JR turned 40 on March 20. She celebrated at Spitzkoppe by climbing rocks, hunting bugs, and swimming in a pool of water caught in a granite crack. (Meanwhile, there was a second sulfide eruption on the coast…) We also ate our first real Namibian meal prepared at the community rest camp – very tough goat, rice, creamy white/pink beans, canned peas with some sort of mayo-like topping, sliced cucumber and tomatoes, and pink gravy. I got a great gift of a hand-crafted mussel shell necklace (hmm, how many of those shells are from introduced Mytilus galloprovincialis? It’s great to be an invasion biologist wearing that mystery all the time.), and – best gift of all – had time to complete and submit a manuscript.
At 40 years and 1 day, I walked outside at night barefoot, stubbed my toe on some cement, and took my toenail clean off. Now, why is it that one says “clean off”? It was not clean, especially cutting the last skin that held the dangling nail, and watching the wound ooze for days. Ouch! Minor emergency. Alan assured me I should be grateful I didn’t step on a scorpion and require medical treatment on a holiday weekend.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Sulfide eruption!
The past three weeks have been devastating for the oyster growers on Namibia’s coast at Walvis Bay. A large phytoplankton bloom, which turned the water into a thick chocolate of spiky dinoflagellates, was followed by a sulfide eruption, when the toxic gas that accumulates in the sediment as a by-product of anaerobic decomposition bubbled up. Hydrogen sulfide is itself toxic, and it reacts with oxygen in seawater, causing hypoxia. The color of the water turns an almost tropical aquamarine, but accompanied by the stench of rotting eggs. Close on the heels of this sulfide eruption came another phytoplankton bloom. Growers are reporting losses of literally millions of oysters, from 25% to more than 70% of their crops. They have little buffer for these losses, since many of the companies are just 2 or 3 years old, and people were counting on the next harvest to pay off debts from start-up costs. Some companies will probably fold altogether.
Oysters are not the only organisms that suffered from the toxic environmental conditions of the past few weeks. From 3/9 to 3/11 we visited rocky intertidal sites around Swakopmund during reasonably good low tides. Initially, we were so excited by what we saw: spiny lobsters, hundreds of them, wiggling their antennae from under any available intertidal ledge, or just hiding in the algae. “Wow”, I thought, “I’ve never seen so many intertidal predators in one place. This must be what it’s like to visit a “pristine” beach!” To the contrary: The lobsters had gathered there in hordes to escape the low-oxygen conditions of deeper water. And the beaches were hardly pristine, as people descended from above to strip as many of the easily-accessible lobsters as they were able to fit into mesh bags, lunch boxes, or plastic shopping bags. We saw some seasoned lobster-hunters in wet suits and gloves, but also some unusual suspects – businessmen in collar shirts and loafers, squabbling couples – all taking advantage of the coincidence of low tides and low oxygen. All sorts of regulations were violated – including catch limits (people would collect some, then stand in a parking lot to sell what they’d collected, then collect more) and size limits (lobsters are not supposed to be kept below 65 mm carapace length, but few people were bothering to measure, justifying that these lobsters were going to die anyway). Any rock small enough to be lifted had been overturned and not turned back. Solitary antennae washed back and forth in the waves and accumulated in the wrack on the beach, as people latched on to the most obvious, but frail, parts of the lobsters to catch them. Watching the interaction between people and these beautiful, vulnerable, probably keystone creatures sickened me.
Meanwhile, many other organisms were also suffering, but primarily from the environmental conditions, not from humans. Mobile species tended to move into the intertidal zone, notably small sharks and large octopus. Sessile species often succumbed: the first to go were the soft-bodied “red bait” (large Pyura ascidians), which I initially thought were horse dung on the beach; many of the lower mussels also died, and then dragged their epiphytes on shore, including kelp and bryozoans. On the oyster longlines in Walvis Bay, epiphytic hydroids had died and discolored, but interestingly the newly-settled native clams were still alive amongst the hydroid strands, even if just a few mm long. On the beach south of Swakopmund, it was clear that many fish had also been unable to escape the low-oxygen conditions: species included the serpent eel (pencil thin and more than a foot long with a beaky snout), clingfish known as rocksuckers, and many more that we didn’t take the time to identify. Death and devastation, the beach littered with bodies – we had never seen such a tangle of the ocean’s denizens cast up on shore like this.
This year’s environmental conditions have been strange. Of course, we have no grounds for personal comparison, but we read the newspapers and we ask around. Even though the inland rains started late (late January rather than November), they have been torrential: reservoirs are overflowing, rivers are flooding, and agricultural land and human infrastructure are under water. The ocean has been warmer than normal for 4 months, with temperatures well above 20C, compared to rare excursions above 18C in most years. Based on reading ahead of time, we expected strong and persistent southwest winds on the coast, but we have only experienced a scattered few days of these winds, with the more common pattern to be W or NW or simply weak winds. We do not know – in fact, no one knows, although there are many hypotheses – any clear relationship between this year’s weather and the devastation for coastal organisms. However, 2006 and 2008 were high-rain years for Namibia and also brought large sulfide eruptions. The weather patterns that bring rain could also trigger sulfide (directly from freshwater inflow to the coast, or from some joint meteorological conditions). We do know that the unusually warm ocean temperatures stem from the lack of upwelling, because little deep cold water comes to the surface, and the warm Angola current pushes south. Earlier this year, these warm water conditions were also associated with oyster mortalities, even before the blooms and eruptions. We also know that the winds determine the severity of sulfide eruptions in Walvis Bay, and the absence of SW winds to push the water offshore allowed phytoplankton or sulfide to accumulate within the bay.
Today, we participated in an emergency meeting of the oyster growers to discuss combined responses to their losses. This was an opportunity to collate information about the spatial and temporal patterns of mortality. Did oysters die in response to toxic phytoplankton, Vibrio bacteria after the phytoplankton crashed, or due to sulfide and low oxygen? (Unfortunately, this seems impossible to resolve because so many environmental changes happened simultaneously, and oysters can buffer themselves somewhat by closing up for a while.) Were oysters closer to the ocean/ mouth of Walvis Bay buffered from mortality because they received some clean water advected with tides? (From what we have heard, this appears to be the case.) Did oysters deeper in the water suffer higher mortality? (This also seems to be the case, consistent with a decline in oxygen concentration from the surface to depth.) We heard that oysters suffered higher mortality if recently cleaned of fouling organisms, and we suspect that this is because cleaning these fast-growing subtidal oysters chips their shells, so they cannot protect themselves by closing up against poor environmental conditions. So what could be done to toughen them up? Did the native clams survive as epibionts on the baskets throughout the bay, and if so, why not cultivate them? (They taste fine steamed in butter and garlic; personal observation).
The oysters growing onshore in the salt ponds at Walvis Bay and Swakopmund have weathered the recent ocean conditions with little trouble, except perhaps mortality of oyster larvae in the hatchery associated with the initial phytoplankton bloom. Because ocean water is pumped vigorously up into the salt ponds, it is well aerated by the time it reaches the oysters.
This has been an awful, but awesome event to witness as an ecologist – as a farmer, it would just be awful. I wonder if living in Africa for a year is a bit like having a terminal illness. Each seasonal event, each visited scene will never be experienced again.
