Day #2: USP Marine Biology Institute & Surfboards
Waking up came just as the previous day, sticky hot and loud nature. However, something was different. It wasn’t as hot and there was a different sound: waves in the ocean. It was a constant, wave after wave after wave. From my room, I could tell they were massive. Last night, there had been a thunderstorm, so today the ocean would be swollen and violent. After breakfast I went to the beach and turns out they weren’t as big as I was expecting, maybe the storm had passed only a little before, so the ocean wasn’t at peak potential, though it was still big. The plan for the day would be to go to the University of São Paulo Marine Biology Institute, otherwise known as CEBIMar. After that, Thiago would come to our house to show us how he builds the frame of the surfboard using plastic bottles, industrial glue, and a PVC pipe.
The Institute of Marine Biology is located more east of Maresias and closer to the port city of São Sebastião. For an Institute of Marine Biology, I was expecting something slightly less elaborate and smaller compared to A&M Galveston. Considering that the University of São Paulo is one of the best Universities in Brazil, so really anyone would think that. Boy, was I off with my expectations. Located six beaches to the east in a bend in the highway SP-55, sits the gate of CEBIMar, facing the canal that separates Ilhabela with the mainland. The entrance stands atop a hill, and past the bumpy and seriously uneven parking lies the first office, and the living quarters for scientists who do research and studies there. Everything is below a dense canopy and the floor is littered with moss and tiny fern plants. We met a woman named Simone, who worked in the front office, and she showed us around a little bit since most of the professors were in meetings talking about coronavirus. Since it had been closed for students, it was mostly desolate. She showed us the living quarters, and inside each room there was a bunk bed and a desk with enough space for two people. Very tiny, but it was enough. The entrance to the living quarters also had a sort of spiral staircase that led down to a medium-sized classroom filled with desks and chairs.
Entrance sign of CEBIMar
Whilst we were in the room we were greeted by Professor Luciano Douglas dos Santos Abel. He is part of the culture and expansion administration for the Institute, and we gathered some chairs and started to talk. We started talking about our project, what it was doing and how to spread out over many different topics. We started talking about coronavirus and politics, how the global economy was going to suffer because of it and how everything could be so much better. Right as we started talking about more tangential things, Dr. Augusto Alberto Valero Flores, the general director of the Institute and a specialist in genetics, walked in and apologized for being late as he was in a meeting about the shutdown of the University. We went over everything again and they were quite intrigued. Talking with Dr. Augusto had me practicing my Portuguese since he himself was Portuguese and I always have trouble with the thick accent. They both seemed very interested in the United States, asking questions about the politics there and practicing their English with us. We talked in that circle of chairs for about two hours, until Dr. Augusto had another meeting to attend and Luciano said he would show us around.
Us in the classroom with Dr. Augusto (Far Left) and Luciano (Middle Left)
Turns out the Institute wasn’t just those areas. Behind the front office there was a little plaza with a small cafeteria, and beyond that stood a staircase built from rock all the way down to the other buildings and two beaches. Here they had several different laboratories, some of them had their own tanks filled with starfish, sea cucumbers, sea urchins, fish, and I even saw a seahorse. There were boats in unused truck racks and in front of the main laboratory stood a black cat named Eggplant. The two beaches were named Praia Secreta (Secret Beach) and Praia do Cabelo Gordo (Beach of the Fat Hair). When Luciano told me the name of Cabelo Gordo, I let out a chuckle. It’s just a very funny name. He explained that the beach was named by the Portuguese in the 16th century, and in old Portuguese “gordo” didn’t mean fat, it meant oily. Apparently, to avoid mosquitos and blood-sucking flies, the natives would rub animal fat all over themselves, including their hair. So when the Portuguese arrived and saw their oily hair, they named that beach after it. The other beach, Praia Secreta, was also true to its name. Tucked away by dense, low grass plants it was maybe only 300m long and held a cove of water. In the cove closer to the channel was a weird looking contraption. From where I was standing I could see that there was an anemometer, but Luciano told me it was also used for testing water temperature and pH, etc.
Me looking at one of their tank
We went inside some more laboratories and saw some more things, most notably some alien-looking bugs kept inside glass capsules. After that we left to go eat lunch at home, because soon enough Thiago would come with his supplies and help us build the frame of the surfboard. After he arrived we got everything ready and my brother and I started doing what he told us to. He had two bags full of two liter plastic bottles that were sent to him by Nestle, and it was our job to count 42 of them into a pile.
Us separating the bottles for cutting
Thiago showing us where to cut the bottles
Me cutting bottles
Filling the bottles with air so that they become stiff
Half of these would cut and the other half would be used as combiners. To make the combiners we had to cut the plastic bottles into sort of hourglass shapes, except the bases wouldn’t exist. We did this sitting down in the grass, and soon enough there were a lot of black flies biting at my legs. I must’ve gotten close to twenty bites before I put on some repellent. After we finished cutting, the next job was to sand all of the bottles, combiners included. If we didn’t sand the bottles, then the glueing faze wouldn’t work. This was probably the part I thought was most tiring, because it was just the same movements for every single bottle. Not only that but it made a lot of plastic dust, and if you breathed it in it would make you cough real hard.
Once that was done we would finally get to the glueing part. We needed six stacks of bottles, each stack containing 4 complete bottles and 3 combiners. The glue we were using was industrial level glue that air dried, so if you got it on your skin (like me) it would stay on there for the next couple of days. After all six stacks had been made we glued them together and they formed a surfboard. One part of a surfboard that is essential to the way it performs in the water is that the front needs to be curved, so Thiago got a PVC pipe and half-melted it over the stove and then bent it to around a 25 degree angle. He put this rod in the middle of the board and then bent the bottles so that they fitted the board, and voila it was complete. All that was left to do was to wait for the glue to dry and clean up all of the leftover plastic. After that, Thiago left and the sun had set, so the only things left to do were to eat dinner and go to sleep.
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