Rio Lagartos that isn't

     Friends and I recently visited Rio Lagartos, the name of both a town and a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in eastern Yucatan. The Spanish name means "Alligator River," but as Ismael Navarro, owner of Yucatan Ecotours, told us, there is no river and there are no alligators here. The body of water along which this little town sits is an estuary of the Gulf of Mexico, with relatively little fresh water,

and its large carnivorous reptiles are actually New World crocodiles.

(If I had been a sixteenth-century explorer, I would not have wanted to get close enough to tell the difference, either. These creatures have serious teeth.)

    To norteamericanos, the reserve is perhaps best known as a nesting site for flamingos, but the area has been inhabited by humans for a long time. Ismael and his son Angel, who was our guide for a fabulous boat tour through a variety of ecosystems, gave a bit of the human history along with outdoor education. The Maya named what is now Rio Lagartos hol k’óoben-"entry to the kitchen"--or literally the three stones marking the boundaries of a cooking fire. The nearby salt lagoons supplied much of this part of the peninsula, and the Gulf and the estuary teem with fish and other marine life even today. Isla Cerritos, now a nesting area for birds, was the fortified site from which the Maya of  Chichén Itzá controlled the trade routes for salt and other valuable substances. This sleepy little town was an important place.

    And it still is. Besides flamingos and crocodiles, the biosphere reserve is home to dozens of species of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and nearly 400 species of birds. (No one seems to have counted the insect species, but there are lots of them.) Endangered loggerhead sea turtles nest here, as do magnificent frigatebirds and wood storks, which in my Florida girlhood were nearly extinct. 

Wood stork photo courtesy of Kate Fitzgerald

And while we did not get to the nesting colonies, we did see a couple of quite handsome flamingos.

    A particular delight for our little group is the fact that so many people in the village have embraced ecotourism. Nature guiding seems to be a growth industry here, with local young people learning the rich natural and cultural heritage of their region--and graciously sharing it with those of us lucky enough to visit.

Their lives go on

     Waking this morning to the news of yet another war started by humans, it was comforting to see a squadron of pelicans sailing overhead as if nothing had changed. 

In their lives, most likely, nothing has, though at least one  commentator has stated that Putin's aggression "changes everything" and that "we are in a different world now." It is probably more accurate to say that humans are in a different world now, a world in which the uneasy peace of the last thirty years seems to have ended and which more resembles the violent world that our species has created for far too much of its history. We have not generally been a nice species. 

     Here in Yucatan, the life cycle is beginning again. Birds, like this pair of common black hawks at Rio Lagartos, are engaging in courtship behavior,

Photo courtesy of Kate Fitzgerald

and indeed, this pair mated in full view of human observers not long after this photo was taken. Hawk life must go on regardless of what humans do. 

     On Isla Cerritos, magnificent frigatebirds are giving up their riding of the air currents for at least a year to nest and ensure the next generation of these genuinely magnificent creatures.

Photo courtesy of Kate Fitzgerald

     In a city park in Merida, groove-billed anis are flirting and occasionally holding still for pictures.

     On the beach behind my rental apartment, Yucatan's melipona bees are gathering pollen, benefiting both plants and young bees.

     The rest of life goes on, doing what it does, regardless of the geopolitical machinations of humans (though war and other human activities are unquestionably bad for life forms other than ours.) This part of the world is full of reminders of rulers and societies that warred with each other, created monuments to themselves, and then vanished into the forest for a century or three. 

Worth remembering.

It's Different Here

 and I don't just mean the lack of snow and serious cold, though for those, I am profoundly grateful. This part of Yucatan has become a cruise destination, but it has avoided becoming the tourist hell of Cancun or Cozumel on ship days; nor has it suffered the degree of gentrification that keeps people like those I grew up with from living on the island where we spent significant parts of our childhoods. And even with a mandate requiring masks just about everywhere except directly on the beach, there are no yahoos blocking traffic, screaming at people, or threatening government officials (though a few locals, especially those whose front yard is the sidewalk, do occasionally sit outside without them, and the cruseros often have to be gently reminded of the rules and provided with masks by health officials on the malecon). 

    Besides, when the next person is perhaps a quarter-mile away, the chances of spreading infection are not great.

    It is also easy not to be obsessed with the human world. The creatures here have their own cultures, though some (particularly, it seems, the pigeons) make use of us. The male grackles hold Very Important Meetings every morning

and sing from every available perch. Sometimes they engage in handsome-grackle standoffs.

    And the beach dogs (not to be confused with the sometimes-pitiful street dogs) seem to have their own culture and hold their own meetings.

And sometimes the morning light is a reminder to stop, and breathe, and be glad.

Gifts from the Sea

     A wild Norte that lasted for something like 36 hours ended with a  clear, cool morning and a very low tide, a perfect time for beach walking.

It was also, evidently, the perfect time for something else, as the exposed sand flats were hosting several people busily gathering something and placing the items in buckets and reinforced bags. (If you look closely, you can see a person in this photo.)

Remembering what was called the shell-hunting posture from my long-ago Florida youth, when one of my jobs was collecting particular species that washed up so that the shells could be sold in the gift shop owned by my mother and aunt (no one suspecting in those days that such creatures could become endangered), when I ran across someone close enough to engage in conversation, I had enough Spanish to do exactly that.