Oysters are not the only organisms that suffered from the toxic environmental conditions of the past few weeks. From 3/9 to 3/11 we visited rocky intertidal sites around Swakopmund during reasonably good low tides. Initially, we were so excited by what we saw: spiny lobsters, hundreds of them, wiggling their antennae from under any available intertidal ledge, or just hiding in the algae. “Wow”, I thought, “I’ve never seen so many intertidal predators in one place. This must be what it’s like to visit a “pristine” beach!” To the contrary: The lobsters had gathered there in hordes to escape the low-oxygen conditions of deeper water. And the beaches were hardly pristine, as people descended from above to strip as many of the easily-accessible lobsters as they were able to fit into mesh bags, lunch boxes, or plastic shopping bags. We saw some seasoned lobster-hunters in wet suits and gloves, but also some unusual suspects – businessmen in collar shirts and loafers, squabbling couples – all taking advantage of the coincidence of low tides and low oxygen. All sorts of regulations were violated – including catch limits (people would collect some, then stand in a parking lot to sell what they’d collected, then collect more) and size limits (lobsters are not supposed to be kept below 65 mm carapace length, but few people were bothering to measure, justifying that these lobsters were going to die anyway). Any rock small enough to be lifted had been overturned and not turned back. Solitary antennae washed back and forth in the waves and accumulated in the wrack on the beach, as people latched on to the most obvious, but frail, parts of the lobsters to catch them. Watching the interaction between people and these beautiful, vulnerable, probably keystone creatures sickened me.
Meanwhile, many other organisms were also suffering, but primarily from the environmental conditions, not from humans. Mobile species tended to move into the intertidal zone, notably small sharks and large octopus. Sessile species often succumbed: the first to go were the soft-bodied “red bait” (large Pyura ascidians), which I initially thought were horse dung on the beach; many of the lower mussels also died, and then dragged their epiphytes on shore, including kelp and bryozoans. On the oyster longlines in Walvis Bay, epiphytic hydroids had died and discolored, but interestingly the newly-settled native clams were still alive amongst the hydroid strands, even if just a few mm long. On the beach south of Swakopmund, it was clear that many fish had also been unable to escape the low-oxygen conditions: species included the serpent eel (pencil thin and more than a foot long with a beaky snout), clingfish known as rocksuckers, and many more that we didn’t take the time to identify. Death and devastation, the beach littered with bodies – we had never seen such a tangle of the ocean’s denizens cast up on shore like this.
This year’s environmental conditions have been strange. Of course, we have no grounds for personal comparison, but we read the newspapers and we ask around. Even though the inland rains started late (late January rather than November), they have been torrential: reservoirs are overflowing, rivers are flooding, and agricultural land and human infrastructure are under water. The ocean has been warmer than normal for 4 months, with temperatures well above 20C, compared to rare excursions above 18C in most years. Based on reading ahead of time, we expected strong and persistent southwest winds on the coast, but we have only experienced a scattered few days of these winds, with the more common pattern to be W or NW or simply weak winds. We do not know – in fact, no one knows, although there are many hypotheses – any clear relationship between this year’s weather and the devastation for coastal organisms. However, 2006 and 2008 were high-rain years for Namibia and also brought large sulfide eruptions. The weather patterns that bring rain could also trigger sulfide (directly from freshwater inflow to the coast, or from some joint meteorological conditions). We do know that the unusually warm ocean temperatures stem from the lack of upwelling, because little deep cold water comes to the surface, and the warm Angola current pushes south. Earlier this year, these warm water conditions were also associated with oyster mortalities, even before the blooms and eruptions. We also know that the winds determine the severity of sulfide eruptions in Walvis Bay, and the absence of SW winds to push the water offshore allowed phytoplankton or sulfide to accumulate within the bay.
Today, we participated in an emergency meeting of the oyster growers to discuss combined responses to their losses. This was an opportunity to collate information about the spatial and temporal patterns of mortality. Did oysters die in response to toxic phytoplankton, Vibrio bacteria after the phytoplankton crashed, or due to sulfide and low oxygen? (Unfortunately, this seems impossible to resolve because so many environmental changes happened simultaneously, and oysters can buffer themselves somewhat by closing up for a while.) Were oysters closer to the ocean/ mouth of Walvis Bay buffered from mortality because they received some clean water advected with tides? (From what we have heard, this appears to be the case.) Did oysters deeper in the water suffer higher mortality? (This also seems to be the case, consistent with a decline in oxygen concentration from the surface to depth.) We heard that oysters suffered higher mortality if recently cleaned of fouling organisms, and we suspect that this is because cleaning these fast-growing subtidal oysters chips their shells, so they cannot protect themselves by closing up against poor environmental conditions. So what could be done to toughen them up? Did the native clams survive as epibionts on the baskets throughout the bay, and if so, why not cultivate them? (They taste fine steamed in butter and garlic; personal observation).
The oysters growing onshore in the salt ponds at Walvis Bay and Swakopmund have weathered the recent ocean conditions with little trouble, except perhaps mortality of oyster larvae in the hatchery associated with the initial phytoplankton bloom. Because ocean water is pumped vigorously up into the salt ponds, it is well aerated by the time it reaches the oysters.
This has been an awful, but awesome event to witness as an ecologist – as a farmer, it would just be awful. I wonder if living in Africa for a year is a bit like having a terminal illness. Each seasonal event, each visited scene will never be experienced again.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Month 3.1 trip to coast
2/27-3/7 2008
We’re spending a lot of time with Mother Goose and Dr. Seuss these days, consequently primed with rhymes for many occasions. For those of you who haven’t read “If I ran the zoo” recently, I’ll remind you that young Gerald McGrew imagines a whole lot of improbable and wondrous animals to populate his zoo: 10-footed lions, elephant-cats, the world’s largest bird called the Fizza-ma-Wizza-ma-Dill, Joats, Gootches, Palooskis, Nerkles, even Nerds, and the “bustard, who only eats custard with sauce made of mustard.” But there really are bustards… and now we’ve seen them! The largest species, the kori bustard, could reach the back of an ostrich (and lives in much the same open semi-arid habitat), has a dandy crest, and can fly at the speed of an underpowered combi (VW van) (pers. obs.). We’re not sure if it eats mustard or custard. Some other amazing birds we feel lucky to have seen: hornbills, korhaans (2 species so far, just slightly smaller than bustards, also long-legged desert denizens), vultures, pied (black and white) hawks, and of course flamingos, hundreds of them every day at our study site. Did you know that flamingos have voices similar to geese?
On this trip to the coast, we again took the tar road until the dirt cut-off to Henties Bay that skirts the Spitzkoppe. Two months ago, I wouldn’t have thought it possible that a “desert” landscape could look so lush – it seems to continue to green with summer rains. The “ah-ha” moment was seeing the patches of ground along the road that had appeared as desolate as “war zones” in January: bushes and small trees had been mercilessly uprooted and piled together sort of like slash, leaving just bare dirt behind. But now, these clearings are knee-high in grasses and forbs, gently waving in the wind. There is a sweet smell in the air. And one grass is particularly beautiful, with silvery seed heads nodding.
Even eastern areas of the Namib desert, areas previously seen with tufts of brown grass, now show green. The cows are beginning to lose their angular, ribbed appearance; goats are filling out; and grazing donkeys seem very happy. Just a note about donkeys: It’s taken us a while to realize that donkey carts remain an important means of transportation, particularly in rural areas. Teams of 2, 3, or 4 (sometimes combined with horses) can be seen traveling on dirt roads or along the margins of the tar roads in parallel tracks. Some of the donkeys look a little raw, underfed, and overworked. But they definitely are powered by renewable energy!
