Titicaca expedition: lago menor II, the massive mortalities

The water in the area is not anymore green but not yet clear

Today was a long day, early in the morning we went out to the lake near Puerto Perez, it seems that we are a little bit late, most of the frogs are already decomposed, the small sample of 106 dead frogs we collected yesterday were in very bad conditions, probably more than one week already dead. Today going to the south by boat we found some dead frogs, not so many as yesterday, the man from the boat told us that the birds ate the frogs and others just decomposed.

Dead frog found in the shore of the lake

Even that we found some frogs that were in the shore of the lake, and not just that, but also several dead birds and mostly juveniles, not sure about the reason of this but probably can be associated to this phenomenon? At the moment we just took some samples to analyze in the future.

one of the dead birds in the shore of the lake

We also wanted to know how was the situation in the center of the “lago menor”. For that we were diving in this area for some minutes and where a couple of years ago was common to see several frogs, we just found dead frogs, not so many as in the shore, and also these frogs were not so decomposed as the others and we think that these frogs have from two to five days that are dead and some of them even the same day. We think that probably these frogs were able to survive the weeks when the lake was with the problem but they died some days after.

Unfortunately we did not find any living frog in all this area, this is the first time we found 100% of the frogs dead, a couple of years ago we found in other area about 80% of the frogs dead, but never like this… we are not sure if there are still live frogs and we are planning now to monitor this area in the future to see if there were some strong enough frogs that were able to survive.

One of the forgs that were dead in the center of the lago menor

We also came back with more questions and concerns, but we also saw people and institutions that are interested to help with this situation and we really hope that we can work together to try to save this species in this area.

swabing a dead frog for BD analysis

Now we need to start analyzing the samples and the data and to see what are going to be the next steps and we think everybody has something that can do and we really hope that we can change this situation for a future for this species.

Titicaca expedition: lago menor, the massive mortalities

Collecting the dead frogs in the Lago menor

Today we were working in the lago menor side of the lake, our first two localities were not so different than before, even in one of the localities the water was not green anymore, but we noticed a big amount of zooplankton in the water, probably a normal situation after an explosion of phytoplankton.

We were travelling a lot to try to cover different areas and at the end of the day we went out by boat just some minutes and when we arrived to a spot of 3 meters by 2 we were able to find in less than 5 minutes 106 dead individuals, this with almost no effort just getting with the net the frogs that were floating in the surface of the lake, but we also noticed that there were much more individuals under the vegetation, but we did not take all these animals because was almost night.

Some of the dead frogs in the lake

With the samples we are collecting until now we saw that this event caused the death of these frogs from 5 to 10 days but the villagers told us that before there were much more but they took out those because the smell was very bad. From all the dead individuals we found we carried out some post-mortem analysis and we found that most of the dead frogs were females with eggs and in several cases the frogs had a not normal muddy substance as gut content.

Taking out the dead frogs

We are trying to collect as much samples as possible for future analysis and to try to understand what is causing this problem that it seems that is associated with the water that arrives in the rivers of the region every rainy season. But talking with the people here they say that is the first time that this happens at that scale. Also for us it was impressing to see that amount of dead frogs and even we saw in the past several deaths, we never saw at this scale.

Postmortem analysis, several females with eggs

Tomorrow we are going to start working with the boat in the area to see how the situation is; also diving in the area to see how is going in the open areas where normally the frogs are also present.

Working with the postmortem analysis

Today we were working in the lago menor side of the lake, our first two localities were not so different than before, even in one of the localities the water was not green anymore, but we noticed a big amount of zooplankton in the water, probably a normal situation after an explosion of phytoplankton.

We were traveling a lot to try to cover different areas and at the end of the day we went out by boat just some minutes and when we arrived to a spot of 3 meters by 2 we were able to find in less than 5 minutes 106 dead individuals, this with almost any effort just getting with the net the frogs that were floating in the surface of the lake, but we also noticed that there were much more individuals under the vegetation, but we did not take all these animals because was almost night.

With the samples we are collecting until now we saw that this event caused the death of these forgs from 5 to 10 days but the villagers told us that before there were much more but they took out those because the smell was very bad. From all the dead individuals we found we carried out some post-mortem analysis and we found that most of the dead frogs were females with eggs and in several cases the frogs had a not normal muddy substance as gut content.

We are trying to collect as much samples as possible for future analysis and to try to understand what is causing this problem that it seems that is associated with the water that arrives in the rivers of rthe region every rainy season, but talking with the people here they say that is the first time that this happens at that scale. Also for us it was impressing to see that amount of dead frogs and even we saw in the past several deaths, we never saw at this scale.

Tomorrow we are going to start working with the boat in the area to see how the situation is; also diving in the area to see how is going in the open areas where normally the frogs are also present.

we hope that with this people and authorities will realize about the real problem we have here in the lake and that the change will come.

Titicaca expedition, in the lake, the lago mayor, the massive mortalities

Now from Titicaca Lake, after our first days we are working in different areas of the lake. We decided to work first in places we knew the populations of Titicaca water frog were doing well and where previously were no problems. We decided this for biosecurity reasons, because it will be very difficult for us to clean and disinfect all our equipment and diving gear in a short term. So if we move from places with less risk to others with more we think will be better.

A frog in the lake, in the Lago mayor side

 Well now our first observations, at least from the locations of the Lago mayor of the lake we found that there is no a visual change in the water, also with the analysis we did with some parameters such as ammonium, nitrite, phosphates, all of these parameters were the same as the previous months, also with the temperature, we saw in our data that there is nothing different or special.

Just in case we took different samples such as subtract of the bottom of the lake, water, different aquatic organism, all these to analyze for possible pollutants.

monitoring the frog populations in the lake

Now about the frogs, we did not see any difference, the numbers of frogs in the areas we were working were the same, also the numbers of dead frogs that we normally find where the same, so nothing special, we even saw different clutches with eggs of the frog developing very well, we did not see just one but several clutches that in the case there was something wrong with the water they would be dead.

an egg of Telmatobius culeus in the lago mayor

So for now we can say that in the side of the Lago mayor there are no massive deaths of frogs. Tomorrow we are going to start to work in the Lago menor of the lake where the deaths were recorded by the media and then we will have a better idea how is the situation over there.