Richard Mucci, M.D.  Amazing Amazon

Richard Mucci MD gave an interesting and entertaining travel talk of his recent trip to the Amazon. He gave some interesting statistics such as the Amazon puts over 500,000,000,000 ft.³ per second into the Atlantic Ocean.

 

This adventure began at Manaus, a former thriving center of the rubber trade before synthetic materials replace this native grown commodity. Most of his trip was spent going up and down the Rio Negra River, one of the "black"Rivers of Brazil, its color being derived from all the leaves that settle to the bottom giving it a very dark color due to the large amounts of tannic acid. Because of this tannic acid, mosquitoes cannot breed in this water in this area of Brazil which is remarkably free of malaria. The “white” rivers of Brazil are that color because of their rapid flow and the carriage of great deals of silt.

 

Richard had numerous pictures of vegetation, insects, mammals, and reptiles.