Boa tarde!

Since the last post I got to check out a new place in the Inhambane province. PAINDANE!
It was fantastic. We dived on the site Paindane Express. It´s known for its strong current and for a good drift dive, but that day it was like a pool. A very different dive from both Zavora and Tofo, and a good chance to see dragon moray eels. We saw 9 at least, and thousands of shrimps, which is not common in Tofo nor Zav.

I had the next 10 days off, which were spent in Tofo. It was nice to go back to ´civilization´, but I really enjoy Zavora, so I was happy to go back.

Amongst the shrimps there is a hiding dragon

My last week here started with learning a new survey technique to measure the abundance of nudis. This is done by placing a quadrat on the reef and counting all the nudis, and maybe other unique stuff inside the quadrat. You do this for a set time and continue to another spot on the reef. Now, it has to be completely random, so you can´t for example swim around until you see a nudi and place the quadrat there. Haha. Best thing is to just close your eyes, swim an x number of kick cycles, throw the quadrat and let the current do the rest. This ´random´ thing turned out to be quite frustrating, as I had two mating Chromodoris 5 cm outside of my quadrat!!! Luckily, the last one had two mating Halgerdas INSIDE. Now, imagine two people who are so occupied sticking their heads in the reef looking for nudis, they don´t even notice to reef mantas creeping up on them. Long story short, I forgot that the camera was set to macro, so the few pics I managed to take of the mantas were recycle bin material.

Yes! Mating inside the quadrat.

We´ve also continued doing Manta ID dives, with proper equipment of course. Failing a little bit at the start, as we dropped much further south than we wanted. We literally drop on top of a manta, but neither of us had no idea where we are, or in which direction the reef was. The place where we dropped was flat and very boring, however, the mantas were everywhere. Big and small, but just passing by and feeding. Yara´s favorite nudi was also abundant in this area, so we actually went back a few days later and collected a couple of them. We found the reef at the end, but there was no action at the regular cleaning station. It would be interesting to see if the mantas we saw were actually going to those cleaning stations, or if there is an unknown one somewhere nearby.

White tip reef shark are also a common site!

The next dive was at Labyrint, the new site, to do a quadrat again. And guess what! While we were kitting up, the skipper sees a baby whale shark sneaking up to the back of the boat. Now I´ve been in Mozambique for four months, and I haven´t seen a single whale shark while I´ve been here. And even sadder, in my life! I jump up and walk to the back with my scuba gear half done, ready to get in the water, without my mask and fins of course. It was so close! But it just wouldn´t hang around, so it dived down. I was so happy and excited my hands were shaking uncontrollably.
Anyway, we tried doing the quadrat at Labyrint, but the site has so many swimthroughs and boulders it creates a lot of strange surges, so you can keep neither yourself nor your quadrat stationary enough to do a search. We ended up exploring the new site, and losing each other after I buddied up with a hawksbill turtle. :p

My new buddy

After the diving days I´ve been entering at least 10 mantas in Manta Matcher per day. It seems quite little, but because the program is so new, and not always working properly, it can take up to an hour to enter one manta. And if you combine that with african internet, you get where I´m heading. Did not think I would get sick of seeing manta pictures, but hey, there is a first for everything. I changed out the mantas with the two new Nembrotha nudis I collected. They got a bit stressed out from the move, so they started mating and laying eggs. I waited for them to finish laying the eggs before I started the process of conserving them. I measured them, took photos, studied them under the microscope and they´re now preserved in a little bottle ready for the next step in the description work that Yara has been doing. Now they need to be dissected and studied molecularly in Europe.

Matchmaking

And the result of mating

Close-up of the gills under a microscope

The beautiful face of the Nembrotha sp. 

My internship in Zav has come to an end, and we finished it off by doing another seahorse survey in the Barra Lagoon. 7 seahorses were measured and photographed and of course loads of other marine life was found. We did a night dive as well, and a whole new world came to life. with lots of crustaceans, octopus, burrowing cuttlefish etc. I truly love the lagoon and hope to study it some more one day.

Never get sick of these

Grumpy

Burrowed cuttlefish

Add caption

Cowfish

So that's it. I hope you enjoyed reading my posts, pictures and the work that we've done the last month. 

So long!

Bom dia!

So much has happened since the last post.

Last week we started with Manta ID dives. Epic!