Into the western Namib, however, the dominant color is sandy beige-red-brown. Although we have personally witnessed 3 precipitation events on the coast this year, it is still not enough (rain, soil, seed bank?) to make obvious changes. Much of the vegetation consists of sparsely-spaced dark clumps of sand-holding plants. I always initially see these shapes as potential animals! But the animals of the desert look like sand and shimmering heat and are cryptic until startled and in motion.
There has been fantastic weather to observe from afar while camping on the beach near The Salt Company: Semicircular double rainbows, from rain caught by the setting sun. Just past dark, the lightning begins inland, so far away that we rarely hear thunder, sometimes lighting up a sheet of rain, or billowing clouds, or just streaking down to the ground. This is a perfect storm for Katie, who enjoys the fireworks but is troubled by the rumble of thunder.
We had only one uncomfortable night camping this time: the night was still and hot, like a steamer inside the Combi. In the absence of an ocean breeze, flies of all shapes and sizes and speeds gathered on our food and found their way into our sleeping area. When a bit of wind did blow, it was from the east, putting us downwind of the guano platform and directly in the path of the scent of 10s of 1000s of cormorants. We now call this platform the “stinky bird place”, although the proprietor says you get used to it: it’s the scent of money. In the middle of the night, Alan opened the sliding door on the side of the van and spent two hours on the alert, occasionally flashing the headlamp into the eyes of circling hyenas. (Okay, they probably weren’t really circling. That was just for African effect. They were hanging out at the fence line, although we know from their tracks that they do sometimes pass within a few meters of the Combi at night.)
Over the weekend, we did a self-guided tour of all the salt ponds, ranging in salinity from seawater to salt. From those with any life in them, we collected algal and water samples. For those of you with some marine training, we can report finding Dunaliella, ciliates, rotifers, ostracods, Ulva (was Enteromorpha), and a monoseriate, branched green alga, possibly Cladophora. For those of you who read any comics as kids, you’ll be happy to know that we found sea monkeys in the wild: brine shrimp by the millions!
With a month of sampling and thinking about the salt ponds, we finally felt ready to write down observations and questions for the Kleins. That document initiated a 3-hour conversation and confirmed that we can do a variety of experiments in the oyster pond, camp near their hatchery, and use their amazing workshop, which is an enormous room filled with Swedish machinery, much of which was unrecognizable to JR, but AT says they could basically build a motor from scratch in there. We used their drill press to drill tiles and watched them build a clam rake to Alan’s specifications. They do a lot of their own machinery repair, plus make such things as stainless steel nails (the correct 316 type for the guano platform can’t be acquired locally). With access to this workshop and the first “real” hardware store we’ve found, we feel like we’ve almost made up for the absence of Jack’s Country Store at Willapa Bay.
Hooray! We set up our first research project, which will compare growth and resources used by oysters transplanted near the “ocean” and throughout 2 salt ponds. Here, we wonder how much nitrogen in the salt pond comes from birds vs. ocean. This is similar to work in Willapa, except at a much smaller spatial scale (30 ha pond). We epoxied 2 oyster species to 15x15 cm tiles (this size tile is used everywhere in conjunction with concrete for building). To deploy them throughout the pond, we borrowed a “research vessel” – small rowboat (the motorized boat used by the oyster workers seems to have a lawnmower motor attached to a horizontal 1 m rod with a propeller on the end – the propeller is lowered just barely into the shallow water). Alan stood waist-deep in water and calf-deep in anoxic sediment of biodeposits and mica, then used a mallet and steel rod to pound a small hole in the hard gypsum layer. Slip out the rod, slip in a mahogany pole, cable tie the tile to the pole, and one sample is done: we set out about 35. Oysters (Ostrea edulis) spawned on Mar. 7, making a cloud of sperm in the water – just like in all the pictures we’ve seen.
Deploying the tiles took the whole day, so the sun was setting by the time we set up camp, and we ate curry-in-a-bag in the dark. We had a visitor: a gerbil, distinguished by the dark tip to its tail (and the fact that there are no coastal mice). We’d seen lots of tracks, but this was the first individual in the flesh. Common, but interesting daytime visitors are Camponotus ants, about a cm long with 2 bright orange spots on their black velvet abdomen. These apparently can spray formic acid when irritated, so we’ve tried not to irritate them! At least one beetle takes advantage of the ants’ nasty reputation by being the same size and color, complete with 2 bright orange spots to mimic.
On Tuesday, Mar 4 we attended a Namibian Mariculture Association meeting and had a fun time comparing the markets, methods, and magnitudes of oyster culture in Walvis and Willapa Bays. Bottom line: there are really teeny tiny operations here, but they are all looking for access to the high-end oyster market (4-Rand oysters, worth slightly more than 50 cents apiece). No one sells shucked meat; lots sell frozen in the shell (we’re dubious). The Namibian growers have been focusing on selecting fast-growing oysters, so it was good to be able to pass along a broad consensus that selection for survival is much more important. On our way from the meeting in Walvis Bay to our “campsite” in Swakopmund, we saw evidence of a sulfide eruption: tropically-blue water just along the shore. What does this bode for their oysters? Only time will tell.
We’re spending a lot of time with Mother Goose and Dr. Seuss these days, consequently primed with rhymes for many occasions. For those of you who haven’t read “If I ran the zoo” recently, I’ll remind you that young Gerald McGrew imagines a whole lot of improbable and wondrous animals to populate his zoo: 10-footed lions, elephant-cats, the world’s largest bird called the Fizza-ma-Wizza-ma-Dill, Joats, Gootches, Palooskis, Nerkles, even Nerds, and the “bustard, who only eats custard with sauce made of mustard.” But there really are bustards… and now we’ve seen them! The largest species, the kori bustard, could reach the back of an ostrich (and lives in much the same open semi-arid habitat), has a dandy crest, and can fly at the speed of an underpowered combi (VW van) (pers. obs.). We’re not sure if it eats mustard or custard. Some other amazing birds we feel lucky to have seen: hornbills, korhaans (2 species so far, just slightly smaller than bustards, also long-legged desert denizens), vultures, pied (black and white) hawks, and of course flamingos, hundreds of them every day at our study site. Did you know that flamingos have voices similar to geese?
On this trip to the coast, we again took the tar road until the dirt cut-off to Henties Bay that skirts the Spitzkoppe. Two months ago, I wouldn’t have thought it possible that a “desert” landscape could look so lush – it seems to continue to green with summer rains. The “ah-ha” moment was seeing the patches of ground along the road that had appeared as desolate as “war zones” in January: bushes and small trees had been mercilessly uprooted and piled together sort of like slash, leaving just bare dirt behind. But now, these clearings are knee-high in grasses and forbs, gently waving in the wind. There is a sweet smell in the air. And one grass is particularly beautiful, with silvery seed heads nodding.
Even eastern areas of the Namib desert, areas previously seen with tufts of brown grass, now show green. The cows are beginning to lose their angular, ribbed appearance; goats are filling out; and grazing donkeys seem very happy. Just a note about donkeys: It’s taken us a while to realize that donkey carts remain an important means of transportation, particularly in rural areas. Teams of 2, 3, or 4 (sometimes combined with horses) can be seen traveling on dirt roads or along the margins of the tar roads in parallel tracks. Some of the donkeys look a little raw, underfed, and overworked. But they definitely are powered by renewable energy!
