Emily in Africa

The place I'm spending my time these days is Mombasa, the 2nd-largest cith in Kenya and located right on the coast with the most important port in East Africa - goods from as far away as Uganda and Rwanda will be brought here and shipped (literally) overseas. I'm actually quite removed from the hustle and bustle of the city -- I live and work on Bamburi beach, about 20 minutes north of Mombasa proper.

Officially, I'm working with the Wildlife Conservation Society's Coral Reef Conservation Project run out of a breezy office on a palm-tree lined beach, the way science is supposed to be done if you ask me! The people I'm working with are amazing and so is the project. It's only been a couple of days, but it looks like I will be working on organizing the fisheries data that the WCS has been collecting over the past few years and looking at how different fishing gears are affetcing biodiversity and catch at several sites along the Kenyan coast. I can't believe how much I've lucked out - people working on coral reef fisheries are pretty rare, let alone talented, motivated and fun people like the ones at WCS.

We go for lunch every day on the beach at a laid-back beach shanty serving up traditional Kiswahili food like beans, chapatis, rice, stews and a tasty little sugary peanut dessert called biali and fast becoming a favourite. The beaches are beautiful but what's most striking is the colour of the sky. It's a little overcast and sticky in the morning but by mid-day the clouds have burned off and it's the most beautiful blue I've ever seen.



If Christina (the fisheries person at WCS I'm working most closely with) and I aren't in the office, we'll be monitoring the fisheries landings. These are places where local fisherman will bring their catch in during the afternoon where we'll try to get our hands on as many fish as they'll let us to count what type of fish they're bringing in and how big they are. While they're only legally allowed to be landing medium-size fish, the site I went to yesterday on Mtwapa Creek uses illegal (apparently that means "only a suggestion" in Kenya) beach seines that bring in any fish it comes in contact with, from large barracudas to extremely undersized parrotfish less than 6 cms long. But it's the human side I hadn't expected. While we're greeted very nicely by the beach manager who keeps track of the economic side of things, it's still a battle in Kiswahili (that I don't quite understand) to convince them to show us the fish. The fish come onto shore in various grab bags, only some of which they want us to see. So we have to be very sneaky to try a see a real representation of what's coming out of the water.


The sneakiest of the sneaky are the Mama Katangas, the women who wait for the smallest unmarketable fish to fry up and sell on the street. They're not stupid and they know quite well it's illegal to have these fish so they try very hard not to let us see them. Even though we have no authority to confiscate the fish (and wouldn't even if we could), they still don't want us to see or let alone measure what they have. Which is a shame since this is likely what the real cost of beach seining is - wiping out the juvenile fishes which means in a few years there won't be many around to replenish the stocks. So it's important to see what the Mama Katangas have and Christina is quite intelligent about it and brings several large bottles of Coke and Fanta to share with the women while we're waiting around on the beach before the men bring in the catch. Then when they've got their share of fish, they seem to be slightly more willing to let us take a peek before they hustle it back to their frying pans.

It's so exciting being at the fish landings and I can't wait to do more next week. Not only is working on the beach in the middle of the day an efficient way to work on my sunburn, but it's also really neat to see the human side of fisheries and not just read about it. And holding all these dead fish or seeing them strung up on palm fronds like a necklace is pretty cool too. But I definitely have to work on my Kiswahili - aside from the niceties I get lost and fast. I also have to look up whatever "Siidi" means, which apparently is my name at the Marina Bay landing site. I guess "Emily" wasn't working for them. Anyways, next week will be landings on the South Coast (this week was the North Coast) and I can't wait to see more of the beaches...I mean, see more of Kenya.