Things. Can always. Get worse.

I’ve said it before.

But for some reason I keep thinking that (any minute now!) things will get easier and just fall into place.

I was all set to post a blog about yesterday’s field experience and how yet another piece of crucial field gear let us down (Spoiler alert: it was the winch! And that post is still to come). But after today’s misadventures, it seems like small potatoes…

BECAUSE TODAY OUR BOAT TRIED TO SINK.

It was super scary, and I’m currently drinking scotch, watching the sunset, and thanking my lucky stars that Benja and I made it home safely.

It’s possible I’m being a drama queen, but it’s also a damn scary feeling to be out in the middle of the lake with absolutely no hope of rescue. Historically the Big Upwelling Event occurs in the next week, so we’re trying to do daily sonde casts to track the temp changes. We got a late start today because…well, because of a lot of reasons. But again, that blog post is still to come. Suffice it to say that we were on our way back from a cast when all of a sudden the boat slowed considerably and started taking on A LOT of water. 

Floating fins and gas tank

We stopped so Benja could re-launch the sonde at Site 7, and while in the water, he had a quick gander at the underside of our 60’s era Zodiac. Our conversation went a little something like this:

Benja: HOLY SHIT.

Ellen: Say what now?

Benja: YOU NEED TO COME LOOK AT THIS. 

[Generally speaking, nothing really seems to get Benja riled up. But he had that crazy look in his eyes...]

Ellen: Really? I’m cold. 

[I had already taken off my wetsuit and didn’t really want to get back in the water. Don’t judge me…]

Benja: ELLEN. GET IN THE WATER.

Ellen: Alright (Inner monologue: Grumble grumble…; this better be worth it…)

So I put on gear and jumped into the water in my swimsuit. BRRRRRRRR…

... and saw that half of the bottom seam THAT HOLDS OUR BOAT FLOOR IN PLACE had come loose. The whole metal support for the floorboards was visible. That. Is. Bad…]

Theoretically Zodiacs cannot sink as long as there’s air in the pontoons. But since the seams don’t seem to be the strongest feature of our Jacques Cousteau-era vessel, there's no good reason to believe the pontoons have long to live either.

We made the executive decision to putt-putt back home, and we were both overjoyed and relieved to be back on solid ground again.

Nervous giggling...because we're terrified...

So now we’re down to one functional boat to share between 7 team members for the next 3 weeks.

This should be interesting…

Deep cast

We’ve been working 14+-hour days now for as long as I can remember, and TENSIONS ARE RUNNING HIGH.

I look around every once in awhile and try to spot the secret video cameras, because I swear we’re all unknowing test subjects in a warped study on human endurance. Turns out people need time off or they start to Lose Their Minds…or at very least start having vivid mental fantasies about, oh, I don’t know…forcefully pushing coworkers off boats, tripping people down stairs, or throwing their Kindle’s into the lake (just to name a few... off the top of my head…)

But as we say on Team Tanganyika, there is no punishment for mental crimes ;).

Sensing that I might be on the verge, Pete told me I could hang back from boat work yesterday and have a few hours off the water. But it was Deep Cast day and I really didn’t want to miss out since it’s an activity that has potential to be super cool. Or it would be super cool if JUST ONCE our gear would cooperate (SPOILER ALERT! Our equipment failed! Again! I know…it was a shocker to me as well since everything had been going so smoothly up until this point…)

So: the deep cast. Benja and Pete got a fancy new piece of equipment this year that can record temperature at Super-Deep Depths (the limit on most instruments is the intense pressure at depth). Again, casts are a good way to monitor the thermocline, see if upwelling is occurring (i.e., evidence of cooler water higher in the water column), and document changes in water temp since the last published study 8 years ago. 

So we loaded up our gear, pointed the boat west towards the Congo, and drove until we could no longer see land (~12km offshore). 

I’ll say that again: WE COULD NO LONGER SEE LAND (Have I mentioned lately how ridiculously big this lake is!). The weather was eerily (and very uncharacteristically) calm and absolutely perfect for the task at hand.