Into the western Namib, however, the dominant color is sandy beige-red-brown. Although we have personally witnessed 3 precipitation events on the coast this year, it is still not enough (rain, soil, seed bank?) to make obvious changes. Much of the vegetation consists of sparsely-spaced dark clumps of sand-holding plants. I always initially see these shapes as potential animals! But the animals of the desert look like sand and shimmering heat and are cryptic until startled and in motion.
There has been fantastic weather to observe from afar while camping on the beach near The Salt Company: Semicircular double rainbows, from rain caught by the setting sun. Just past dark, the lightning begins inland, so far away that we rarely hear thunder, sometimes lighting up a sheet of rain, or billowing clouds, or just streaking down to the ground. This is a perfect storm for Katie, who enjoys the fireworks but is troubled by the rumble of thunder.
We had only one uncomfortable night camping this time: the night was still and hot, like a steamer inside the Combi. In the absence of an ocean breeze, flies of all shapes and sizes and speeds gathered on our food and found their way into our sleeping area. When a bit of wind did blow, it was from the east, putting us downwind of the guano platform and directly in the path of the scent of 10s of 1000s of cormorants. We now call this platform the “stinky bird place”, although the proprietor says you get used to it: it’s the scent of money. In the middle of the night, Alan opened the sliding door on the side of the van and spent two hours on the alert, occasionally flashing the headlamp into the eyes of circling hyenas. (Okay, they probably weren’t really circling. That was just for African effect. They were hanging out at the fence line, although we know from their tracks that they do sometimes pass within a few meters of the Combi at night.)
Over the weekend, we did a self-guided tour of all the salt ponds, ranging in salinity from seawater to salt. From those with any life in them, we collected algal and water samples. For those of you with some marine training, we can report finding Dunaliella, ciliates, rotifers, ostracods, Ulva (was Enteromorpha), and a monoseriate, branched green alga, possibly Cladophora. For those of you who read any comics as kids, you’ll be happy to know that we found sea monkeys in the wild: brine shrimp by the millions!
With a month of sampling and thinking about the salt ponds, we finally felt ready to write down observations and questions for the Kleins. That document initiated a 3-hour conversation and confirmed that we can do a variety of experiments in the oyster pond, camp near their hatchery, and use their amazing workshop, which is an enormous room filled with Swedish machinery, much of which was unrecognizable to JR, but AT says they could basically build a motor from scratch in there. We used their drill press to drill tiles and watched them build a clam rake to Alan’s specifications. They do a lot of their own machinery repair, plus make such things as stainless steel nails (the correct 316 type for the guano platform can’t be acquired locally). With access to this workshop and the first “real” hardware store we’ve found, we feel like we’ve almost made up for the absence of Jack’s Country Store at Willapa Bay.
Hooray! We set up our first research project, which will compare growth and resources used by oysters transplanted near the “ocean” and throughout 2 salt ponds. Here, we wonder how much nitrogen in the salt pond comes from birds vs. ocean. This is similar to work in Willapa, except at a much smaller spatial scale (30 ha pond). We epoxied 2 oyster species to 15x15 cm tiles (this size tile is used everywhere in conjunction with concrete for building). To deploy them throughout the pond, we borrowed a “research vessel” – small rowboat (the motorized boat used by the oyster workers seems to have a lawnmower motor attached to a horizontal 1 m rod with a propeller on the end – the propeller is lowered just barely into the shallow water). Alan stood waist-deep in water and calf-deep in anoxic sediment of biodeposits and mica, then used a mallet and steel rod to pound a small hole in the hard gypsum layer. Slip out the rod, slip in a mahogany pole, cable tie the tile to the pole, and one sample is done: we set out about 35. Oysters (Ostrea edulis) spawned on Mar. 7, making a cloud of sperm in the water – just like in all the pictures we’ve seen.
Deploying the tiles took the whole day, so the sun was setting by the time we set up camp, and we ate curry-in-a-bag in the dark. We had a visitor: a gerbil, distinguished by the dark tip to its tail (and the fact that there are no coastal mice). We’d seen lots of tracks, but this was the first individual in the flesh. Common, but interesting daytime visitors are Camponotus ants, about a cm long with 2 bright orange spots on their black velvet abdomen. These apparently can spray formic acid when irritated, so we’ve tried not to irritate them! At least one beetle takes advantage of the ants’ nasty reputation by being the same size and color, complete with 2 bright orange spots to mimic.
On Tuesday, Mar 4 we attended a Namibian Mariculture Association meeting and had a fun time comparing the markets, methods, and magnitudes of oyster culture in Walvis and Willapa Bays. Bottom line: there are really teeny tiny operations here, but they are all looking for access to the high-end oyster market (4-Rand oysters, worth slightly more than 50 cents apiece). No one sells shucked meat; lots sell frozen in the shell (we’re dubious). The Namibian growers have been focusing on selecting fast-growing oysters, so it was good to be able to pass along a broad consensus that selection for survival is much more important. On our way from the meeting in Walvis Bay to our “campsite” in Swakopmund, we saw evidence of a sulfide eruption: tropically-blue water just along the shore. What does this bode for their oysters? Only time will tell.
Week 7 trip to coast
2/16-2/20 2008
On the drive to the coast by tar road, we again saw hundreds of wheeling kites – our bird book says this is a typical response to termite emergence. The kites appeared to be catching termites in their claws – each would periodically swing its legs forward and its head down, as if picking something off the talons. The talons certainly are not built for catching termites. We saw them up close because Alan picked up a stunned (and probably mortally wounded) bird that had been hit by a truck. The feet and claws reached well around his finger, with each talon more than a cm long and deadly pointed.
We exited the tar road to take the dirt “cut-off” to Henties Bay and stopped to campe at the community campsite at Spitzkoppe. Exactly our style. Very rustic campsites, spaced hundreds of m apart, nestled in spectacular rock formations. Up close, the Spitzkoppe rocks are conglomerates of small, rough pebbles, great for grip when you’re climbing upslope. Even Katie enjoyed the rock-climbing experience (and we saw no snakes, even though the adults fretted about them). We arrived just after a rain, and the air smelled of bay spice and moisture, birds were singing, and rock hyraxes – hundreds of them – whistled from caves and ledges. We fortuitously camped near an area with rock paintings – a lion, rhinoceros, and people were easily recognizable, but the technique of achieving red images on the rock face unclear. The most unexpected aspect of the camp was that “community” means it is indeed run by local people, rather than as a resort of relic colonialism. We stopped en route at one of the roadside stands where we selected a piece of aquamarine with black tourmaline to send to a rock-loving friend in the US. (Other options: garnet, sodalite, quartz, many more…) The stand included two additional pieces of architecture: a m-high hut made of branches angled to a point and daubed in manure (we assume, since sand clearly wouldn’t hold together, and clay is not available); and a slightly taller square cube with walls of soda and beer cans, strung in vertical columns.
On this trip, we went to the salt ponds on 2 days with Hilma and Magdalena (faculty and student at Poly, respectively), caught fish (tilapia, mullet), and discussed salt pond food webs and oyster production. Along the margins of the oyster pond, clams were gaping and dying – these are Manila clams introduced from Europe (but originally from Asia), also familiar to us because they are introduced in Washington. These clams bear some further study: their presence all around the pond indicates at least one successful recruitment event, but the strange size structure (no small clams) means that recruitment may not happen regularly. We suspect the clams were dying from unusually high temperatures and other stresses that contribute to “summer mortality”.
