Mark Grismer (UC Davis) and Robert Collison (UC Davis) were unable to stay until the end of the expedition, so the watershed group has changed its focus a bit. With the addition of Marion Wittmann (UC Davis), this group has begun a near-shore survey. Marion, Eliska, and students are boating around the perimeter of the lake to sample invertebrates, algae, water, sediments, and plants. This is expected to take three days to complete.

Photo: plant samples from near shore survey are identified, labeled, and packed safely for transport (Marion at right)

The large boat continued sampling for water chemistry, phytoplankton, and invertebrates in different parts of the lake. The afternoon winds came very early today, which made sampling a challenge.

Annie Caires, University of Nevada, Reno

The past few days have been a bit surreal, as we went out on the boat at night to help with a nutrient addition experiment as well as primary productivity measurements. Many of the students and researchers here had been up for around 30 hours by yesterday afternoon. Despite that, everyone appeared to be in good spirits, and all of the lab work (filtering) was completed after naps around the 40th hour. Very impressive; some great data should be obtained! The night on the boat was something that I will probably never forget. Working at night allowed for mostly calm waters. The night sky was beautiful and the lights from the villages around the lake sparkled on the shore. When the boat captains awoke from their naps, the party got started around 3 or 4 am, as they cranked up the music on a huge speaker on the top of the boat. Just after 5 am, the sun came up; also a memorable moment. Laughter fueled us for the rest of the morning.

The morning before we went out on the boat, I attended a meeting with teachers from the area at a school in Solola. It was great to be able to see the school and to meet with local teachers. Nancy gave a great talk on Lake Atitlan and basic limnological concepts. Afterwards, we broke up into groups to talk with the teachers. Although each group was supposed to discuss a specific limnological concept, it seemed as if all of the groups tended towards one theme: what was going on with the lake and how to decrease lake contamination. I was impressed with the passion that many of the teachers seemed to feel for cleaning up the lake and their desire to pass this information along to their students.

Photo: Annie (at left) in small group discussion with teachers

Although I feel that changing people’s habits around the lake and trying to come up with sewage treatment methods is a daunting task here, I came away from the teacher’s meeting feeling positive and realizing that public awareness of lake contamination sources is certainly increasing.

There has been a great deal of work accomplished to this point; however, it seems we could spend another month here and still not accomplish everything we would like to. And only another 3 working days left! Venga, con prisa!

Clint Davis, University of Nevada Reno and Desert Research Institute

Spent the day catching up on rest after a marathon Friday night/Saturday AM sampling event. Previously I had spent Friday AM sampling on the beach near the Hotel San Buena Ventura, basically attempting a pilot experiment, so to speak, to attain metabolic rates of attached algae in the eulittoral area. Looked to be mostly Cladophora spp. (green filamentous), which appears to be quite common around the lake. Unfortunately I have not had time to work up/process the data collected from that experiment, as I joined the nighttime sampling in the middle of the lake. We had several objectives that included: 1) test newly-acquired rope/weight system that would immediately be deployed for the next 2 objectives; 2) primary productivity measurements at 13-15 depths spanning the epi-, meta-, and hypolimnion for the daylight period of Saturday; 3) nutrient bioassays to test for nutrient limitation (N, P, N+P, trace elements); 4) any additional plankton tows that we could fit in.

These assays required approximately 300 meters of rope to be deployed, which takes some finesse. We did not have buoys, so were using improvised hard plastic containers instead. Due to the high ‘traffic’ across the lake, it was decided to sink these a bit to avoid vandalism. Hydroacoustic tags were attached to both ropes to help with relocation at a later time. I would expect it is definitely a little dicey attempting to pull off an experiment like this in a large, deep lake. Overall, things went well. Spirits were high all around, despite slow progress. By mid-AM Saturday (2ish am), laughter filled the boat, as sleep-deprivation set in. Managed to fit in a birthday celebration for one of the students, Monika, amongst the many other tasks. I’d say my favorite moment was right at dawn. Everything seemed to quiet down for that transition period, and I took a moment to take in the surrounding landscape. . . volcanoes, twinkling city lights, and of course, the mirror-like waters of Lago Atitlan.

