On the work front the majority of this week has been pretty
similar to last to be honest, the plankton cultures seem to be functioning much
better now, which is a relief. To avoid any major disasters in the future we’ve
now got a good number of reserves, 100ml gets taken out of each culture and
stuck in the fridge. The cold temperature and darkness reduces the metabolism
of the phytoplankton pretty dramatically, the reserves are useful for a decent
length of time and there’s enough in them to get a culture up to a useful
strength fairly quickly. We’ve laid in a good stock of small bottles so we
should be able to keep a good reserve, if nothing else! The bottles come from a
guy at the side of the road who sells them for 4p each, community recycling in
action! (We made sure to wash them well though!)
The mechanical success of the first fry tank inspired us to
make a massive one. The first is around 25cm tall, the second about twice this
size. I thought pictures of the big one would be better to put up here, so I didn’t
get any of the small one. Unfortunately the first time the big one got filled
with water it completely fell apart, I guarantee pictures next week…
I met with a friend from the panto who teaches at the local
international school on Thursday to chat about developing some teaching
materials to use with the fish facility which was quite interesting, she
spotted a lot of potential stuff we can use. Once the new facility is finished
we’ll have a small classroom on site so having some teaching materials could
prove to be pretty useful, just need to get the building finished now!
The low point of this week began with the exciting news from
Rene that the container with all the hardware for the seahorse facility had
left Denmark, which was extremely good news. Unfortunately on Friday he heard
that it actually hadn’t because Mombasa port is a complete mess and not taking
any incoming containers at the moment. This is pretty irritating news as we can’t
really do anything major until all that kit arrives and I currently have no
idea when we’ll get it. I’m really hoping that this gets sorted out soon, if
not things are going to get frustrating here extremely soon. Still, enough of
the negative waffle!
Yesterday Rene decided that the bosses needed to make a
surprise appearance on the dive and snorkel boats (apparently I’m one of the
bosses…). This resulted in a 3.15 am start to get down the coast in time to
meet the boats before they left. As it turned out we got there about 90 minutes
early, but better safe than sorry I guess! I was on one of the snorkelling
boats, a small dhow like thing.
Conditions were pretty much perfect, glassy calm and cloudless, but I’ve
definitely got a bruised arse from the rock hard bench seats!
The view from the boat yesterday, that's Tanzania in the background.
On Friday night I went out with a few of the people that I met
in the panto for a pub quiz at a local school. I bumped into one of them on
Thursday who said I had to come along to make up the numbers on her team, 3
others got the same request and on arrival we all discovered there were too
many of us and ended up in a team on our own! All four of us arrived here at
more or less the same time so struggled quite a lot with the Africa based
rounds, but managed not to do too badly, coming 5th out of 12 in the
end I think.
Today’s been spent getting a decent sleep after yesterday,
hitting the gym (one week in and I’ve not been too bad at keeping it up, even managing
a morning spinning class on Friday) and enjoying a (so far) decent game of
rugby after yesterday’s dull affairs!
I’ll be back next week, with pictures I promise!
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