Off the Beaten Path: The Invasion of the Water Nymphs
At the end of November, a video popped up in my Twitter feed. It is from a Channel 4 news report in El Salvador. I had to watch the video twice. The images are startling! For two weeks in November, not a single fishing boat nor tourism boat had been able to go out on Lake Suchitlán due to an invasion of ninfa, or water nymphs. Watch the video, then read a little bit more of the story... Invasion of the Water Nymphs Now that the words "invasive species" have a whole new creep factor for you, we can dig into this story a little more deeply. Let's begin with a map. The head waters of the Río Lempa (Lempa River) are located in Guatemala, where the river is called Río Olopa. The water flows through Honduras and then into El Salvador, where it meanders west before turning south and flowing into the Pacific ocean. The blue area on the map shows the watershed for the Río Lempa, which includes mountainous regions, agricultural zones and urban areas. Lae Suchitlán is