Yes, I am wearing the same clothes in every single blog post, because apparently I no longer care about personal hygiene.... It's tight quarters in the old Zodiac with all that Heavy Gear.

We finally arrived at our destination, Benja slowly lowered the instrument down to 1200 meters (!!!!!!!), and then it was time to bring it up with the winch. It became progressively harder as we took turns cranking away, and at some point we noticed the pile of metal shavings that accompanied the loud metal-on-metal screeching sound. It took THREE people (given, I wasn’t as much help as the guys here) FORTY-FIVE minutes to get it back to the surface, and that was the end of our adventure since further use would have likely irreparably damaged the winch. 

Sadly Pete lost his field hat, so he re-purposed some boxers for his last day in the field. He assured me they were clean...

After the cast, we intended to send the Niskin bottle down to collect water every 50 or 100m throughout the water column, checking the conductivity and filtering/collecting water for nutrients. Tanganyika is permanently stratified, so this part (while ridiculously annoying on some level, because it’s so tedious and physically taxing) is actually really awesome. Last year around 100m the water started smelling strongly of sulfur, and after a quick glance among my team members to identify the guilty party, I realized the stench was coming from the water. Pete said that water had been at that depth for over 1500 years (!!!), and THAT is incredible. 

This is from last year's collection since I apparently don't have a current Niskin bottle pic.

Alas, that task will have to wait for another day, and we reluctantly turned the boat around and headed home. Take home message: the lake is warming (sigh), and the thermocline is a’rising. 

Rumpelstiltskin? Benja managed to fix the winch with an old saw blade (appropriate technology!). Here he's changing out the wire on the spool.

Just the half of it

Now that our work in Mahale has finished up, it’s time to start field sampling in Kigoma! (I’m trying to be enthusiastic here (as evidenced by the careful placement of that exclamation point), but it’s actually really hard to be here after having seen the mostly-pristine beauty of the mountains). So after one very luxurious day of doing Absolutely Nothing (it was all I hoped it could be and more!), we fueled up the engines and inflated the boats and were back to the grind of collecting data.

Since we didn’t get a chance to get in the water before we left Kigoma the first time (remember all the residency permit issues early on??…), a boatload of work awaited us upon our return to reality. Step one was to hit each of our 12 sites for what Team McIntyre affectionately calls “Weeklies.” Since I’m “boat girl” during this event, for me it’s an exercise in sunburn, dehydration, and testing the limits of my bladder. 

Boat girl and water boy

Basically Benja and I hightail it to a site (Pete came along this week for good measure), and while we dangle a sonde off the side of the boat, Ben hops in and fills some syringes with lake water for me to filter onboard. He then free dives down to 15 feet and carefully places IER’s (Ion Exchange Resins) onto the benthos. 

IER's attached with some coated wire, zip ties, and rubber bands from the CFL mailboxes.

 

Tanganyika is special for many reasons, but The Big Question we’re trying to answer is how such a nutrient-poor lake is so productive and can support such high species diversity. It’s a real head-scratcher, but water sampling and IER’s tell us a weekly story of how many nutrients are out there, available for uptake.

The second big task was to get the thermistor chain in the water and recording the temperature of the lake at various intervals down to 120 meters. 

As a totally unrelated aside, I’d like to point out that at its deepest point, Tanganyika is over 1600 METERS. A MILE. Remember field day in elementary school when the gym coach made you run around the track 4 times? For whatever reason, that’s always been my mile-reference for life, and that’s a damn long way down.

Going back to the fact that this lake is nutrient-scarce, one of the hypothesized sources of nutrients is upwelling events that bring all the (good) stuff that has sunk to the bottom of the lake back to the top. Those events are associated with slight changes in temperature (deep water is cooler), and the idea is that we will be able to watch it happen by putting loggers at various depths and downloading the digital story.

