Islas Murcielagos and Bahia Huevos
After ten hours of navigation through the perfect Hollywood thunderstorm, we dropped anchor off the beautiful Murcielago Islands, which are part of the Santa Rosa National Park established in 1971 and located in one of the oldest geological areas of Costa Rica: the Santa Elena Peninsula, where some rock formations are around the 80 million year old. This and the Nicoya Peninsula were part of the first big volcano that emerged from the oceanic crust to begin the raising of the Central American isthmus.
After lunch the ship moved to Bahia Huevos, where we took a Zodiac cruise through a small mangrove forest surround by tropical dry forest. Mangroves are a group of unrelated woody plants, so are not part of a precise taxonomic classification, but rather any tree that is able to grow in salt and brackish waters.
Living in such close association with salt water has caused the evolution of unusual traits among mangroves; these traits defined which species is able to grow closer to the water and which ones remain behind, further inland. Mangroves do not require salt, in fact several of them grow better in fresh water.
Dealing with salt water requires that the mangroves be able to handle the amount of salt in their tissues. There are three main ways: tolerating high concentrations in the sap, storing the extra amount of salt in older leaves before they fall, and finally having an active secretion from leaves and roots.
Among anatomical traits, the most striking ones are the unusual root morphology, such as aerial prop roots that arch from the trunk and branch into two or more roots. In addition to these are drop roots that descend from high up and branch into several groups. Such profuse and branched roots must provide support for the trees, but their main function is to assist aeration. Mangroves are truly odd trees and their reproduction system is not an exception: they have viviparous seedlings, where the seeds will develop into a small plant while still attached to the parental tree, when they fall in the water they can float for months until they find a suitable place to grow.
But the really important trait is the unusual marine habitat that they have become: sponges, oysters, barnacles, algae, baby fishes, crabs, lobsters, shrimps, octopi use the entangled root as a protected area or to feed. For many years they were cut down or burned because we thought they were swampy, stinky areas where nothing but mosquitoes abide. It has only been in recent times that the world has started protecting them, understanding that every ecosystem in this planet has a job to do in the perfect nature chain, and we should not decide which forests are more useful than others just because they do not look that pretty from our point of view.
After ten hours of navigation through the perfect Hollywood thunderstorm, we dropped anchor off the beautiful Murcielago Islands, which are part of the Santa Rosa National Park established in 1971 and located in one of the oldest geological areas of Costa Rica: the Santa Elena Peninsula, where some rock formations are around the 80 million year old. This and the Nicoya Peninsula were part of the first big volcano that emerged from the oceanic crust to begin the raising of the Central American isthmus.
After lunch the ship moved to Bahia Huevos, where we took a Zodiac cruise through a small mangrove forest surround by tropical dry forest. Mangroves are a group of unrelated woody plants, so are not part of a precise taxonomic classification, but rather any tree that is able to grow in salt and brackish waters.
Living in such close association with salt water has caused the evolution of unusual traits among mangroves; these traits defined which species is able to grow closer to the water and which ones remain behind, further inland. Mangroves do not require salt, in fact several of them grow better in fresh water.
Dealing with salt water requires that the mangroves be able to handle the amount of salt in their tissues. There are three main ways: tolerating high concentrations in the sap, storing the extra amount of salt in older leaves before they fall, and finally having an active secretion from leaves and roots.
Among anatomical traits, the most striking ones are the unusual root morphology, such as aerial prop roots that arch from the trunk and branch into two or more roots. In addition to these are drop roots that descend from high up and branch into several groups. Such profuse and branched roots must provide support for the trees, but their main function is to assist aeration. Mangroves are truly odd trees and their reproduction system is not an exception: they have viviparous seedlings, where the seeds will develop into a small plant while still attached to the parental tree, when they fall in the water they can float for months until they find a suitable place to grow.
But the really important trait is the unusual marine habitat that they have become: sponges, oysters, barnacles, algae, baby fishes, crabs, lobsters, shrimps, octopi use the entangled root as a protected area or to feed. For many years they were cut down or burned because we thought they were swampy, stinky areas where nothing but mosquitoes abide. It has only been in recent times that the world has started protecting them, understanding that every ecosystem in this planet has a job to do in the perfect nature chain, and we should not decide which forests are more useful than others just because they do not look that pretty from our point of view.