The trip was short because it was bookended by strategic planning meetings in Windhoek...
Transportation addendum
In Namibia, lots of people walk. And people walk lots of places: school kids walk along the highway to get home; women walk with large sacks of grass on their head; people in blue pants and shirts – the characteristic sign of working class – make their way by foot (or packed into the back of pick-up trucks) from residence to job or return. The country has 2 million people and 70,000 cars, so lots of people go without. Given how much travel happens by foot, one might expect pedestrians to have the right of way, and drivers to be aware of foot traffic. Quite the contrary! It doesn’t matter your age, race, or how many small children you’re traveling with, if you’re on foot, you have to make sure you stay out of the way of cars and trucks, because they will not deviate from their path. Even crossing a street with a green light, the pedestrian has to yield to right or left hand turners, or risk being hit. Actually, some of our closest calls while driving have occurred when we tried to allow someone to cross the road in front of us on foot: pedestrians assume that cars will continue to move at a constant speed and direction, and they often judge their crossing to flow just behind a passing car – sort of like a deadly video game! When we slowed down or changed lanes, pedestrians became quite confused!
For people without cars, there are many options for transportation – but we haven’t experienced these directly, despite our thoughts prior to arrival of doing without a car. In Windhoek, there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of taxis, with a similar proportion in smaller towns. When we’re walking around town, the taxis regularly honk (they all seem to have the same horn-tone) to inquire if we want a ride. People can get picked up and dropped off all along the way. Prices are uncertain: students at the Polytechnic who live in Katatura, a traditionally-black suburb of Windhoek, pay $N200 (US$30) for an entire term of daily transport, but other fares have to be negotiated, as there are no mileage or time counters in the taxis. Each taxi driver is his (haven’t seen any her) own company, usually simply indicated with some letters on the door stating name and address.
For longer distance transport, there are short buses that pull baggage trailers behind them. People gather at major intersections along the highway for pick-up. On dirt roads, people hitchhike – we’ve picked up several when the clutter of sleeping bags, oyster samples, and Katie’s books hasn’t been too excessive, and when traveling in pretty remote places where the next car could be some time coming. Very few people travel by rail in Namibia, in contrast to many other African nations (so we’ve heard). Our flat in Windhoek provides ample opportunity to observe trains – even more so because Katie’s ear is acutely tuned to the rumble, chug, and whistle, so she runs to the window to look at each one. An old blue engine or two, belching black smoke, generally pulls some yellow cylindrical tanker cars, maybe some open-top cars full of scrap metal, a few boxcars, and perhaps a passenger car or two. The trains often have just 5 cars total and rarely more than 20. We are on the main north-south route through Namibia, so it’s strange that most of the trains seem to be heading south (but we haven’t quantified this); there is also a rail spur to Swakopmund, but in many many hours of traveling this road back and forth to the coast, we’ve only seen one train on the tracks parallel to us. Which brings up one current reason for little train traffic – good roads for trucking from Walvis Bay, the country’s only deepwater port, to pretty much anywhere. The poor infrastructure for trains may also reflect a historical decision: Namibia’s railways are spaced at 3 and a half feet, rather than four feet and change elsewhere, a legacy of someone’s assessment that getting a narrow gauge railway through the mountains would be less work. We recently learned that the first railway in Namibia was near Cape Cross, running between the phosphate rock (old bird guano, nitrogen leached out) and the small harbor where sailing ships would anchor offshore.
Health and safety addendum
I forgot to repeat some political analysis that we heard from embassy staff relevant to explaining the high variance in income in Namibia. I have always equated colonialism and bad: exploitation, oppression, conversion. But Namibia may actually be at a further disadvantage because it was not a colony (at least recently: German occupation ended after WWI). African colonies enjoyed some intellectual and human resource exchange with European countries, producing an educated leadership that could take over when occupation ended. In contrast, black Africans under apartheid were systematically denied access to opportunities for educational and economic advancement, and this has devastating carry-over to this generation. Very few black Namibians have higher degrees, mostly via education in the States – but they include prominent people such as the first and current (second) president of the country and rector of Poly. (When will the US elect a PhD as president?!?)
It's the wurst!
Actually, the sausages are superb – even the Viennas (essentially hot dogs), but especially brats and “Windhoek grillers” that incorporate both pork and mutton, and also boerwors coiled like snakes for sale. These are undoubtedly a german legacy. (And another enticement to get JR's dad to visit... bratwurst like it was meant to be!) However, the local delicacy is biltong – beef or game meat dried and spiced for very long shelf life. There are chains of stores that sell only biltong, plus biltong available in unlabelled bags at nearly every gas station convenience store. We’ve now tried both types and have found them… well… chewy, but certainly flavorful. Given the country’s interest in preserved meat, one might perceive a market for smoked oysters, but, as far as we can tell, no one has attempted this niche, and the niche may not actually exist – oysters, after all, are seafood. However, we can now report on some further sampling of Namibian oysters: 3 preparations at the Lighthouse restaurant in Swakopmund – raw on the half shell, baked with cheese, and battered and fried and served in shells with a sort of golden boullion (this last, our favorite, was a special dish requested by our server when he found out we were oyster biologists, but we didn’t manage to get the same thing when we came back a few weeks later); raw oysters on the boat tour of Walvis Bay; baked oysters at the Raft restaurant in Walvis Bay; and freshly opened raw gigas from the Kleins’ salt pond (one never turns down a grower’s offer – especially since he’d opened them to check for spawning condition and found very little gonad). The standard procedure is to keep oysters in holding tanks prior to sale long enough for them to clear their guts – this is very different from our Washington experience, where the phytoplankton contribute some of the distinctive taste from particular growing areas. Generally, the oysters tend to be very small, which makes for easier one-bite slurping or tasting, and also allows for rapid grow-out times of 7 months! (One wonders what the equivalent crop cycle time would be in Willapa Bay if oysters were harvested at shell lengths less than 2 inches – but hey! we can find that out with a quick comparative study!) Some of the oysters we consumed were pretty “soft” – after all, it’s the southern summer, and water temperatures have been unusually high, so no wonder oysters are building up gonad. One grower has just started pumping ozone into his refrigerated building where he holds oysters as they clear their guts; the ozone is supposed to help firm up the oysters, although how this would work mechanistically is very unclear to us.
As we’ve been camping with just a tiny one-burner stove, we’ve been venturing into new culinary territory as we try a variety of ready-to-eat meals. Many of these seem to come in the form of curries (the east Indian influence is strong in South Africa, where the grocery chains are based): we’ve tried curry-in-a-can (and strongly recommend against the textured vegetable protein), and curry-in-a-bag (these are quite good, including separate lemon rice or biryani, although Katie pronounces some of them “too spicy”). In both cases, one places the container in boiling water for a few minutes, then simply pours out of the can/bag. Undoubtedly better when consumed on the beach while watching the waves.
It’s Namibian!
Good beer, brewed to German standards with imported ingredients. There are several Namibian breweries, and the “waste” grain is a potential source of feed for intensively-raised non-ruminants such as chickens and pigs. Some of the faculty at Poly are just embarking on a research project to examine feed quality.
Hot Cross Buns: all his life, Alan has been disappointed with the bland taste and texture of what nursery rhymes assure us should be a tasty treat. But here in Namibia, he’s found HCB’s that are truly delectable, not just stripes of sugar-water on top of a white roll.