 

We made it almost all the way to the drop location before Benja realized he didn't actually activate the loggers. Pete doesn't mess around when it comes to safety (as evidenced by his wearing of the PFD indoors...)

 

In a perfect world, you’d be able to slap a buoy onto the line that holds your NINE THOUSAND DOLLAR piece of equipment, but here in Africa that would be the equivalent of a giant neon sign saying “COME STEAL ME! I AM VALUABLE!!!” So there is no surface buoy, and the buoy holding the chain is sunk to 30 feet. It takes a GPS, a good eye, and a whole lot of luck to find it again (read: a miracle)…

Go time! Pete lowers the Super Heavy Anchor over the side, and I slowly lower the rope through a series of carabiners.

It mostly went well, and after following Ben’s advice to keep it simple, it’s in the lake, doing its thing, collecting data. Last year we celebrated our successful endeavor by jumping off a cliff; this year (since The Boss was along and didn’t want us engaging in life-endangering activities) I gave the guys knucks. Goooo, team.

Totally unrelated picture to this post, but I saw this boat out during Weeklies. Biggest life raft ever? Maybe...

Why we’re here

Previous field research for the Lake Tanganyika Ecosystem Project has been based out of Kigoma, Tanzania’s biggest port on the lake. But earlier this year, Pete and Yvonne were approached by The Nature Conservancy to assess our interest in a field collaboration with them, Pathfinder International, and Frankfort Zoological Society at Mahale Mountain National Park.

When Pete asked if Benja and I were game, the answer was a unanimous HELL, YEAH.

Mahale is probably the most remote and least-visited of Tanzania’s national parks, mainly because it’s so damn hard to get there. It’s mostly frequented by the insanely wealthy who arrive via airplane (rooms at the 2 nearby safari camps cost $1000/ and $500/night respectively) and adventurous Lonely Planet types who brave their chances with local $2 water taxis (not a typo. Actually TWO dollars…) and stay at the park camp for $30/night. Along with Gombe, the park is famous for its population of chimps (the largest in all of Africa!), but it’s also home to a host of all the other wild animals and plants people come to Africa to see.

The purpose of our involvement is to develop a baseline for what conditions are like in the nearshore community before the instigation of the Tuungane Project (the giant collaboration between the 3 entities).

The reason the Tuungane project exists is ultimately to protect this incredible place, since preliminary household surveys revealed depressing statistics regarding the villages adjacent to the park:

1.       Half the population in the villages is under 15 years old, and a virtual population bomb awaits (a large population coming up with limited resources to support them.)

2.       There are 6.7 people/family (that’s the highest in the world…).

3.       130/1000 children born since 2006 didn’t survive until their 5^th birthday.

4.       The villages have poor access to health care, and family planning is virtually non-existent.

5.       Household income comes from farming and fishing, and herein lies the problem:

Farmers clear the surrounding forest of trees to make plots for growing crops. Deforestation leads to increased sedimentation, and all that loose sediment ends up in the lake. Extra sediment covers the algae growing on the rocks that supports a large number of the grazing fish species (and the rest of the greater food web) and chokes out fish breeding sites. Fewer fish that can’t breed = fewer fish in the ecosystem = fewer fish to catch.

So they cut down more trees to make bigger plots of land to grow more food (a dangerous and unsustainable spiral).

I’ve heard this story before, as it’s a pretty common phenomenon worldwide. But even though I’ve read about it, it broke my heart to actually see it. We picked research sites inside and right outside the park, and the difference was astounding.

So our role is an important one, and it feels really great to be part of a team that will hopefully have a positive impact on this gorgeous piece of paradise.  

And over the course of 13 days, it’s become one of my favorite places in the Whole Wide World. I honestly don’t know where to begin, but here are a few of the wild events that became the new “normal” for us during our stay.

1.       Animals. Everywhere. All the time. Baboons on the roofs of our bandas, stalking and encircling us while we ate our meals outside, and chasing each other through the camp. Warthogs and bush pigs digging through the garbage heap outside the kitchen. Hornbills and kingfishers, vultures and herons, and countless other birds I couldn’t identify doing flyovers and fishing while we worked. Duiker and dik dik and mongoose silently maneuvering through the forest.