I was a little skeptical about going out to dive for the sole purpose of seeing a manta, as I know how rare sightings can be. Especially considering the site we were going to was a maximum of 16 meters, and I’m used to only seeing them at 30 meters in Tofo. Mantas visit the shallows due to the cleaning stations on the reef. These stations have cleaner wrasses, sergeant majors, and surgeon fish that pick parasites of other fish. They get a free meal and the visitors are parasite free, win win! Zavora has many cleaning stations, and we conducted the identification work on three situated close enough to visit on the same dive. The point of these dives is to take video/photos of the mantas ventral side. They have black spots and grey patches on the gills, pectoral fins and the belly which is unique to every manta, functioning as a finger print. Thus, there is no need to mark the manta when doing population studies etc., and is way less invasive and stressful for the animal. Some mantas even have huge chunks taken out of their fins by sharks, making them easy recognizable.

This is the kind of shot we're after.
You can clearly see the spots and patches, and large scars if there are any.

The first dive started very slow in terms of mantas. We did see a leopard shark and an almost 2 meter wide blotched fantail ray, but no mantas in site. After 40 minutes it started getting cold and we were at the third cleaning station, having 5 minutes left on the timer. Finally our first manta decided to appear. It came straight for us and passed over both Yara and me several times, giving us very good photos to use later for identification. Success!!

Me with my selfie stick which lasted one dive.
It's really nice for getting close ups of the belly.

The second dive was the same sites, but a whole different story. Within the first 5 minutes we had two encounters with the same manta. Two more on the last cleaning station, one of which drove me away from Yara as I was too busy filming it that I didn’t pay attention to where I was going. I looked for Yara a bit, but the visibility was bad, so I decided to just go up. Just when I was reaching for my SMB, another manta decided to show up! I love how they just come straight toward you, and all you have to do is point your camera upwards and let it slowly pass over you. Needless to say, the day was a success, and we could enter 5 more reef mantas to our database!

The next day we had two more mantas, one being a resight from the first day. The third day we went to an offshore reef, about 10 km from the shore. The purpose of the dive was to change a temperature sensor located at the bottom (34m), and I had the task to unscrew the old one and install the new. The visibility was superb, and straight after we dropped I saw a giant manta hovering above the reef. Instinctively I went for it, completely forgetting the purpose of the dive. Halfway there I remembered, and gave up the manta. When I turned around and started swimming towards the others and the sensor, I saw three more giant mantas circling the reef! My heart was pounding, knowing how awesome it would be to put in some giants in the database, as most of the mantas there are reef mantas. Jon signaled to me that one of us had to go take photos. I was the only one with a camera, so he took over my original task. The mantas were so friendly, stopping beside us, checking us out, and turning around again and again.

Sometimes the mantas have so many remoras or sucker fish, you can't tell where the spots are. Filming instead of taking pics usually solves this problem.

The last dive of the week was the wreck Rio Sainas for a fish survey. During the survey we basically spend 5 minutes at different stations on the wreck, write down all the species of fish within a 2 meter radius, count them and note their size. The information is used to monitor the colonization of the wreck and how it changes over time. Key species were three HUGE brindlebass or giant groupers and annoyingly close longfin batfish. Very, very nice dive, but it’s quite deep so there was only enough time for the survey.

The end the week was used to dissect nudibranchs. We dissected two that were marked as Chromodoris hamiltoni, but which could be two different species. One of the ways to find out is dissection and looking at the radula (nudibranch teeth). Jeez, dissecting a 25mm organism is meticulous work for someone who has never dissected any animals smaller than a squid. The insides of a nudi are so fragile, so it was a bit nerve wracking. Did you know that nudis are hermaphrodites? It basically means you can find both the male and female reproductive systems in one nudi. The reproductive systems in our nudis were very different, so we might have two different species. After drawing the systems and the foregut, we put the foregut in acid to be left with only the radula. This has to be sent to a country with an electron microscope to be covered in gold and photographed. You end up with a super detailed photo of all the tiny, tiny teeth so they can be counted and used in the description of the species. How cool is that!

Poor little nudi

Otherwise, the tide has been low and springy the past three days, so we’ve spent every morning in the rockpool photographing invertebrates, nudis and fish to make ID-slates specifically for the rockpool. I never get sick of this place, there is life everywhere. I found five different nudibranch species on the underside of the rock I usually put my gear on. One of which is newly observed in Mozambique. Here are some of the photos

Unknown blenny

Juvenile honeycomb moray eel

Lionfish

Marionia sp. 