Phytoplankton: A Scientific Discussion

Jiří Komárek, University of South Bohemia, is the world’s leading specialist in the taxonomy, biology, and ecology of blue green algae, including the cyanobacteria that is of concern at Lago de Atitlan.

Jana Veselá, University of South Bohemia, is a graduate student working with Dr. Komerek. She studies diatoms, a common type of algae.

Photo: Dr. Komárek and Jana Veselá on the boat

Phytoplankton in the whole lake has more or less the same species composition, which corresponds to normal state of the large mesotrophic, similar reservoirs. The dominant species are Ceratium cf. hirundinella and Fragilaria crotonensis, one species of Dinobryon is codominant. These species are regularly distributed approximately to the depth 20-30 m, in lower layers their quantity decreases and in sediments are only the empty scales of diatoms and Dinobryon.

In the upper layer above 20 m occurs also a slightly developed community (comp. transparency) of other microalgae, especially green algae (Eudorina sp., Planktosphaeria gelatinosa, Oocystis parva, Oocystis sp., Elakatothrix sp.), diatoms (several morphotypes of the planktic Aulacoseira), one small species of Peridinium and (not “water-bloom”-forming) cyanobacterium Aphanothece (Anathece) microscopica. This community is almost completely missing below 20-30 m (light conditions, and evidently after the predation pressure of zooplankton, which is common in lower layers).

The presence of the green alga Botryococcus cf. braunii (from Trebouxiophyceae), which can potentially cause a small “water bloom”, is remarkable. The same composition of phytoplankton is developed in the bays, but sometimes with higher quantity of some species from the same community, e.g. Ceratium and Fragilaria in the vicinity of San Juan, or Aulacoseira (as well in various modifications) near Santiago Atitlán. Solitary cells of littoral diatoms also sometimes occur here.

The vegetation of potential “water bloom” forming cyanobacteria is particularly important. Lyngbya robusta occurs very sporadically in the whole reservoir, including the lower layers in the centre of the lake. The filaments are in a good physiological state. L. robusta was found very rarely also in both bays, but only sporadically. Not any filament or hormogonium of this species was found in the bottom sediment in the bay near San Juan. However, numerous hormogonia (not vegetative filaments) of this species were found in the samples from the bottom near the shore at Hotel Atitlán. More attention to this fact is recommended.

Solitary colonies of Microcystis occur in the whole lake. It seems to be a special, morphologically distinct population from the vicinity of M. aeruginosa – M. botrys. In contrast to Lyngbya, it was evidently found in higher quantity in the bay of San Juan, where its population formed small “water bloom” in the samples. We will try to transfer the both species into cultures for further experiments.

Photos: cultures and samples ready for transport

Emily Carlson, UC Davis

Tina showed up, and I am glad to have the help. Now that more samples are coming in daily, we have some catching up to do. The students have all been great; they are quick learners and are eager for any task. A large group went out last night for a night cruise, despite the pouring rain and lightning. Thankfully the storm had abated by the time they got the boat loaded and shoved off. I can't wait to hear how the overnight cruise went - they'll be bringing me back tons of samples to process. Our days in the chem lab will be full from here on out! But I couldn't have picked a better local to set up a lab in a hotel, that's for sure!

Marion Wittmann, UC, Davis

Alan Heyvaert (DRI) and his wife, Ellen Levy , and I arrived at Lago de Atitlan a few days after everyone else and what we found when we arrived was incredible. There is a world here that is powered by the sheer energy and motivation of ~50 of the most amazing and dedicated people I have ever been around. First time in my life I have been immersed in such a positive and truly fantastic place. It is good.

