In November, as part of our Guest Scientist program, we brought otter scientist, Alejandro Valenzuela, from the Argentine National Parks with us to Isla de los Estados. He is the Argentine Otter expert and this would be the first otter survey of the island. The goal was to place cameras in places that had indications that otters were present – poop, dens, pathways, etc. Ale was able to place 5 cameras throughout the island with hopes of capturing the movements of the otters.
We are now back in the middle of January and we have started to check the cameras. So far we have visited 2 and whoa – some very cool photos. The first camera did not have much activity, but of the activity that it did have – there were 2 shots that were amazing. In case Ale is reading I’m not going to reveal what they were, because they are really cool and I want to see his reaction when I show them to him (perhaps its not a big deal at all, but it seemed super interesting to us). In the second place there were many many videos captured of one and sometimes two otters moving next to a stream and them getting into the stream. A few videos showed them “pawing” at the ground – I guess Ale will have to tell me what it means.
Its been super exciting to go and collect the videos and share them with everyone onboard. We have also collected 5 poop samples so far. One of our guests is a high school biology teacher and he helped us at one of the places and he was the one who found and collected the poop! We love to get everyone involved.
Today and tomorrow we will collect the videos from 2 more places. We then return in March to collect the videos again!!!