Saddleback toby

Juvenile geometric moray eel

Tomorrow we’re going to Paindane, near Inhambane, to do some diving. Apparently there is a good drift dive to do, so I’m stoked! 

Until next time!

Ciao!

New(bie) intern in town!

Hi there!

I’m Mona, the new intern at Zavora Marine Lab and Mozdivers. I’ll be giving an update on the work we do every week, so stay tuned. I’ve come all the way from Norway to explore the Mozambican waters and enjoy life in the tropics and the ocean. I’ve already been in Tofo for three months, diving every day, and absolutely loved it! I’m staying one month in Zavora to learn more about the coastal ecology of Mozambique, and particularly nudibranchs, manta rays and seahorses. I’ve been here a week, and already I’ve learned so much and done something different every day. 

                                          I love walking up a mountain as much as diving down
                                          to a reef. :)

The first day Yara took me to their beloved rock pool, which we can only visit when it’s spring and low tide. I did not expect to see so much life in such a small area just a little walk from the beach. We spotted loads of different nudibranchs species, and seven of these we found in a hole no bigger than 4 square meters. Two of which were the first time observed in Mozambique. 

                                         New species to mozambique

Wednesday was Earth Day, so Yara, Jon, Wrunga (Yara’s OW student), Mauro and me went back to the rock pool and removed pieces of fishing nets the fishermen leave behind. Equipped with scissors and scuba gear, we were ready to save some corals from suffocating plastic nets. I gotta say, it was pretty challenging trying to focus on the task when you’re surrounded by the beauty of the rock pool. The far end has some amazing topography, with big boulders suspending over the white sands. There’s life everywhere; porcelain crabs, boxer shrimps, nudis, bubbleshells, needle fish, and lots of nice hard and soft corals. Everything is connected, and corals play the biggest role in the presence and diversity of these crustaceans and molluscs. We saved around 15 live corals, but even more were already dead… This shows how important it is to do things like this regularly when there is active fishing going on.

Thursday was my first real dive here. The mission was to find as many nudis as possible and write down the species etc. Well…. I found a lot of nudis, but all that theory that was supposed to sit inside my head, was left at the surface. I also forgot how to use the camera once it sat in the underwater housing, so it’s role got degraded to a very buoyant accessory on my BCD. The second dive was a little better. We found a new dive site with the sonar, which ended up with the name Labyrint. It was like a maze, and the surge was hectic, but a lot of nice marine life. A giant orange frogfish the size of a handball scared the crap out of me when it suddenly appeared in a coral while my face was 15 cm from the reef looking for something way smaller. Very nice day of diving!

 

On Friday we drove to Barra Lagoon near Tofo to do a seahorse survey. Even after 3 months in Tofo, I hadn’t been to the estuary. Really regret not going there before, because it was AMAZING. We were so lucky. What started as a seahorse survey, turned out to be a full on macro life party. We saw almost everything there is to see in the estuary. Sea moths, robust ghost pipefish, frogfish in all sizes, razorfish, decorator crabs, spider crabs, dwarf lionfish, seagrass pipefish and of course seahorses. Not too bad to work and at the same time do some world class muck diving. And the best part; you can stay there for hours. Or at least until you air runs out. The depth ranges from 1-3 meters, most of the life being at 1 meter. 

                                          Baby frogfish

                                          Sea moth

                                          Robust ghost pipefish

                                          A white fuscus seahorse

                                          Colour varies within the species, as it's the same 

                                          species as the white one. :)                 

Saturday was an extended Earth Day, so we went to the beach with some kids from the local school to clean it up a little. The amount of plastic on the beach was overwhelming. For the last few months living on the beach, I haven’t noticed it at all. It just becomes a part of the landscape here. But when you actively try to look for it, it’s EVERYWHERE. Mostly small pieces, which are very time-consuming to pick up, and some crumble at the touch. But you know that these small pieces will get even smaller, until they’re so microscopically small they end up in corals and plankton. We weighed all the bags and the results was 116 kg of plastic rubbish in one hour with 15 people. Imagine what could be done if a whole village joined.

Yesterday and today we did Manta ID dives, with great results, but more about that next week.