We came to the Reserva on Thursday April 15, where we found at least 30 of our teammates sitting around a table discussing the day’s activities and plans for tomorrow. It was clear that energies were very high and also very positive despite how tired everyone was—3-4 hours of sleep per night seemed to be an optimistic average! Everyone had been working quite hard for some days now, to set up the laboratory, to get the field sampling started, to get logistics sorted out. The Guatemalan students have been a huge part of all of this—interested, engaged, hard working. I have never seen such a group of people who are so upbeat, and so genuine about pursuing this science, inspired by conservation. It’s really emotional for me to see this. And really uplifting.

So the day after we arrived we went out for the paleo-limnology portion of the field sampling. This is Alan Heyvaert’s expertise, and so he showed us all how to put together a sediment core and to collect materials from the bottom of the lake. We travelled out to the deepest part of the lake and were able to successfully grab 3 cores from approximately 310 m depth. I have never done anything like this, so it was great to learn the technique and to have success in the first run! It is exciting because there are diatom and cyanobacteria researchers here from the Czech Republic—colleagues and friends of Eliska. They have interest in these cores, and are now pursuing communications and ties between DRI (Alan) and their university. VERY INTERNATIONAL! And VERY COOL.

I also cannot begin to describe the science powerhouse we have here. We have world experts in multiple fields that are completely engaging in their work on this lake. It’s like an all star team. Every time I sit down for a meal, I am sitting down next to someone who is intensely smart, and who truly loves what they do. I feel like we should all have team jerseys…Team Atitlan, or as Bob says, The Army of Atitlan! Woot!

This lake is very interesting in the sense that the afternoon winds, or chocomil, come up like clockwork…about 2 pm every day and it’s time to get off the lake because of this. It is pretty wild to see a different style of lake—there are fishermen, small boats, large boats, but all is very casual in comparison to Lake Tahoe. More on this later. I still am in the process of soaking it all in.

One cool thing is being able to be out on the lake with Bob Richards…a legend from Tahoe—the former boat captain for the Tahoe Research Group, and the namesake for the research vessel that I have gained my “lake legs” on, and I, and all the students here are getting the chance to learn from him. Amazing.

Photo: Bob Richards (right) on the boat with Javier (who, like Bob, seems to be happy all the time!)

Off the lake, yesterday was a very important day for our research leaders—there were three major events—a meeting with the teachers of the area, a meeting with the ambassador’s office, and also a meeting with local NGO’s and other government representatives. From all accounts, it sounds like everything went fabulously! Our respective teams worked their magic on all fronts. From what I hear, there were 100 teachers, all broken up into five groups where they were able to talk limnology, ecology and voice general concerns about the state of Lake Atitlan, this watershed and how they can help. I think it’s so amazing that local community leaders are ready to jump to action. I think that it is this kind of spirit that helped Lake Tahoe, and it is certainly alive and well here. The meetings with the government officials, NGO’s and other local groups also seemed to have gone really well. I caught the tail end of one of them, where Sudeep was communicating ideas about what works and what doesn’t work in terms of lake management, ecology, and the link of these issues to human and social needs. He was encouraging the consideration of ecology, the community, and impacts that these thoughts will have on future generations. What he said was well received, and I think it made an impression.

The team was recently out night sampling. We wished them off at 10 pm last night, and this morning I watched their boat (Mariner’s wife style) from the balconies at the Hotel Atitlan. They are scheduled to arrive back at noon! At which point we will relieve them and retrieve the experiments they had placed last night. There were five different collections and experiments being conducted between about 20-25 people on the boat! PPr, a bioassay, another experiment that Jessica (ASU) was running, ammonia, and other water quality sampling on behalf of Margeret Dix and her husband Michael Dix.

I am worried about the group because they were attempting to set a few lines, by mooring them on the bottom—these lines must stay out for four days for Jess’ experiment. They are using pingers in case the lines get carried away by the infamous chocomil. Our luck has been so great since we’ve arrived, that I’d bet that the lines will stay! Fingers crossed.

One last thing…we are staying in the most amazing hotel I’ve ever been to. Cheers to Alberto Rivera for supporting our group in such a luxurious way. How would we make this work without the kindness of so many people?