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.