Expensive weekend

Among others on the expedition equipment list, assembled and purchased this weekend:
- Cable ties and duck tape: the most indispensable items on expedition.
- Suunto Mosquito dive watch/computer with PC USB interface. Features a snorkeling and logging option which was unavailable on my last one that got damaged in the car crash.
- Titanium dive knife, a bit smaller and with a smarter design than the one that got lost in the car crash.
- Sub-surface horn, for safety and buddy communication.
- CD-Cassette adapter, to make the long hours of driving and the long weeks of pure Arabic radio stations a bit more bearable.

To do before I leave on Friday morning:

confirm rental car, alert Joker of the wrong name on the extra baggage allowance, find my travel passport, find my travel passport, correct the introduction to the dissertation of my master’s student, identify 50 seaweed samples for the same student, find my travel passport, find my travel passport, write next year’s dissertation projects, discuss further methods and a schedule for my other master’s student, find my travel passport, find my travel passport, get sampling equipment and containers, gather stuff and start packing, find my travel passport, relax for a dinner and a last night at home, find my travel passport, continue gathering stuff and packing, find my travel passport, and leave.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few minor things, but we’ll see about that later…

Discovery of the day and the year: Oman Mobile, my mobile phone operator in Oman, has officially launched WAP for pre-paid customers two weeks ago. This means I’ll most likely be able to send and receive Gmail and Yahoo e-mails (thus including posting to my blog) everywhere, even during my fortnight in Mirbat, devoid of cybercafes! Hear hear!

Update: I’ve found my passport in a huge envelope in which I’d dumped a lot of administration. Now, as Koen pointed out, keeping it in sight until Friday is another challenge…

Marine ecological field work rulezz

This one always does the trick: showing the relation between images taken from 615 km altitude and in the field at more or less the same time, all by myself… Or in the case of the satellite images, ordered by myself, I don’t want to exagerate

The future in my hands

[bolds added to make my point]

ESA: Please find attached a quick look of the Siddah site. Is it of the correct location and if so do you require further images of this particular site ?

Me: Thank you for the effort of taking a quick look. I was a bit surprised though to notice that the actual image center is somewhat 9 km southeast of the requested image center, which is located just outside the upper right image corner. I double-checked the coordinates and to my mind, it seems that something went wrong in pointing the sensor at Siddah…

ESA: Just checked the coordinates requested for the acquisition of Siddah. It seems you are correct in your assertion that there was a satellite pointing error. Better luck next time.

If only NASA had disposed of the same hi-tech state of the art technology as ESA, I figure a lot of these American satellite-based precision bombings in Iraq would have harmlessly ended up in plain desert. Yeehaa

And contrary to what people tell about the first 99% of a job taking 1% of the time and the last 1% taking 99% of the time, the opposite is true for me. I’m supposed to finish a powerpoint of my research to present to 5th grade high school students by tomorrow afternoon, and I just can’t get started… I just don’t know where to begin, which pictures to choose… Look at me, I’m blogging again instead of working on the powerpoint. I’m seriously suffering of beginner’s block. I’m sure everything can get finished in just a few hours if I just could get started… Although I must admit the whole initiative is kinda cool. I’ve never seen “real-life” research when I was in high school, let alone I’d ever heard of some of the techniques and subjects they’ll get to know tomorrow!

Five past twelve

About 10 days ago, a question was posted on the Coral-List asking where (and basically, if) healthy coral reefs in the Florida Keys are still to be found. Following more than a week of debate, the conclusion turns out to be equally simple and worrysome: nowhere. Phillip Dustan from the College of Charleston (South Carolina, USA) posted a summarizing reply, which I feel free to quote here, as it can’t be stressed enough and Phillip did it in a more fervent and accurate way than I could. Please take a few minutes to read this: it’s an eye-opener.

Dear Coral List,
I’d like to thank everyone for participating in the discussion about healthy reefs in teh Florida Keys. I’ve gotten lots of response but no one can point to a healthy reef, because there are none left. And probably haven’t been for a long time.

My point is that before we talk about resilience, maybe we can reach a true consensus that the reefs are a mere shadow of their past. By my calculations nad measurments, the Keys have lost over 90% of their living coral since we began to study them in the 1960s and 70s. The Tortugas are in better shape, but are also losing vitality pretty fast too. This is shameful. All this time we have been talking about studies, monitoring, and awareness and the house has been in full flames right in front of our faces. Shame on everyone that wants to minimize this or, even worse, deny it. The authorities should be worried about how to protect what is left, and should have been fully engaged in this years ago, but everyone wants to pretend that it’s patchy, or not here, or look over there, there’s a new recruit! Worse yet, some want us to think that we can remake the reef with concrete or boulders- the built it and they will come mentality. There really is no point in continuing to wear a smiley face. Looking for patches that are the remnants of a far greater luxuriance, without documenting (georeferencing) the losses that are far greater, supports this form of denial.

Well, the water is too polluted and we’ve know this for a very long time. We may not know exactly how, but we know it is and perhaps there are some creative ways to reduce loading. And there are too many people fishing and gathering, and Key Largo STILL does not have a sewage system because its too expensive? And watershed effluent is not simply sewage……But still we look for bright spots. I think it’s because it’s more politically palpable and easier. The really worthwhile road is hundreds of years long and involves some really hard reality checks, sacrifice, political savy, and serious money. What’s the point of having a sanctuary if there’s nothing left except an economy?