Namibian whole milk curdles rapidly, we discovered when our cooler ran out of ice 12 hours before we reached a refrigerator. But curdled milk works great in biscuits.
Beetroot – available in all sorts of preparations off the shelf (grated, sliced, whole, pickled, spiced, etc.). Seems to be served as a side dish, along with other options such as feta, olives, and gherkins. Feta is particularly confusing to us, as we think of it as middle eastern, and the connection between that region and Namibia seems thin.
Ice cream: Despite Katie’s appreciation of “pink” soft-serve, ice cream in general is disappointing. 90% of what’s available in stores is from Nestle, and 100% has vegetable shortening as an ingredient, which must contribute to the foamy texture even when it’s melted.
Five Roses: this is THE black tea brand in southern Africa. And JR could drink it all day! We’ve learned that it’s easiest to order black tea by simply saying “Five roses, please”.
Garbage: We’re generating much more than we’re used to in the U.S., primarily because we have no access to a compost pile (or chickens, which are actually illegal in Windhoek), and Namibia’s recycling program is either non-existent or still opaque to us. We’ve heard that some recycling occurs when people sort through trash looking for anything usable, but we weren’t told what counts as usable. Fortunately, thanks to the amazing cloth diapers we brought with us (Fuzzi Bunz: happy to give personal testimonials), we’re not generating diaper waste. And, because Katie is daytime potty-trained, we’re not tied to doing laundry every other day.
As we’ve been camping with just a tiny one-burner stove, we’ve been venturing into new culinary territory as we try a variety of ready-to-eat meals. Many of these seem to come in the form of curries (the east Indian influence is strong in South Africa, where the grocery chains are based): we’ve tried curry-in-a-can (and strongly recommend against the textured vegetable protein), and curry-in-a-bag (these are quite good, including separate lemon rice or biryani, although Katie pronounces some of them “too spicy”). In both cases, one places the container in boiling water for a few minutes, then simply pours out of the can/bag. Undoubtedly better when consumed on the beach while watching the waves.
It’s Namibian!
Good beer, brewed to German standards with imported ingredients. There are several Namibian breweries, and the “waste” grain is a potential source of feed for intensively-raised non-ruminants such as chickens and pigs. Some of the faculty at Poly are just embarking on a research project to examine feed quality.
Hot Cross Buns: all his life, Alan has been disappointed with the bland taste and texture of what nursery rhymes assure us should be a tasty treat. But here in Namibia, he’s found HCB’s that are truly delectable, not just stripes of sugar-water on top of a white roll.
Namibian whole milk curdles rapidly, we discovered when our cooler ran out of ice 12 hours before we reached a refrigerator. But curdled milk works great in biscuits.
Beetroot – available in all sorts of preparations off the shelf (grated, sliced, whole, pickled, spiced, etc.). Seems to be served as a side dish, along with other options such as feta, olives, and gherkins. Feta is particularly confusing to us, as we think of it as middle eastern, and the connection between that region and Namibia seems thin.
Ice cream: Despite Katie’s appreciation of “pink” soft-serve, ice cream in general is disappointing. 90% of what’s available in stores is from Nestle, and 100% has vegetable shortening as an ingredient, which must contribute to the foamy texture even when it’s melted.
Five Roses: this is THE black tea brand in southern Africa. And JR could drink it all day! We’ve learned that it’s easiest to order black tea by simply saying “Five roses, please”.
Garbage: We’re generating much more than we’re used to in the U.S., primarily because we have no access to a compost pile (or chickens, which are actually illegal in Windhoek), and Namibia’s recycling program is either non-existent or still opaque to us. We’ve heard that some recycling occurs when people sort through trash looking for anything usable, but we weren’t told what counts as usable. Fortunately, thanks to the amazing cloth diapers we brought with us (Fuzzi Bunz: happy to give personal testimonials), we’re not generating diaper waste. And, because Katie is daytime potty-trained, we’re not tied to doing laundry every other day.
Polytechnic strategic planning
Only read this if you want to know the nitty-gritty details about the fact that we're doing more in Namibia than looking for oryxes, ostriches, and oysters, oh my!
For better or worse, the Polytechnic is in the midst of strategic planning, their third such process since the institution was founded in 1995. We – especially Alan – find ourselves deeply involved in the process. It is an interesting higher-level perspective to accompany the program-building that we are doing within a single department. But first, a step back:
Namibia – a country of around 2 million with 40,000 high school graduates each year – has two institutions of higher learning. The University of Namibia is based in Windhoek and has satellite campuses (for instance, several agricultural campuses and an engineering campus in the works) throughout the country. UNAM was founded in 1992 but (I think) was mostly renamed from an existing institution. The chancellor of the university is the founding president of the country. And UNAM is widely recognized as being responsible for producing bachelor degrees. The Polytechnic of Namibia, in contrast, is responsible for training technicians. Its schools include Business (6000 of 8000 students), Engineering (where new programs are just starting in biomedical and environmental science, go figure), Communications (largely responsible for making sure all students have functional English skills), Information Technology, and Natural Resources and Tourism. Within the last, there are 4 departments: Agriculture, Nature conservation, Land management (including surveying), and Hotel and tourism management. We are in Agriculture, responsible for helping to develop a new program in Aquaculture and for teaching Non-ruminant Animal Husbandry next term. (Technically, it’s JR’s responsibility, but early on we got permission from the Rector of PoN to job-share, hence AT’s involvement in strategic planning.)
Agriculture currently has 6 faculty (plus a seventh whom we have not met: He was recently hired to teach agribusiness courses but has not arrived due to delays in work permits). Their entering class is about 30 students each year. They offer a 3-year diploma, and, with an additional year or two of distance courses and research project to receive a Bachelor of Technology – we remain pretty uncertain about what constitutes a BTech, which is okay, because it’s being phased out anyway. The faculty are largely trained in agribusiness but very committed to providing students with hands-on training that would allow them to become successful farmers. So the students take a course in building with concrete, electric fences, etc. They also spend one term (out of 6) working on a farm or with some other agriculture-production oriented business. What we are beginning to realize is that the department’s vision of their role in Namibia may be somewhat different than that of the administration (but isn’t that why strategic planning happens – to reconcile those views?). Driven by the administration, Poly is in the process of transforming from a technical college to a university: this involves more than a name change to University of Science and Technology, but also an accreditation process and direct competition with UNAM. Some might say that UNAM doesn’t present much competition, since, for instance, the Fulbright Fellow posted there hasn’t even been given an office after 2 months, and her teaching responsibilities will be guest lectures. Right now, nothing is happening at UNAM because the faculty are on strike for 12% raises. We have heard that BSc preparation out of UNAM does not provide students with equivalent skills as they could acquire at a South African university, where most of the best students in Namibia still go. However, the two institutions certainly compete for resources, and we have heard that Poly gets much less government support than UNAM.
