Swa-Bem-Span-glish

Fishing just once a day (as opposed to twice) is Changing My Life, and I've been taking full advantage of opportunities to go off into the forest and get my butt off the boat. It’s pure heaven to stretch my legs and bend my squeaky knees (they literally squeak...), even if doing so requires coating all exposed skin in DEET, schlepping through calf-deep mud in the jungle, and accepting that the mere act of standing results in heavy sweating.

The Brits keep calling them "wellies"; in 'Merica, we call them "rubber boots". Either way, they get muddy in the jungle, as do the trousers.

Before I signed on for this trip, the Peru director (now my buddy, Rachel!) assured me my expired ability to speak Spanish would not be a problem. In hindsight, instead of pointlessly attempting the memorization of 1000+ fish species in the very lovely (and sadly unknown-outside-of Opwall) "Fishes of the Pacaya Samiria Reserve, Peru", my time would have been better spent brushing up on the ol' Español…

A toucan, just chillin' in the tree (Photo by Eric)

A sloth, just chillin' in the tree. We have much to learn from the sloths. (Photo by Steph)

Most of the students and staff here are from the UK or various European countries, but our Peruvian guides only speak as much English as I speak Spanish (Less, probably. Much, much less...). Beyond telling folks my name, what my father does for a living, and asking for a beer or a bathroom, my language skills from 20 years ago have proven quite useless. And since my field-acquired foreign language skills have historically involved fishing lingo, I often find myself spouting an incoherent mash-up of Swahili, Bemba, and Spanish. 

It does make for some highly entertaining conversations, though, and I’m constantly amazed how we eventually (accidentally) hit upon some form of understanding despite our communication barriers. And with the aid of some drawings, hand gestures, a few key nouns/infinities, and some luck, we dance around meaning and assume we're all talking about the same thing. No harm in that, really...

I drew this picture in my field book in an attempt to ask Samwell if the lake was connected to the river year round (it is, I think...)

I’d been told that mist netting for understory birds was not to be missed, so I spent yesterday afternoon out in the forest picking tiny birds out of mesh nets. It felt a whole lot like fishing, only for birds…in the air…  We pull down the nets, let them “fish” for 30 minutes, and then go collect birds/take measurements/band a subset for population estimates. I wish someone would have told me to bring a book…but the waiting part turned out not to be so bad. 

I have a feeling he wouldn't sit still except for the fact that his legs were pinned between fingers...

(Photo by Eric)

During one of those stretches of downtime, Jorge, our guide for the day, came and found me.

“Teacher,” he said. “Come.”

(I love that he calls me "teacher"; to the others I'm usually "Helen" or "Elena"; I answer to just about anything at this point.)

Jorge!

So I followed him into the forest, and he showed me a giant pile of tiny dead fish swarming with flies.

A giant pile of tiny dead fish swarming with flies.

Even with my limited vocabulary, I gathered these were the remnants of the receding flood waters. We are deep in the heart of the largest protected flooded forest in the Amazon, and the water level can vary as much as 12 meters between the high and low water periods.

Some evidence of the falling water (check that old water line...)

You read that too fast. I'm sure of it. That's almost FORTY FEET.

THAT'S LONGER THAN A SCHOOL BUS, PEOPLE. This river can fluctuate more than the length of ONE SCHOOL BUS every year. WHAT THE WHAT!!!!

This picture doesn't do it justice, but when the Rio first arrived at site, the water level was up to where that guy is standing. True story.

A few months ago, the solid ground we walked upon had been covered in water, and as the floods began to recede, little lakes formed in depressions. Those little lakes eventually dried up, and a whole lot of tiny fish got left behind. Crazy.

Left behind :(. Unfortunately I never got to see this one alive...when he still had eyeballs. 

The bird survey was...fine. I'm not the biggest fan, honestly, but it's a pretty rare opportunity to see all those understory birds up close (even if the birds themselves don't seem to love it). 

As for the speaking-of-Spanish, I’m getting by, for now, and getting better by the day.

[Note to self: get Rosetta Stone when you get home…]

The Transfer

As per usual, anticipation has proven worse than reality.

It’s the transfer period.