2.       Two hippos set up shop on the beach where we launched our boat each morning. We gave them a wide berth when taking off for work, and they (fortunately) never gave us any trouble.

3.       CHIMPS came down to the water and curiously watched us work collecting specimens for stable isotope analysis. Another small family group was waiting for us at the boat launch when we arrived at home one night after a long field day. We followed them through the forest in our wetsuits…

4.       Water cobras swam with us each day and mostly just tried to avoid us. Spottings are a Very Rare Phenomenon in Kigoma, but here they were spotted by multiple team members on any given day. They Are Awesome.

I probably wouldn't be so calm if this one wasn't dead. He got caught in a gillnet, and we took the opportunity to sample him for the stable isotope food web (and look at his fangs up close).

5.       The cichlid community was larger in size, occurred in higher densities, and was more diverse than anything we’d seen previously. It was pure bliss getting to swim and observe all of the incredible fish that live in the protected paradise of Mahale. I never want to get out of the water…

This picture doesn't do it justice, but it's all I have at the moment. It's a giant emperor cichlid (the biggest cichlid!) at 10m, and I've never seen any this big.

6.       CROCODILES! I never saw one of these, but one of our study sites was the place the park takes visitors when they want to guarantee a croc siting. Pete spotted one during a night dive (Our Fearless Leader takes wild chances at times…), and the WSU team saw a little guy before they started their diving for the day.

Our fearless leader...

Calling it a day and heading home

7.       Most people don’t realize it, but this lake truly has magical properties. It has the power to take away my crabbiness by the simple act of dipping my sore and exhausted soul into its waters. THAT is a miracle. 

Just another day in the field…

There is no typical day in the field I guess…so this might be a recurring feature of the blog.

But what we do on any given day depends on a few things:

1.       Which project goal we’re trying to accomplish

2.       If our gear is cooperating

3.       If the weather is cooperating

4.       If our guts are cooperating

So here it is…one random field day during the Mahale excursion:

Monday, 2 July 2012

7:30am – Wake up. Head to breakfast and see what Hassan has cooked up. 

8:30am – Start packing up the gear we’ll need for the day (snail quadrats, fish quadrats, plum lines, whirl pacs, dive tanks, BCD’s, regs, snorkel stuff, wetsuits-that-reek-of-urine, our lunch!) into the smallest space possible and walk it down to the water.

8:45am – Head down the beach to boat storage with Pete. Watch in horror as Dakota (one of our trusty park staff) mouth-siphons fuel from the 200L barrel into our 25L tank. Mix in the 2-stroke oil and haul it and our motor down to the Zodiac. Pump up the keel of the Zodiac again because it’s always flat (must find mysterious small leak…). Guts feel…off. Take 2 Pepto and pack 2 more into dry bag Just In Case.

9:30am – Finally leave camp with Pete and Vanessa and attempt to get the Zodiac to plane (Aside: Pete is OBSESSED with getting our boat to plane. It usually involves asking us to move a few inches towards the bow or stern 100 or so times until we are moving as quickly as possible to save transit time.)

[FBN: “If you want Pete to go fast, put him in a boat.” –Yvonne Vadeboncouer]

9:45am – Stop at park headquarters so Pete can show me where the freezer is located for future sample dumps. Keeping stuff frozen here has been a real challenge, and in the end we had to bring our own freezer from Kigoma. Seriously. 

10:05am – Arrive at Site 4. Pete dons dive gear to deploy the sonde.  Sondes are Very Expensive pieces of field equipment that record the temperature, conductivity, and dissolved oxygen of the water at each of our study sites at a set logging interval.  Pete picks a spot, I lube up the bike lock and key, Pete locks the sonde to some rocks, and we hope against hope that we’ll be able to find it again when it’s time to leave (more on that in a later post…)

A successfully deployed sonde!