Last year, the Department of Agriculture developed two new curricula, an update to their agriculture programs and a new curriculum in aquaculture. The curricula are matched explicitly to NQF/NQA criteria – these stand for Namibian Qualification something or other – which require that the degrees and each course within the degree contain specific learning objectives. The learning objectives are scored by level (sort of like Bloom’s taxonomy – a course where students learn to identify is at a lower level than one where they have to compare, apply, or evaluate) and by Notional Hours (which incorporate both contact hours and study time on their own). Then, specific numbers of notional hours at specific levels are required for certification as a National Diploma or Bachelor degree. Some of this is very familiar from similar attention to learning objectives at the University of Washington. However, other parts have taken some getting used to: for instance, the degrees proposed for Agriculture Management and Aquaculture Management have no electives – all students in a class take exactly the same 5 courses each term. Also, curricula are being built in the absence of faculty to teach the courses. This is particularly obvious in Aquaculture, where one inspired faculty member read a lot of books to put together a curriculum, which will need to be taught by at least 4 additional people trained in aquatic science or aquaculture.
The curricula proposed by the Department last year passed through the Board of Studies (essentially a “faculty meeting” of everyone in the School) but stalled at the Senate (which consists of upper administration), which requested that the Department develop BSc degrees, in addition to the Diploma. Now, if Poly is to become the University of Science and Technology, it definitely makes sense to have BSc’s. But, the department’s response was to add an additional year of courses to the diploma (courses in agribusiness, marketing, plant production, and animal production – even though students have already had 3 business courses, and 5 taxon-specific production courses) and call it a BSc. Our first contribution to program-building was therefore sort of negative (well, hopefully constructive criticism). We pointed out that the amount of math (accounting), chemistry (1 term), physics (none), and biology (some physiology and ecology in the context of agriculture species and rangeland) did not align well with any other BSc’s with which we were familiar. We suggested that it was not possible to build a BSc on top of a technical diploma (unless students wanted to take all of their physics, organic chemistry, and calculus in the final year, which sounded neither fun nor useful), but a BSc could be developed in parallel, with (gasp) electives, use of courses offered in engineering, and synthetic seminars to help students draw together, say, strands of preparation in genetics and farming. Resistance has been high, on a number of grounds: we have heard that Namibia doesn’t need scientists, that UNAM is charged with producing those sorts of graduates, and that graduates of an agribusiness program at Poly would still be better than UNAM graduates. Okay, well, it is sort of funny to be thinking about what distinguishes a farmer and a scientist (like, the scientist can’t actually grow food), since these are two paths that we’re personally interested in. But, we mostly wonder whether the disparity of vision between administration and department is as high as it now seems – what is the role of this institution, and how can it best contribute to economic development in the country? As scientists, we have seen opportunities for research at every turn, from tracking mountain zebras to understand their competition with cows, to growing salt pond Dunaliella in culture to extract beta-carotene, to more marine ecological issues of top-down vs. bottom-up controls on oyster production. But then again, we’re not asking to be paid to work on scientific questions – it’s a passion, not a 7:30-4:30 job (which reminds me, the culture at Poly definitely emphasizes “seat time” for faculty – definitely not the way we work!). Alan was up past midnight last night learning about boring polychaetes and summer mortality in oysters, which will allow us to avoid taking our research down well-trodden territory. I counted isopods until dark last week to get a first sample of the Paridotea population. But we do wonder how many scientists Namibia could support, with no national funding for research and industries struggling to break even, let alone support research.
For better or worse, the Polytechnic is in the midst of strategic planning, their third such process since the institution was founded in 1995. We – especially Alan – find ourselves deeply involved in the process. It is an interesting higher-level perspective to accompany the program-building that we are doing within a single department. But first, a step back:
Namibia – a country of around 2 million with 40,000 high school graduates each year – has two institutions of higher learning. The University of Namibia is based in Windhoek and has satellite campuses (for instance, several agricultural campuses and an engineering campus in the works) throughout the country. UNAM was founded in 1992 but (I think) was mostly renamed from an existing institution. The chancellor of the university is the founding president of the country. And UNAM is widely recognized as being responsible for producing bachelor degrees. The Polytechnic of Namibia, in contrast, is responsible for training technicians. Its schools include Business (6000 of 8000 students), Engineering (where new programs are just starting in biomedical and environmental science, go figure), Communications (largely responsible for making sure all students have functional English skills), Information Technology, and Natural Resources and Tourism. Within the last, there are 4 departments: Agriculture, Nature conservation, Land management (including surveying), and Hotel and tourism management. We are in Agriculture, responsible for helping to develop a new program in Aquaculture and for teaching Non-ruminant Animal Husbandry next term. (Technically, it’s JR’s responsibility, but early on we got permission from the Rector of PoN to job-share, hence AT’s involvement in strategic planning.)
Agriculture currently has 6 faculty (plus a seventh whom we have not met: He was recently hired to teach agribusiness courses but has not arrived due to delays in work permits). Their entering class is about 30 students each year. They offer a 3-year diploma, and, with an additional year or two of distance courses and research project to receive a Bachelor of Technology – we remain pretty uncertain about what constitutes a BTech, which is okay, because it’s being phased out anyway. The faculty are largely trained in agribusiness but very committed to providing students with hands-on training that would allow them to become successful farmers. So the students take a course in building with concrete, electric fences, etc. They also spend one term (out of 6) working on a farm or with some other agriculture-production oriented business. What we are beginning to realize is that the department’s vision of their role in Namibia may be somewhat different than that of the administration (but isn’t that why strategic planning happens – to reconcile those views?). Driven by the administration, Poly is in the process of transforming from a technical college to a university: this involves more than a name change to University of Science and Technology, but also an accreditation process and direct competition with UNAM. Some might say that UNAM doesn’t present much competition, since, for instance, the Fulbright Fellow posted there hasn’t even been given an office after 2 months, and her teaching responsibilities will be guest lectures. Right now, nothing is happening at UNAM because the faculty are on strike for 12% raises. We have heard that BSc preparation out of UNAM does not provide students with equivalent skills as they could acquire at a South African university, where most of the best students in Namibia still go. However, the two institutions certainly compete for resources, and we have heard that Poly gets much less government support than UNAM.
Last year, the Department of Agriculture developed two new curricula, an update to their agriculture programs and a new curriculum in aquaculture. The curricula are matched explicitly to NQF/NQA criteria – these stand for Namibian Qualification something or other – which require that the degrees and each course within the degree contain specific learning objectives. The learning objectives are scored by level (sort of like Bloom’s taxonomy – a course where students learn to identify is at a lower level than one where they have to compare, apply, or evaluate) and by Notional Hours (which incorporate both contact hours and study time on their own). Then, specific numbers of notional hours at specific levels are required for certification as a National Diploma or Bachelor degree. Some of this is very familiar from similar attention to learning objectives at the University of Washington. However, other parts have taken some getting used to: for instance, the degrees proposed for Agriculture Management and Aquaculture Management have no electives – all students in a class take exactly the same 5 courses each term. Also, curricula are being built in the absence of faculty to teach the courses. This is particularly obvious in Aquaculture, where one inspired faculty member read a lot of books to put together a curriculum, which will need to be taught by at least 4 additional people trained in aquatic science or aquaculture.