    As I suspected, these folks were gathering molluscs, particularly the conchs washed in by the Norte's high tides, but not for their beauty or tourist value (though the variety most commonly found on the beach here is a lovely and non-endangered member of the conch family). Instead, they were harvesting what would be very expensive seafood if purchased in a restaurant. My informant's plan for his was ceviche, the ubiquitous Latin American dish of raw fish or shellfish cured in lime juice and spices. (Not something I eat, having heard too many stories of parasites lurking in such things, though most people here seem to consume the stuff without a problem.)

    These particular conchs were doomed, having been stranded in a place where getting them back to their sea-bottom habitat was not among the choices. I suspect that the people who have lived on this coast for the last few thousand years have always viewed the post-storm conch inundation as one of the sea's many gifts.

    

    

A useful lovely

Wandering the beach road a couple of days ago, I noticed this lovely thing in bloom.

 There is a lot of it here, and it makes quite an impressive showing along the dunes

in addition to being popular with pollinating insects.

While most insects would not cooperate by holding still long enough to be photographed, these seaside shrubs were attracting a fair number of skippers, the first of these little butterflies I have noticed here in Progreso. And while I was unable to get a closeup of bee fannies on this particular species, I did see what appeared to be the stingless Melipona bees of the Yucatan on nearby vegetation.

Obviously, a plant that can grow in pure sand, tolerate salt spray, and support insect life has a lot going for it, so obviously I had to find out what it was.

This lovely shrub is Suriana maritima, or bay cedar, known to the Maya as Pats'il. Common on this stretch of beach, it is listed as an endangered species in Florida, where unwise development has eliminated much of its coastal dune habitat. Fortunately, there is enough of it in the rest of its range that the IUCN lists it as a species of least concern.

It should come as no surprise that the inhabitants of this peninsula found ways to make use of a common plant that grows well without human interference. The wood of mature Pats'il is dense and heavy and was once commonly harvested for small items. The plant also found its way into traditional medicine as a poultice to treat infection and internally to cure dysentery. Research into its properties is ongoing at CICY, the Centro de Investigacion Cientifica de Yucatan, where contemporary scientists work with traditional healers to isolate the compounds that cure diseases and make them available to modern medicine.

Still, I can imagine long-ago groups wandering these seaside thickets to harvest this medicinal plant. (It's as good an excuse for a beach walk as any.)

This morning's discovery

 On this morning's beach walk, my companions and I came across this creature, deposited on the shore by a strong incoming tide.

    The orifice on the left side of its body in the photo above was opening and closing, so it was presumably still alive. A tender-hearted companion hoped to rescue the creature, but not knowing what it was, and some gelatinous masses of marine invertebrate being venomous, we were not about to touch it.  Eventually, she was able to move the mystery organism with her flip-flop, but every time it was successfully moved into the water, a wave brought it back onto the sand, and we finally gave up and left it to its fate (which on this stretch of the Yucatan coast probably involves being eaten by gulls).

    A Google search identified the unfortunate creature as some type of sea cucumber, possibly Thyone mexicana, the Mexican sea cucumber, though it was not in the best of health, several Gulf species look basically alike to me, and we did not measure it or check out the tube feet it supposedly has. For those unfamiliar with these creatures, they inhabit the floors of shallow seas and feed on whatever debris comes their way. Some do indeed have venomous defenses, so we were wise not to touch this unfamiliar being.

    Disgusting as sea cucumbers look (at least by human aesthetic standards), they have a number of predators, including crabs, fish, turtles, and the aforementioned gulls (when they find their way above water. What I had not known is that some species are being hunted almost to extinction because humans in many places (mostly China and South Asia, though the market is expanding) have developed a taste for sea cucumber flesh. A shocking-to-me statistic: dried sea cucumber meat is selling on the black market for over $200 a pound, and poachers have been known to attack legitimate fishing boats in waters off the Yucatan peninsula. 

    Having encountered the creature in the wild, and even without knowing the horrors involved in its harvesting, I have no desire to order it should I encounter it on a menu.

    Let's leave it for the sharks and sea turtles.

Sources for further reading:

How a Seafloor Blob Became Mexico's "Black Gold"

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/sea-cucumbers-mexico

A “Sea Cucumber Mafia” operates along the Yucatecan coast

    

Something I Did Not Expect to See

     Wandering the beach road shortly before sunset, I was drawn to a white blossom down at ground level. At first, I thought it was some sort of datura, but the characteristic overwhelming scent was not there, and the habit was wrong. This little beauty was a vine, intertwined with other tough plants digging their roots into wind-blown sand.

It did not occur to me that I was looking at a plant that has always defeated me when I try to grow it: Ipomoea alba, often called moon flower in the US. Yet another supposedly foolproof plant that has always refused to grow in my yard but was here doing quite well in an area that defeats most vegetation, salt and low fertility not generally being good things in the angiosperm world. 

    Moon flower is a close cousin of morning glory, but, as the name suggests, it blooms at night. Or is supposed to: this specimen was in full flower before sunset, yet another reminder that plants sometimes have minds of their own.

    My search for the mystery flower's identity led to something else I had not known: moonflower has been cultivated for many centuries in what today is Mexico. In more inland areas, it often grows in the company of rubber trees, and the Mayans and Olmecs used its sap to vulcanize natural latex into the first rubber. Not being in the habit of using wheels, as this part of the world lacked any animals useful for pulling carts, these earlier Mexicans used rubber to make the balls used in the sacred game of pok ta' pok. Courts where this ritual game was played are found at many of the temple sites found through Mesoamerica.

    I never expected to find a plant essential to ancient chemistry and ceremony on the path a few blocks from my apartment.