[FBN: Pete’s notes on where it’s located: “40m off from big white rock. Flat mix of boulder and sand. Should be pretty darn easy to see.”]

10:45am – Arrive at Site E. Deploy sonde.

11:35am – Encounter the WSU team on their way back to camp because they forgot a crucial piece of field sampling gear. Whoops. 

11:48am – Arrive at Site E since Site C is deemed unusable. Deploy sonde. Ho hum.

12:20pm – Eat Clif bar (shameless plug for Clif bars. Please send Clif bars, Clif company…). Feel nauseous. Begin mentally playing out various scenarios of how to deal with soiling my wetsuit should it occur.

12:27pm – Arrive at Site D. Deploy new Onset logger.

1:10pm – Motor to Site B but turn around when we realize how late it is. Drive back to Site D to start sampling, but tons of fisherman have set nets since we left and we can no longer be discreet. Head to Site E instead.

1:52pm – Pete gears up again and stashes the rest of the sondes in the water until we can deploy then at a later date. I am most assuredly going to crap my pants.

2:00pm-ish – FINALLY start fish counts and snail collection. Pete lays out an 8m x 7m quadrat, identifies each fish to species, and records the number of each. It’s actually pretty incredible since there are over 300 species of cichlids in this lake. Attaboy, Pete.

Meanwhile Vanessa and I don dive gear and get ready to descend. This is her Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) project, and I’m her dive buddy. She lays out 1m x 1m quadrats and I come along and pick up every snail I see in said quadrats. Sampling design: 8 quadrats at 3 depths (2m, 5m, and 10m; that’s ~6ft, 15ft, and 30ft for the non-metric folks reading this).

Me...pickin' snails...

 [FBN: “There are a SHIT-TON (of snails) and it takes FOREVER. Giant eel has been watching me work.”]

I found this awesome green spiky sponge growing under one of the cobbles.

3:00pm-ish – Vanessa ran out of air after the 10m snails, so I finished all the 5m quadrats solo. My head hurts (Bad air or dehydration? Hard to say…).

4:00pm-ish – Surfaced and Pete was finished with fish counts, so he snorkeled and helped Vanessa finished up the 2m snails. I descend back to 5m to collect 4 cobbles and surface to discover that a giant leech has attached itself to my hand and is in no hurry to leave. 

(Vanessa: “HOW AREN’T YOU FREAKING OUT RIGHT NOW!!!).   

We need to quantify the amount of periphyton available for the fish to graze upon at each site, so basically I pick a rock, scrub off all the algae except for a small bit I cover with a centrifuge tube cap. I then scrape the remaining algae into a pan, collect it in a whirl pac, and spin it down back in the lab when we return to camp. It’s not fun, this scrubbing algae off rocks…but whatevs. That’s why I get paid the big bucks… ;).

Voila! A nice circle of algae!

5:20pm – DONE! Watch in amusement as a fleet of (mostly) naked boys in dugout canoes inches closer and closer to Pete as he collects snails with Vanessa. I give them our leftover hard boiled eggs and bananas from lunch. Start motoring home. 

Vanessa, Pete, and their entourage

6:30pm – Arrive at home. Unload all the gear on shore. Vanessa moves things up the beach while Pete and I take the boat and motor to the shed to be locked up for the night. Things seem safer here, but we still need to make sure they don’t walk away… Rinse smelly wetsuit in the lake or there will be consequences.

7:00pm – Dinner! Guts feel marginally better. Recount everyone’s adventures for the day.

8:30pm – Start spinning down algae with hand-crank centrifuge that frankly scares the crap out of me (and no eye protection in site…). Leslie helps me acidify half of the samples with 1N HCl since in the past, half of our samples have turned to tar when we tried to analyze them for Carbon, Nitrogen, and Phosphorus content. Pete and Vanessa scrub algae off all the snails we collected today (so they can later be identified) until well after midnight. There is NO WAY I’m helping with that…

11:00pm – To bed (finally)! Fall asleep immediately.