Emily in Africa

This weekend was a 2-day field trip with the whole office to Kisite Marine Park down south on the border with Tanzania for the annual monitoring survey. It’s a beautiful site and we had a great time…complete with adventure on the high seas. After a 3 hour drive from Mombasa via the infamous Likoni ferry, we arrived in town and was immediately told by the warden that she hadn’t been called ahead of time and we would have to go home. Which was a slight problem since we were supposed to use her boats, gas, permits, etc. Serious problems. So after she refused to change her mind (other issues apparently), we rented a big wooden sailing boat that usually takes out tourists and today was taking out marine biologists. But more importantly, it was a BIG step up from the small motorboat that would have had some staying-afloat problems if we had taken it through the waves we went through on the first day.

These two days were the “substrate” days which involved a lot of measuring coral cover, herbivory and sea urchin predation. I got to have the funnest job which involved the urchins. Now, you might not think this would be fun, and I must admit, I had my doubts. Not only did I have doubt, but I had childhood trauma too! When I was 9 I went snorkelling for the first time ever and after putting my head in the water, refused to go on because of the spiny sea urchins that I was convinced would swim after me and poke me with their posionous spines! I’ve always had a large aversion to sea urchins since then and I wasn’t entirely sure of the idea of touching them…

Luckily, this field work turned out to be good therapy. Not only did I get to touch urchins, but I got to kill them too. And in a really painful way -- OK, so even though they can’t really feel pain, they certainly didn’t look very happy. In order to see how many fish are on the reef, you punch a hole through the sea urchins, string them up with fishing line like christmas ornaments a tie them onto the reef. Then you leave them overnight and come back the next morning to see if there is anything left. Apparently this is a good way to see how many big fish there are, but I just think it’s a lot of fun.

But the adventure doesn’t stop with sea urchins. We went on “springs” tide which means that it’s the biggest difference between high and low tides. And tides are big here in the first place – about 2 meters is normal but springs kicks it up to 3.9, 4 meters – which is like 12 feet!

So because we were late getting out to the site on the first day, we ended up being there high tide which nearly drowned us, well not really but there was a LOT of water – you couldn’t even see this huge boat when a wave was in front of you and it felt like being in the middle of a very very big ocean. But then you’d duck your head underwater, see where you had to tie up your sea urchin and wouldn’t really worry too much about it.

We spent the night in the little town called Shimono and stayed in some little “bandas” (Kiswahili for store/cottage/building/etc – I think it loosely translates to “will likely stay up for the night but likely no running water”). But dinner was at a fancy hotel on the sea where we were served up grilled fish, chicken and local delicacies of scouma (spinach), walli (coconut rice) and french fries (ok, not really a local dish, but still tasty!). Then I stayed up much too late chatting with people from the office about local NGO politics before finally making it back to our bandas in the dark and only tripping over one very pregnant goat.

So after the adventure of high day the day before, we decided on the second day to aim for low tide…And do I ever mean LOW tide -- there was maybe 6 inches (usually less!) of water over the corals we were supposed to be working on, which would be nice on a calm day but there were just loads and loads of waves smashing into you and pushing you onto coral. Nasty and very frustrating – it wasn’t a good day but I feel much more battled-hardened now, and I even have the coral wounds to prove it. And it helped that I got to work on my tan too. And yes, I do mean tan and not sunburn for anyone who was wondering (Joan!)

So that was the excitement of two days in Kisite – and I won’t even start to tell you about the flat tire on the ferry ride home! Have I mentioned its never dull around here? (No complaints, it’s the way I like it).