Last night I foolishly agreed to accompany Tim at 6:30am as he went to measure the oxygen levels of about 20 ponds. While normally this wouldn’t be too bad, that time is when mosquitoes are most active.
I was surprised to see how dramatically the oxygen levels had decreased overnight. I assumed that the oxygen level of ponds would only show substantial decrease if the pond contained a large fish biomass. I was surprised to see oxygen levels of 2units, compared to 8-9units in the day time in Tim’s ponds. I interpret this to mean the algae has a much larger affect on the reduction of oxygen levels than I originally suspected. It is also possible that even the small fish in Tim’s pond are making a substantial difference in the pond, but I doubt it.
At 9am we had an official weigh in for all six of Tim’s ponds. This was to be his first set of results, very exciting. We walked out to the ponds to find the working sitting with all the gear. It was not our place to tell them to get to work so we had to wait 20 minutes for Dr. Gamal to come and tell them to do just that. The workers would get into the ponds, they are about 4 feet six inches deep. They used a medium size net to catch about 20 fry, hopefully a random sample. Then Tim would measure and weight 15 of them.
The only problem I could see with this process was I don’t think the fish were an accurate random sample. First, the biggest and strongest fish would have a better chance of not getting caught in the net. Next, the fry were transported in a crate with holes it, allowing the smallest fish to fall out and not be recorded. Lastly, the person who handed Tim the fish seemed the grab the fish that he knew would be easiest to hold, the largest.
At around 4pm Tim had to go back out to his six ponds and measure the seepage and evaporation. There is a PVC pipe stuck in the mud and covered to prevent evaporation. We had to uncover the pipe and record the water level, this is seepage. Then we record the difference between the water level inside and outside the pipe, this is evaporation. We couldn’t get the top off one of the pipes so I got in the water to remove it. The water was so nice and warm I stayed in for a few minutes, until Tim reminded me of the snake… A few days ago we found and had a water snake removed from one of Tim’s ponds. This was adequate motivation for me to get the hell out of the water, flash back of Snakes On A Plane occurred to me.
Well I finally meet me bodyguard. We were running low of food so I headed back toward Abassa for the fourth time. As I got to the security gate the guard asked what I was doing, after telling him I was going to town he told me “no, too dangerous.” Then my bodyguard walks over, he is either in his late 40s or early 50s. He was unarmed and it was quickly obvious he could no more protect me than do a push-up. My bodyguard starts speaking in Arabic and pointing toward town and himself. Now I never asked for a bodyguard, nobody at Abassa asked for a bodyguard, and he is obviously useless. So I stop asking and more start telling him to open the damn gate, I can take care of myself. I tower over everyone else here, I’m fit, and always bring my knife with me when I go into town alone. Most importantly I have already been into town many times and never had any problems.
Eventually the guard opens the gate and I start walking away, ignoring the bodyguards Arabic. I wondered weather my bodyguard was going to walk the two miles to town with me, I wasn’t sure he would be able to. Therefore I was not surprised to find myself walking alone along the dirt street. Everything was fine in town and returned with some badly needed food.
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