Sea Cave with Bats in Southwestern Costa Rica

After our visit to Campanario, we headed back to the Firestone Center in Baru, Costa Rica.  The route took us by the sea cave where we had previously done some work, so decided to give it a bit more attention, with installation of the ammonia sampler as well.  We only had to go into the chamber with the big bat colony once for this, so figured it would add a lot of data to our bat cave work without much bat disturbance and could just use red headlamp lights for the roost work.

First up is Guy with his contraption for automatic sampling of ammonia over the course of a programmable time frame.  This thing worked flawlessly in what can be called less than ideal conditions.

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Guy van Rentergem and the automatic ammonia sampler before setting it in place to it's thing

We also did more carbon dioxide sampling at various places in the cave.  

Don McFarlane and Guy van Rentergem near the cave entrance working on the carbon dioxide profile of the cave

And finally, the airflow.  It is one thing to have a set of numbers placed on a surveyed map which show things at this point or that point, but it is even better to have those numbers with an idea of why they are what they are.  By using smoke from a vaping machine that Guy created we could essentially map the airflow patterns and speed without introducing anything harmful to the cave environment.  

Guy van Rentergem working on the airflow map at the first low point in the cave.

And, well, that is going to have to be all for now.  I will finish blogging this trip after I return home as while it has been difficult at times to do so from here, after tonight it is impossible to add more.  But we have been to some pretty interesting places, and still have two days to go, so look for a continuation of posts in a couple days to catch up on the final bits from the trip.