Moving my stuff (imagine the Charlie Brown sad music playing in the background)

Every 2 weeks, our research vessel, the Rio Amazonas, takes a load of students back to Iquitos and picks up a new batch to bring out to our study site. Our accommodations have always felt a bit… basic, so I had No Idea I’d been living the high life up until this point. A small fraction of us stay on site during these times to keep collecting data, so I was forced to move all my earthly possessions to The Nutria (an iddy-biddy boat scarily-tethered to the boat full of undergraduates!) for 5 days until the Rio comes back.

Left behind ("WHAT IF THEY DON'T COME BACK?" --inner monologue, 10 seconds after I could no longer see the boat)

It took the equivalent of a 10-point turn to get that beast headed the right direction downriver.

In short, I found the prospect terrifying. One student said it was kind of like moving out of a 5-star hotel into a cardboard box. So now I’m sharing a tiny co-ed room with 6 other staff members, and “privacy” is just some word I used to know.

Home sweet home. I've never been in a crack house, but I suspect it looks something like this.

[Update: September 1, 2014; I came to love that tiny little boat and all the people on board (minus the snorers (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE) and the unnamed night-farter. Much love to my favorites, Nico, Emma, and Mario. Mu-ahh!)]

Nico and Emma, 2/3 of Team Herp

But it turns out not to be so bad. Communal living has its perks, and in some ways, it feels a bit like those first couple weeks of college when you don’t know anyone but find camaraderie in a shared novel experience. In our case, it’s surviving the nasty mattresses (shudder), relaxed expectations of personal hygiene, universal hatred of rice, and learned tolerance of mosquitoes and biting flies.  

As for the undergrads, they’re not as scary as I first thought, and some of them are downright endearing. In the past, I've often been frustrated with that (seemingly apathetic and entitled) age group; but on the flip side, they’re young and idealistic enough to believe that small conservation efforts can save a doomed earth, and that naive enthusiasm is truly refreshing.

The Peruvian staff on the Pithecia fixing food for 50 (ish...)

The other perk of the transfer is that we only go fishing once a day, so I actually get to take part in the other surveys going on in the Reserve. Last night I did point counts with Segundo, the macaw biologist, which basically involved driving the boat to various points on the river, ID’ing birds as they flew by, and enjoying the last lights of day as the sun went down.

Segundo (I think his real name was Archie), totally pulling off the fanny pack

"Blue and yellow! 100 meters! 1650!" --some kid on a macaw survey (ID, distance estimate, and time, in that order)

It’s my new favorite thing to do between 4:30 and 6:30.

But lest we forget the jungle basically wants us dead…

At our last stop of the day, I happened upon a tiny snake when I was trying to take a picture of the thousands of spiders lying in the floating veg. When I asked what it was, Segundo freaked out and said it was very dangerous and to stay away (after I’d already stuck my face as close possible for the picture…). Our resident herpetologist and my new roommate, Mario, told me later it was a fer-de-lance, one of the deadliest snakes in the Amazon.

Since I was (unknowingly) risking my life to get this shot, you'd think it would be better...

Lesson learned. 

Don’t get too comfortable

I was probably getting a wee bit cocky.

With great regularity (yawn), the predominant species we catch in the nets and on our hooks each day is the infamous red-bellied piranha (Pygocentrus nattereri) and another smaller type, Serrasalmus humeralis. And while I was a bit hesitant to get my fingers near their toothy-mouths at the onset two weeks ago, my boldness-level has increased exponentially with each trip to the lake. 

Chicken makes excellent bait, but fish is better. (Beef can work in a pinch.)

The rules say we’re supposed to wear leather gloves when we handle piranhas, but some of the fish have been so large (some close to 25cm!), Pool assured me I could lose a digit or sizable hunk of flesh with or without hand protection.

The lesser known piranha, Serrasalmus humeralis

Not-a-piranha. I'm not even sure how he got caught. 

Comforting thought.

We only let the gillnets set for an hour or THIS can happen. The piranhas take advantage of the easy pickings...

So there I was, blissfully fishing in the shade of the flooded forest off the bow of our little green boat, when I felt a tug on my hook. Piranhas tend to nibble bait without getting snagged, so your best bet to land a fish is to set the hook quickly and fling it onto the boat. Which is what I did…

"Sure, you may photograph me with my GIANT PIRHANA!" (This is not the fish in question, by the by)..