The curricula proposed by the Department last year passed through the Board of Studies (essentially a “faculty meeting” of everyone in the School) but stalled at the Senate (which consists of upper administration), which requested that the Department develop BSc degrees, in addition to the Diploma. Now, if Poly is to become the University of Science and Technology, it definitely makes sense to have BSc’s. But, the department’s response was to add an additional year of courses to the diploma (courses in agribusiness, marketing, plant production, and animal production – even though students have already had 3 business courses, and 5 taxon-specific production courses) and call it a BSc. Our first contribution to program-building was therefore sort of negative (well, hopefully constructive criticism). We pointed out that the amount of math (accounting), chemistry (1 term), physics (none), and biology (some physiology and ecology in the context of agriculture species and rangeland) did not align well with any other BSc’s with which we were familiar. We suggested that it was not possible to build a BSc on top of a technical diploma (unless students wanted to take all of their physics, organic chemistry, and calculus in the final year, which sounded neither fun nor useful), but a BSc could be developed in parallel, with (gasp) electives, use of courses offered in engineering, and synthetic seminars to help students draw together, say, strands of preparation in genetics and farming. Resistance has been high, on a number of grounds: we have heard that Namibia doesn’t need scientists, that UNAM is charged with producing those sorts of graduates, and that graduates of an agribusiness program at Poly would still be better than UNAM graduates. Okay, well, it is sort of funny to be thinking about what distinguishes a farmer and a scientist (like, the scientist can’t actually grow food), since these are two paths that we’re personally interested in. But, we mostly wonder whether the disparity of vision between administration and department is as high as it now seems – what is the role of this institution, and how can it best contribute to economic development in the country? As scientists, we have seen opportunities for research at every turn, from tracking mountain zebras to understand their competition with cows, to growing salt pond Dunaliella in culture to extract beta-carotene, to more marine ecological issues of top-down vs. bottom-up controls on oyster production. But then again, we’re not asking to be paid to work on scientific questions – it’s a passion, not a 7:30-4:30 job (which reminds me, the culture at Poly definitely emphasizes “seat time” for faculty – definitely not the way we work!). Alan was up past midnight last night learning about boring polychaetes and summer mortality in oysters, which will allow us to avoid taking our research down well-trodden territory. I counted isopods until dark last week to get a first sample of the Paridotea population. But we do wonder how many scientists Namibia could support, with no national funding for research and industries struggling to break even, let alone support research.
Week 6 trip to coast
2/11-2/14 2008
On this trip, we took a new road to the coast. On the map, it is labeled C26, but widely known as the Khomas-Hochland road. The “C” part means it is not paved (B is for tar-road). Half of the drive – by distance, and by far the majority by time – was through mountainous territory with sinuous roads, rather washboard, and periodically cut through by intermittent rivers. We drove much of it at 30 kph. Cattle and horses along the way indicate that the area is grazed, although the soil is so thin that rocks show through everywhere, in lines suggesting sedimentary layers turned on end. It was a fantastic drive for charismatic megafauna: when we stopped to look at a few oryx (whose dramatic coloring makes them stand out), we also startled a dozen kudu, totally invisible in their lightly banded brown coats until they moved. Charismatic birds included some really large and pied (black and white) ones – we’re marking dates and places in our bird book when we can identify species, and we added more than a half dozen on this trip.
The road emerges from the mountains almost directly into Namib-Naukluft park, where oryx, springbok, ostriches and zebras congregated in remarkable numbers on the eastern edge, which was beginning to green from recent rain. We saw Welwitschia mirabilis for the first time in the wild, looking just as scraggly and other-worldly as in the UW greenhouse. Apparently, its two leaves can grow for a millennium.
We camped for 3 nights around The Salt Company, making forays there each day to begin understanding how the water moves among the ponds and which species are present. We were surprised that the inlet canal, where seawater is first pumped, had no clams, mussels, or barnacles – we wondered if the pump was fatal to larvae, or if the flamingos were dancing them to death, but then learned that the canal periodically dries out when the pump is turned off. In any case, many species that appear not to be present in the inlet to the oyster salt pond, suddenly appear in the pond: barnacles on the rocks and floats, a reddish bryozoan, isopods in the Gracilaria, under rocks, and sometimes just swimming openly. We tentatively identified the isopods as Paridotea fucicola [later: nope – the uropod ramus dimensions became clearer with a better ‘scope], but it wasn’t easy without a dissecting kit or dissecting microscope: I had to pull out the mouthparts and uropods by hand and try to look at them under the compound ‘scope that Mr Klein uses to observe oyster larvae.
Our camping trip was a bit of a shake-down: we spent the first night at a commercial campground, which is good since the propane canisters recommended for our Bleuet stove didn’t actually fit, and we used the kitchen stoves available at the campground instead. On our second night, we opened cans of mutton and TVP curry with a knife (stainless steel beats aluminum) because our mess kit includes a cork/bottle opener but no can opener. By the third night, we felt that we were settling into more of a routine. All 3 of us pack into the back of the Combi to sleep even though it’s 4” too short for Alan (he gets the spot where one of the seat backs folds down.
During our stay, the winds began blowing from the SW for the first time in weeks: if this holds, upwelling should resume and the water temperatures cool and become less stressful for aquaculture.
On this trip, we took a new road to the coast. On the map, it is labeled C26, but widely known as the Khomas-Hochland road. The “C” part means it is not paved (B is for tar-road). Half of the drive – by distance, and by far the majority by time – was through mountainous territory with sinuous roads, rather washboard, and periodically cut through by intermittent rivers. We drove much of it at 30 kph. Cattle and horses along the way indicate that the area is grazed, although the soil is so thin that rocks show through everywhere, in lines suggesting sedimentary layers turned on end. It was a fantastic drive for charismatic megafauna: when we stopped to look at a few oryx (whose dramatic coloring makes them stand out), we also startled a dozen kudu, totally invisible in their lightly banded brown coats until they moved. Charismatic birds included some really large and pied (black and white) ones – we’re marking dates and places in our bird book when we can identify species, and we added more than a half dozen on this trip.
The road emerges from the mountains almost directly into Namib-Naukluft park, where oryx, springbok, ostriches and zebras congregated in remarkable numbers on the eastern edge, which was beginning to green from recent rain. We saw Welwitschia mirabilis for the first time in the wild, looking just as scraggly and other-worldly as in the UW greenhouse. Apparently, its two leaves can grow for a millennium.
We camped for 3 nights around The Salt Company, making forays there each day to begin understanding how the water moves among the ponds and which species are present. We were surprised that the inlet canal, where seawater is first pumped, had no clams, mussels, or barnacles – we wondered if the pump was fatal to larvae, or if the flamingos were dancing them to death, but then learned that the canal periodically dries out when the pump is turned off. In any case, many species that appear not to be present in the inlet to the oyster salt pond, suddenly appear in the pond: barnacles on the rocks and floats, a reddish bryozoan, isopods in the Gracilaria, under rocks, and sometimes just swimming openly. We tentatively identified the isopods as Paridotea fucicola [later: nope – the uropod ramus dimensions became clearer with a better ‘scope], but it wasn’t easy without a dissecting kit or dissecting microscope: I had to pull out the mouthparts and uropods by hand and try to look at them under the compound ‘scope that Mr Klein uses to observe oyster larvae.
Our camping trip was a bit of a shake-down: we spent the first night at a commercial campground, which is good since the propane canisters recommended for our Bleuet stove didn’t actually fit, and we used the kitchen stoves available at the campground instead. On our second night, we opened cans of mutton and TVP curry with a knife (stainless steel beats aluminum) because our mess kit includes a cork/bottle opener but no can opener. By the third night, we felt that we were settling into more of a routine. All 3 of us pack into the back of the Combi to sleep even though it’s 4” too short for Alan (he gets the spot where one of the seat backs folds down.
During our stay, the winds began blowing from the SW for the first time in weeks: if this holds, upwelling should resume and the water temperatures cool and become less stressful for aquaculture.
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