beach into their already luxurious estate. On Wednesday of this week, a field trip with LSU brought me back to Lota to visit one of the coal mines owned by this family. The name of the mine is, El Chiflón del Diablo, translated as “Devil’s Blast”. This is the only coalmine in the world that has natural ventilation and extends almost 1000 meters underneath the Pacific Ocean. All of the coal was excavated by hand, and as many mining jobs are, the work was incredibly dangerous. Our guide told us that from the opening of the mine in 1857 until its closure in 1997, over 3,000 men had died down there. They depended on rats to sense inodorous gas leaks and would quickly follow the rodents if they saw them running. Children could start working at 8 years of age and if the man of the household died, like our guide’s father did, the children needed to take his place in the mine. Today, all of the tour guides are ex-miners, as tourism became a popular choice of work after the mine was shut down.

Getting lowered down into Chiflón del Diablo 

Enough with all of the fun, what’s work been like?? This week, the science folks and I were supposed to spend some time at the university and collaborate with other oceanographers in our field. Unfortunately, all of the faculty and students in the department were busy this week at a conference being held at the university. We changed our plans around a little and decided to attend the conference! Everyday there are talks about fisheries, conservation, biodiversity, plastics in the ocean, etc. The talks are all in Spanish with an exception of a presentation here or there... so we are all just trying to be attentive and follow along/struggle as best we can! This is actually my first scientific conference, so I’m thinking if I can power through one in a different language,  I’ll do ok with conferences in my homeland! One of my favorite talks, and one of the only ones I could understand, discussed the effects of microplastics on the diet fish at Easter Island. Easter Island is a Chilean territory over 2,000 miles off the coast of the continent. No plastics are produced there, but unfortunately due to its location in the Pacific along with ocean circulation, evidence of plastic use around the world is prevalent in its waters. In this study, the most abundant color of plastic found in the water samples was orange, however, when examining the gut content of fish, 80% of them had blue plastics in their stomach. Also found in their stomachs were small, blue copepods, a typical prey item for this specific fish species of focus. It is clear that the fish are mistaking the small microplastics for food and it is extremely unfortunate that humans are causing such deleterious problems for marine animals not only at Easter Island but all around the world. Reduce, reuse, recycle people!!! Anyways, tomorrow is the last day of the conference and we are also meeting with a faculty member to discuss modeling and fisheries- exciting stuff J  That's all for this week, chao!