But the little bastard immediately came loose and started jumping willy-nilly around the boat. I grabbed a glove to pin him against the floor boards, but he jumped at the fleshy part of my index finger and had no intention of letting go. I have thin blood anyway, but soon enough, a small trickle turned into giant red blobs hitting the deck. I shook my hand until he fell off while my buddy Emma searched through our disappointingly-inadequate first aid kit for some Band-Aids.

.

Jungle medicine: Back on the Rio, Nurse Marta opens the gash and pours the contents of a mystery pill into the wound.

Normally, none of this would be a big deal, but infection is a real threat here. So now I get a regular bandage change by nurses (who only speak Spanish) and a course of antibiotics to keep things from getting worse. Plus I'm not supposed to get my hand wet while it heals, which poses all kinds of problems (on the fishing surveys and otherwise...)

Pool, sporting a bandage from the time a piranha bit off the tip of his thumb

And, in addition to a cool war wound with a jagged sawtooth outline, I seem to have gained some credibility with the Peruvian guides. Handle fish long enough, and you WILL get bitten, and as word of my injury spread, the guides all showed me various scars and missing bits of flesh from their encounters. 

One of the guides, Euclides, made me a necklace from a piranha jaw we caught one day, so all in all, I'm calling it a win for the Visitor.

Fishing the Amazon

I just spent the last 15 minutes writing down things I want to say to the Peruvians when we’re out doing fishing surveys; now I just need to find someone to do the translations. The last formal Spanish class I had was ~15 years ago, and my pre-trip-prep would have been better spent brushing up on a few key infinitives and nouns. So far I've been getting by using rudimentary vocabulary and a lot of hand gestures, but it's truly sad.

Looks like I'm one of the biologists...

My counterpart on the expedition is an adorable guy named Pool who (so far) has magically known all of the fish species we've been finding in our nets each day. For the most part, the most common catch has been two different piranha species, some big enough to chomp off a finger even if you happen to be wearing leather gloves. Those teeth are No Joke, and while I've been getting a bit bolder in my handling of them, it might be considered a miracle if I make it to summer's end with all my digits.

Red-bellied piranha (Pygocentrus nattereri); om nom nom...

Depending on which resource you check, there might be as many as EIGHT THOUSAND species of fish in the Amazon basin, 1000 of which are supposedly found in Peru. So I look on with curiosity (and a little fear) every time the net comes in.

A pretty good haul; boquichico, carachama, and piranhas, oh my!

There really isn't much to the science of what we’re doing here, and my role might be better described as “tour-guide/camp counselor with marginal background knowledge” than “fish biologist.” Our surveys are meant to replicate traditional fishing methods of the Cocoma Indians who live in the reserve, and the data we collect inform quotas for the subsistence fishery. 

There's also a fair amount of sitting and crossword puzzling happening, depending on the day.

So each morning and afternoon, I pack up a load of kiddos onto the boat (mostly middle school-ers and college kids), force them to wear a flotation device, and take off for a site upriver. One of our trusty Peruvian guides (usually Ormenio or Euclides) sets the gillnets, and in the meantime, we all “fish” from the boat (read: dangle a hunk of bait from a line tied to a stick) and listen to music (courtesy of Pool's cell phone; he's especially fond of THIS SONG, which we listen to often...on repeat...which (it turns out) is a great way to learn Spanish AND go a little crazy at the same time). 

As the British statistician on board put it, fishing here is a bit like that magnet fishing game we all had growing up where you dangle the fishing rod into plastic fish mouths that spin in a circle. You know the one...

It’s sort of exactly like that.

I bait hooks, free lines from tree branches and roots, and try to appear sympathetic when kids complain about the heat and biting flies. So basically, I’m everyone’s dad on their first fishing trip. After an hour, we go collect the net and record fish ID’s and take measurements to get an idea of what, how many, and how big some of these fishes are. 

I could get used to this life...

Fake it ‘til you make it

[The blog posts that follow were written over the course of summer 2014. Since there was no internet access during my stay on the Amazon, I wrote posts on my laptop when it felt appropriate, and I plan to post these musings sporadically this fall. Thanks for reading! 