Ciao!

I am leaving part of my heart in Africa…

This is it. My last days in Zavora. My last days in Mozambique and my last days in Africa for some unforeseeable time.

Me.

I had a lot of fun and a great experience. I am actually leaving here some good friends. I will miss everything, from the sea breeze and the sand that gets stuck everywhere to the routine of spraying yourself with anti-mosquito spray in the evenings and sleep under a mosquito net. I will miss the view from “my office”…looking at palm trees and every now and then catching a glimpse of a nice old lady laboring her land. 

View from "my office" window. Notice the gecko!

I will miss the long walks on the beach with the dogs doing turtle nest monitoring. Or sometimes just walking on the beach for the sake of it and getting your mind off things.

I will truly miss the geckos running around while I was doing my work in the office. I will miss this nature; the silence, no noisy city sounds but those of louries on the trees.

I will miss the freedom and happiness I feel I have here and you don’t get so easily. It’s a wild freedom.

I will miss walking around in flip flops or barefoot on the streets because you forgot the flip flops. I will miss the people here and the spontaneity of having everyone over or just calling them to have a braai five minutes later. Nobody that says no to meeting to eat together or says "ups, I can't I have too much to do."

Stairs to the sea...stairs to paradise.

But most of all I will miss the sea, which has been my working place for the past three months. Everything I did and everything I read about had something to do with this beautiful place that we know comparable so little about. The sea truly captivates. The infinite blue and the unknown are what fascinate me the most.

I came here to learn about underwater scientific methodology and I am leaving with a lot of practice and newly acquired knowledge. I am actually a nudibranch-enthusiast now and will keep my eyes open for these beautiful macro organisms on my next trips under water. 

But I not only learned about marine biology and helped practically to acquire some truthfully important and needed scientific and ecological data but had the feeling I was being a part of something good. Mozambique is still the most undeveloped country in Africa even though sometimes it might not seem so. Therefore, it needs help. Mozambique and its locals need (among other things) a better education system that allows for the people in the remote areas to be taught how to sustainably use the resources they get from the nature so they don’t overfish and kill the coral reefs and along the organisms that depend on them. By doing underwater clean ups, trying to eat non-endangered fish species and doing beach clean ups we can easily help a little bit, but it takes more people doing right to fight the wrong. 

The locals not being ecological are only a minor problem. The bigger problems lie in enterprises and countries that don’t wanna be reasonable about their un-ecological practices.

Mozambiquean flag.

Africa is a beautiful continent. Every time I leave I am leaving a different person. This time again, I have learned more about myself and what I wanna be/stay in three months than I learned in Europe in one year. Of course you need some western things now and then; you were raised in a western nation after all. But it is possible to adjust and definitely worth it. 

Small eye stingray I saw on one of my first dives to Rio Saiñas.

I left my heart in Africa long ago; I just didn’t know it…After three months here I realized, Africa is just another story. Maybe because humanity started here and you feel closer to your roots. I don’t know why. What I know is…Africa always calls me back and I will surely try to take the next call! 

By the way…on Wednesday (22.04.2015) is Earth’s day! If you don’t do EVERY DAY already, try at least on that day to make something nice for “mother earth”. Give food to some staring street dog, maybe plant a tree or water the plant (but not grass for golfing purposes!), save water when showering, etc etc. Without the nature we wouldn’t be here and if we don’t stop or mitigate our unsustainable consumption of natural resources we surely won’t be here much longer.

With this, it was really great remembering through the blog posts my long forgotten passion for writing. I hope you enjoyed to read as much as I did in writing.But most of all I am very grateful to the people that have been part of this wonderful experience. There are wonderful people down here and I hope I can one day show them how truly grateful I am to have met them.

So long and thanks for all the fish! ;)

So long and thanks for all the fish.

Traducción al español:

Esto es todo amigos. Ya llegaron los últimos días en Zavora, en Mozambique y en Africa por un tiempo largo.

[Yo.]

La experiencia que he pasado ha sido impresionante y no hay palabras para expresar el júbilo y la felicidad que he sentido. Echaré de menos todo, desde la suave brisa del mar y la arena entre tus pies hasta el tener que ponerte espray anti-mosquitos cada atardecer y dormir bajo una mosquitera. Echaré de menos mirar por la ventana mientras trabajo y ver palmeras y cada cuanto ver a una señora labrar su campo.