It’s been said by many that the coral reef science community eats their young. It also seems to be good at reinventing discoveries and denial. The reefs are dying faster that we are progressing however. Rather than resiliency, I’d favor a term like remnancy (to coin a new term) that portrays reality a bit more. Which reefs are hanging on, or slower in losing ground. Perhaps we could institute a scale of remnancy (the R scale from 0-5). Molasses reef might be rated as R2, Rock Key R3, Carysfort R1, etc… Maybe this might help create public awareness and political pressure. It would also promote healthy competition between dives shops and localities along the Keys. Who wants to dive on an R2 when we can go to an R3? In a few hundred years some reefs might even be up to R4 if conservation is successful.
Otherwise,with business as usual, we just keep shifting the baseline downward and keep studying the reef, and gee, it’s a problem that we need to keep working on. But the house is now ashes and the emperor is wearing a beautiful set of new clothes.
Thanks again and I hope we can keep focusing on the reefs. Just imagine the Florida Keys without reefs?
Phil

Today

Inspired by Pieter, I installed the climate change experiment on my computer, a distributed computing project in which calculations on huge environmental databases are running constantly in the background of a personal computer. This way, you get actively involved in climate research (making your computer more useful over time than by supporting global porn economy). Sadly I had to stop the program as its background processes seem to heat my processor to the extent where the ventilator noise really started bothering me.

I’m supervising a phycological practical course for 3rd BSc in Biology option Botany all week now. It feels good to actually see some beautiful algae under a microscope again after weeks of computer work. From time to time some inspiring microscopic images are to be seen (image soon to come). In contrast with last year when only 4 students were enrolled to the option Botany, 18 students attend the Botany courses this year (last year was actually good fun – it resembled a private class, and their 4 days field course in northern France I supervised was like a few days off among friends interested in coastal biology). Remarkably, they are all very interested, quite and hard-working. Not surprisingly though: what is more motivating than gaining insight in astonishingly complex red algal courtly love?

Behavioral anthropology

I’m not a racist, but there’s one particular subspecies of Homo sapiens, called footballsupporteriensis, of which I doubt the specimens actually are sapiens. Their population is 90% male, and characteristic of lower life forms they are very predictable in their behavior: they venture out with ten thousands at a time to witness primitive battles fought by rivalising teams of “heroes”, while producing loud, meaningless vowel-based sounds which they call “songs”. Instead of water, a yellow fluid called “Jupiler” seems an essential substance in their survival. The more Jupiler they drink, the more decibels they produce, the higher their status. Yesterday evening, I got stuck for 45 minutes in a huge traffic jam caused by several thousands of Homo s. subsp. footballsupporteriensis var. Bruggensis on their way to a match against var. Romensis, to see their tribe of 11 heroes loose 1-2 against the 10(!) enemies, largely assisted by a glorious own-goal. I sincerely wonder if interfering with this subspecies wouldn’t be a great idea: they would save a lot of money by staying at home instead of wasting fuel, thereby adding to global warming. It would protect them from a (however predictable) disappointment and at least I WOULDN’T SPEND A USELESS 1 HR 45 MIN DRIVE ATTEMPTING TO REACH THE NEARBY SWIMMING POOL FOR A TRAINING SESSION WITH MY BROTHER TO DO OUR FIELD JOBS PROPERLY!!!!!!!! Apart from the frustration, the specimens under discussion make an excellent subject for hilarious jokes when observed from a car

On the origin of bonds

Topic of conversation nr. 1 among the office-mates this morning: the Canvas documentary Over Leven episode of yesterday evening (site in Dutch, providing interesting links to English documentation – might move to “archief” in a couple of days) on the physiology of love and sex, and the role of non-coding “junk” DNA within the genes for oxytocyn and vasopressin (“cuddling hormones”) in establishing bonds. Being a marine ecologist doesn’t quite prevent me from being very interested in certain fields of human physiology, although I’ve missed last night’s episode, as it happens…

If you’re going to San Francisco…

Be sure to have some money one your account!

Last Wednesday, Krista asked me if she could join us to California. Since she wouldn’t match the conditions of the action (becoming 25 or traveling together with someone who does), I checked out the regular fares for a ticket Brussels-SF-Brussels in July… It turned out to be 937,66 euro!!! For a moment there, I thought I’d die of sudden cardiac arrest. Since United Airlines offers 25% discount on actual fares in the framework of the Joker-25 action, that would still mean a staggering 703 euro to us who are traveling according to the Joker-25 conditions, well over 300 euros more than the minimum quote mentioned!!! So I immediately mailed Joker, and guess what, rates indeed vary enormously according to the season -> So long, San Fran, as I’m not up to spending a month’s salary on a 16 day journey at the moment…

Why am I always so over-enthusiastic before I’ve even double-checked all conditions? *weeps heartbreakingly*

Canadian humor

There’s the world famous phycological Saunders lab web site, with loads of serious, interesting pages to be found.
For instance, there’s the Saunders lab members page. Take a close look at the post-doctoral fellows.
And then there’s the Pile Challenge pages.

Update on announcements

Seems like two out of three announcements have been answered by now.

Most importantly, my twin brother was very enthusiastic to help me out in Oman, so I’m not in search of a sampling companion anymore! Utter nepotism, I know. Many thanks to those who responded anyway, as this won’t be the last expedition I’ll be in need of companions!

Secondly, the California team is almost formed: Wouter (marine biologist/flatmate/fellow Sweden-traveler), Pieter (marine biologist/former flatmate/near-fellow Sweden-traveler) and Inge (historian/former fellow coastal lifeguard/near-fellow Sweden-traveler) are most likely to join me. In the course of next week we’ll discuss a few practical issues, and then off to the travel office to book our flights! Gee, I’ve never actually made such a decision (read as: paid quite a lot of money) that much in advance…

Thirdly: comments on the nutrient analyses are still most welcome!!

Update: this question, too, has now been answered!! (see below)