I will be adding to this page in the near future. For now, here is a taste of our trip.

The COTERC station is located on Cano Palma, a canal that joins the Rio Tortuguero.

This region in Costa Rica is one of the wettest spots on earth and we were not disappointed. We got to see first hand how much rain can fall in a few days. The main station building came dangerously close to being flooded. The large amount of rain and standing water brought out many wonderful species of frogs.

The most successful means of catching fish turned out to be hand-netting in the shallow, flooded edges of the canal, typically at night. Here we found some surprisingly large specimens of Parachromis managuense, commonly called the jaguar cichlid.

P. managuense is readily identified by the shape of the lower rear portion of the preopercle. The red arrow indicates that P. managuense has rearward projection on this bone, unlike any other species of cichlid in this region.

 

More to come....