[Vistas desde mi pequeño espacio que consideré mi oficina.]

Echaré de menos los largos paseos por la playa patrullando con los perros. O simplemente para pensar o dejar divagar los pensamientos paseando.

Verdaderamente echaré de menos las salamandras intentando pillar cacho de las moscas y paseando por doquier, hasta por las paredes.

Echaré de menos la libertad y la felicidad que tengo, cuando si te olvidas ponerte las chanclas, no pasa nada, de todas formas son contra productivas la mayoría del tiempo. Echaré de menos la espontaneidad de tener a todo el mundo para hacer una barbacoa cinco minutos mas tarde…nadie que diga “uy no puedo…tengo mucho trabajo”.

[Escaleras al mar…escaleras al paraíso.]

Pero sobretodo echaré de menos el mar que ha sido mi verdadero sitio de trabajo estos pasados 3 meses. Todo lo que he hecho o leído ha tenido algo que ver con este magnífico ecosistema del que sabemos verdaderamente poco. El mar verdaderamente me captiva. El azul infinito y lo desconocido me apasiona. Vine a aprender sobre biología marina y método científicos bajo el agua y me voy sabiendo un montón sobre ello y como nueva entusiasta de nudibranquios. A partir de ahora mantendré los ojos abiertos por estos preciosos macro organismos.

No sólo aprendí mucho sobre biología marina y ecología sino que con mi trabajo recopilé datos científicos que me hacen sentir que fui parte de algo bueno. Mozambique sigue siendo el país menos desarrollando de África aunque a veces no lo parezca. Por eso necesita mucha ayuda. Necesita entre otras cosas un sistema educativo bueno que llegue también a la gente en areas remotas y que les enseñe a usar los recursos naturales de una forma ecológica y a no sobre pescar por ejemplo o pescar especies que no están protegidas. Haciendo limpiezas de playa, de debajo del agua, etc podemos ayudar un poquito, pero se necesita a más gente haciendo bien que el mal.

La gente local es más bien el menor problema. Las empresas y algunos países enormes que muchos ya conocemos y que no quieren escuchar nada sobre sus método poco ecológicos son los que tienen mayor repercusión en el ecosistema mar.

[Bandera mozambiqueña.]

Africa es un continente precioso. Cada vez que me voy me siendo una persona diferente. Esta vez, me voy habiendo aprendido más cosas sobre mí en tres meses de las que aprendí en un año en Europa. Me voy sabiendo un poco más quién soy y quien quiero ser o seguir siendo. Sería muy ilusa negando que habiendo crecido en un entorno europeo no me hace desear algunas cosas que no tengo aquí. Pero te acostumbras y sobre todo…merece la pena acostumbrarse a vivir con más simpleza.

[Raya que vi en una de mis primeras inmersiones al Rio Saiñas.]

Dejé parte de mi corazón en África hace mucho tiempo. A lo mejor porque esté es el lugar de nacimiento de la humanidad y como tal te encuentras más cerca de tus raíces. Vivir en Zavora me ha recordado mucho a mi niñez en casa de mis abuelos en pueblos de la España profunda. Esa libertad y felicidad que no se encuentra en la ciudad. No sé porqué me gusta tanto África, pero sé que siempre llama y la próxima vez que lo haga seguro que intentaré responder!

A todo esto, el miércoles (22.04.2015) es el “Día de la tierra”. Si no estáis haciendo algo por la tierra cada día ya, por lo menos este día haced algo que merezca la pena. Plantar un árbol, dar de comer a animales de calle, regar las plantas (que no césped para hacer golf), intentar usar menos agua en la ducha, etc…  “La madre naturaleza” os lo agradecerá; sin ella no estaríamos aquí y no lo estaremos por mucho más tiempo como sigamos sin mitigar nuestro consumo anti-ecológico de los recursos naturales.

Con esto que decir más que me ha encantado reencontrarme con mi pasión por la escritura gracias a escribir en este blog.  Espero que os haya gustado leer tanto como a mi me ha gustado escribir. Sobretodo le doy las gracias a todas las personas que de una forma u otra han sido partícipe de esta experiencia. Espero que algún día pueda verdaderamente mostrarles lo agradecida que estoy.

Hasta luego, y gracias por el pescado.

[Hasta luego y gracias por el pescado.]