Pacific-side locks

Tuesday and Wednesday of this week were spent in a new area (for me) of the canal expansion zone, where the new locks to the Pacific are currently being constructed. We were given a very short-term and site-specific permit to work in this spot, but our requests for a long-term, general permit are still unanswered. I'm 99% sure this has to do with the fact that at our usual localities the work we do is STRI- and University of Florida-specific, while at this new Pacific locks site our work will directly benefit the canal authority. We essentially did the work of the ACP geologists for them -- they had passed the site off to us because they had found a few fossiliferous beds, so why not let us just do all of the measuring and describing and hand over our data once we'd finished. We want to do whatever it takes to maintain good relations with ACP, so we take care of the occasional odd jobs they throw our way, but three months of dealing with their selective communication and permit-withholding is really starting to wear on me. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be for the long-term employees like Aaron and Jorge.

The highly productive layers were where you can easily
see the slanting of the bed. Also, the mud made getting
to and from the outcrop quite a challenge!

I really shouldn't complain, though, since it gave me a chance to go to the field -- in all likelihood those chances will be few and far between from now until the end of the internship. And the work wasn't too demanding or challenging, just a bit on the dull side. Sam and Jorge measured the section, which wasn't much thicker than 25 meters, while Pedro, Nicole, and I prospected in the invertebrate-rich beds. On Tuesday I felt like a kid in a candy store; no collecting had ever been done at this site, so the best layers were just overflowing with easily-removed, well-preserved surface fossils. In the few hours I spent collecting there was hardly a continuous minute spent searching, since I was able to just go from one fossil to the next to the next. I even found a fragmented fish tooth, which was something we had really been hoping, but not expecting, to find. (I should say that not ten seconds after my find, Nicole found one that was both larger and more complete; I swear, the fossil gods must frown upon me!) Even being highly selective I was able to fill up two sample bags worth of inverts, no problem. The usual post-fieldwork ice cream bar at the nearby MiniSuper felt particularly well earned that day.

Scallop.

Wednesday was a group-wide prospecting day. Nicole and I worked mostly in one particular layer that had been highly productive the day before, while Pedro, Sam, and Jorge wandered around a bit more looking for anything new. It's a good thing they did because Pedro found a sizable (maybe 10 cm across) piece of turtle carapace that led to the discovery of even more turtle remains in the same bed. By the time the afternoon rolled around, all of us were digging bits of turtle out of that layer. They weren't the prettiest fossils I've ever seen (they were pretty heavily weathered and fragile, so they went to pieces when removed from the rock, even when prepared with glue) but they were pretty abundant so I'm sure we ended up with some good ones somewhere in there. Having explored the entire area and not having any particular interest in the kinds of things we found there, we bid the site farewell in the mid-afternoon and decided not to return for the rest of the week (the duration of our permit).

I should say a bit about the work site, since it was actually pretty cool. We don't usually work so far south when we're in the canal expansion area, so I had never seen that part of the expansion project before. Things are a lot further along there than they are in our usual spots -- instead of just demolishing and clearing and moving rubble around, they've already entered well into the phase of constructing the actual lock system. Security was extra tight so we had to be escorted each day by a safety and a security personnel  This, combined with the much heavier traffic of huge construction vehicles, really drove home just how expansive and complicated the expansion is. It felt much more like an active and frenzied construction zone than the comparatively deserted areas where we normally work. As we drove in both days, we would be adjacent and roughly at-level with the existing canal and would then descend down some 150 meters into the completely dry bottom of the soon-to-be expanded canal, a bizarre experience to say the least. And down in the bottom were the beginnings of the lock support structures -- imposing cement columns that shot straight up out of the pit. Together they formed what looked like a kind of gauntlet  almost like castle walls from which would-be attackers would be showered with arrows and hot oil. It was definitely a cool back drop to be working under.