-ejh, 12 August 2014] 

About a month ago, some folks in the UK asked if I’d be interested in leading the fisheries surveys for their education/conservation program (Operation Wallacea, for those who want to Google it) this summer…

in Peru…

on a tributary of the Amazon River.

And while I’m fairly secure in my knowledge of many fishy things, I am in no way qualified to take kids into the jungle to catch/identify any of the thousands of species that may wind up in our nets. As my boss so bluntly put it: why did they want you?

Fair point. (But ouch, right?)

So of course I said yes.

Having spent the majority of my winter sitting sedentary nursing a bum knee following a nasty ski accident, I was probably ABSOLUTELY overdue for a new adventure. And for the first time in three years, instead of diving with the cichlids in the most amazing lake in the world, the plan for the UW field team involved sweating it out in Madison by nasty, green, Lake Mendota, writing papers, and analyzing data (yawn).

And so, “fake-it-‘til-you-make-it” has become my new personal mantra, and each morning, my plan is to don a “fish ecologist” hat and act like I know what I’m doing.

[I have no idea what I’m doing.]

If nothing else, I’ll get to see a new corner of the world (I’ve always wanted to visit South America!), and I'll (hopefully) collect some new stories along the way.

When I couldn't decide whether or not to go, a good friend asked me what I’d regret more: canceling the fun summer plans I’d made in the US (canoe trips, music festivals, bike-riding!) or missing the unknown wilds of the Amazon Jungle. So I figure, even if turns out to be awful, “I went” is always a better story than “I had the chance to go, but…”

And when it’s all said and done in this life, I want to make sure I did it all.

Here goes nothing.

Oops, I did it again

Yeah, that’s right. After an incredibly long hiatus from blogging the written word, I’m starting this one with a casual reference to a bad Brittney Spears song.

This season, NON-field season—the time of lab work and data analysis and a more boring, sedentary professional life—is tough for me. I took up classic cross-country skiing a few years ago in an attempt to make winter more bearable. I even got to the point where it seemed like an OK idea to sign up for the American Birkenbiner: a ski-marathon of epic proportions. In hindsight, it was sort of like thinking, “Hmm…I really love biking, and I’m pretty good at it. I think I’ll do the Tour de France.”  It seems like everyone I know in Wisconsin either does the Birkie or has a grandma that does the Birkie…so I failed to recognize the full extent of my undertaking.

I made it roughly 5 miles before a bad fall at the bottom of a steep hill left me with 2 torn ligaments and torn cartilage in my right knee. In terms of fruit, we're talking 'small cantaloupe.'  And since this is the second time I’ve ruined a knee skiing, part of me should have seen this coming.  

This injury had nothing to do with field work, but it seemed like a good time to say this:

Field season is hard on the ol’ body.

And while most of my posts (hopefully) express the joy and fun that fills most field seasons, there is an ugly dark side I don’t often mention. I’m accident-prone (FOR SURE), but over the past 10 or so years, I’ve sacrificed much in the name of SCIENCE and data collection!

So here, in REVERSE(!) order, are the Top 6 Bad Things that have happened to me in the pursuit of science.

If you count yourself among the Faint Of Heart, do yourself a favor and sign off now ;).

1. The mystery parasite. 

You may recall that at the end of last field season, a little bit of Africa tried to come home with me. I pulled this guy out of my right calf, but a nice Tanzanian doctor finished the job once my leg became infected. Luckily he numbed it with some Lidocaine after I started to scream...

 

2. The time my skin and fingernails fell off

Turns out, I'm allergic to Doxycycline. Which made my skin fall off. Followed by my fingernails. Luckily Benja gave me some of his spare meds so I wouldn't get malaria...

3. My angry feet

Chacos are easily my stream footwear of choice, but after this pair tried to kill me, I promptly switched to Keene's (much better grip PLUS toe protection!). This happened on a field expedition back in Idaho during a heroic quest to locate dead salmon. I ended up with a free pair of Chacos after I complained to the company...

