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.