Delays, delays, delays...

I was wrong! I thought we had finally fallen into a routine here, but I was totally off base. Turns out we've just been working on an extended temporary permit for all of March, and now we no longer have access. Here's a rough rundown of the situation: For the past four years or so, the Smithsonian and the Canal Authority have been working together through a joint contract that expired the first of this year. Under that contract, the Smithsonian received some amount of funding (I have no idea how much) for the work they were doing and would have to submit regular reports detailing what had been found and where for ACP's use in PR, historical documentation, etc. The group I'm currently working with (run through the University of Florida) knew the contract was nearing it's end and in the months leading up to 2013 repeatedly tried to get things moving with both the Smithsonian and ACP, since we're the only ones who would truly be affected by delays. Both organizations assured UF that there would be no problems at all and pushed negotiations off until the new year. Well, we're now in the fourth month of 2013 and no new contract has been agreed upon. Supposedly we can still access the Canal on a day-by-day basis (or week-by-week if we're lucky) by getting special permission the head environmental engineer, but we haven't been able to reach her for the past two weeks. So until that changes, lab days and spontaneous field trips are forecast for the foreseeable future. I'm not terribly upset about this because I've taken responsibility for cataloging all of our samples on an online database and up until now have basically had no spare time to actually do so!