 

4. Ellen vs. the horse

During one of the summers of my Master's research in the Idaho backcountry, my field team and I found ourselves in the middle of a rockslide/rain/lighting storm with 2 pack horses on a scree slope. In an attempt to shield my head from an oncoming kick from a shod-and-very-spooked horse, I threw up my elbow instead. That moment, standing in a downpour covered in blood with my elbow throbbing, was easily one of the worst moments of my life. We then hiked 5 more miles to make it to camp.

5. Just a little case of poison ivy

No biggie, really. But never having had it before, I didn't recognize the signs. By the by, shaving your legs over poison ivy is a Very Bad Idea.

6. My broken face

Which brings me to my final, and worst, field injury. This occurred during my days as a commercial fisheries observer for NOAA on the East coast. I got assigned to a VERY sketchy boat with a VERY sketchy captain and first mate in a small Maine port. The short story is that we were 6 days at sea, the weather got very bad, and we started the long journey home. At some point during the night, I awoke to a hatch cover falling on my face and blood pouring out of my nose. Eight hours later we made it to land, and I (very much later) found out I had a broken face and nose. It took surgery to get my septum back in place.

It's fun. And if it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The HARD, is what makes it great ;).

Upping the ante

For the past 48 hours, Benja and I have been finishing up the ongoing fish excretion component to the project. It’s pretty similar to last year’s endeavor except that it occurs primarily at NIGHT (in year 3, we have to find creative ways to up the proverbial ante…). At this point we have a pretty good handle on fish peeing rates during the day, but the suspicion is that things probably tail off at night (which is personally true for me, so it may hold true for the fishes as well.). 

Two eretmodus, probably peeing... (photo by Benja)

Just to be clear, we’re not interested in peeing for peeing’s sake. As I’ve mentioned before, since Tanganyika is so lacking in nutrients, we suspect the fish themselves facilitate nutrient cycling in the lake (Meaning: all the attached algae probably take full advantage of the fact that hundreds of fish pee on them constantly, providing them with nutrients to create biomass that, in turn, feed the fish. I heart cycles.).

There’s a fair amount of prep work involved (like filtering 100 liters of water, labeling all the Ziplocs and vials, etc.…) and the field experience is a bit nuts since a job that was formerly performed by 6 people is now done by 3.

And, like I said, it’s all in the dark.

Once at site, we fill the bags with filtered water and our old pal Georgie starts catching fish (I have No Idea how he holds the flashlight AND manages to trap fish in the net at the same time, but he’s a professional!). 

Georgie is ready (as always) to catch some fish.

Each fish gets dropped into his own bag, and after 30 minutes of incubation time, we collect pee-water samples that will be analyzed for nitrate, phosphate, and ammonium. We also get lengths and weights on each fish and hold each bag until all the poop settles. 

Ben sucks up poop. This was taken during a daylight endeavor, but you get the idea.

We left at sunset the first night and were back sleeping soundly in our beds by 2am or so. But this morning we were up at 3:30am, which meant trying to go to bed by 8pm to get some semblance of a full night’s sleep. It’s been like Spring Break Kigoma for a seemingly-endless number of consecutive days, with celebrations including the end of Ramadan, Nane Nane (literally 8/8), and now, continued partying because no one said to stop. Even my industrial grade ear plugs couldn’t block out the backbeat from the Prison Bar speakers (yes, we’re close to the prison, and yes, they have a bar…), but I took a Benadryl to seal the deal and it was lights out.

Attack of the mayflies! They really liked the low beam on my headlamp. That, and the water I guess?

Luckily our endeavor was cleverly (accidentally?) timed to coincide with the Perseid meteor shower, which made me feel marginally less sorry for myself for being awake at a time of night I reserve exclusively for sleeping. While it’s not super fun assembling the boat/motor/gear with the aid of a headlamp, it is SUPER AWESOME driving full-speed on a Zodiac in nearly-complete darkness to a random spot on shore 6km down the beach in the middle of the night (that’s not sarcasm). 

Benja measures a bigger-than-normal Petrochromis kasumbe. Their giant mouths are especially good at chowing down on periphyton.

And today marked a milestone in LT field work as we collected our very last pee sample (I won’t write “ever,” but I kind of want to…). No one’s shedding too many tears over that one.

I celebrated by eating some passion fruit. Om nom nom...