New Providence Excursion (Lads on tour)

Apologies for the long gap in blog posts for a while but we have been so busy lately and the last 3 days we had been on a houseboat without wifi, so no blogging!

Previously in the main trip, Fiona, Miles, Maurice and I met with Geologists on a Chevron- Petrobras Joint Field Trip led by Mitch Harris and Gregor Eberli. The Field trip, simply Geology of the Bahamas, the modern carbonate environment. Some of the sites they looked at were on North Andros, so why not join up for an argument? I am getting ahead of myself... Mitch and Gregor were very welcoming and after a quick introducing session we headed to Captain Morgan's Cave (Morgan's Bluff); a large flank margin cave in an aolinite ridge, right at the Northern tip of North Andros.

After Mitch said hes bit on the geology we were looking at, he opened the floor for questions and a general discussion. When I say discussion I mean polite arguments. Maurice, being in the know, lunged in and (in my opinion) "won" the discussion. Of course winning as nothing to do with the pursuit of knowledge and a group understanding but Maurice did seem to have spring in his step after the bout was over!

Much learned and contacts made!

Later on in the week....

Maurice Tucker and I were given permission to leave the group for a mini field trip back on new providence! This was recommended by Fiona after seeing a huge road cutting after arriving off the plane from Blighty. Huge thanks goes to KT, Fiona and Miles for running down this new cutting in the evening before leaving for Andros and basically getting a section ready to be stitched together back in Bristol. After our run in with the oil geologists at Morgan's bluff, Maurice had a list of sites to go to and we set off from the chemistry and the heat of the Nicholl's Town house to the relatively crowded and busy capital of the Bahamas, Nassau.

After dumping our stuff at the hotel, we made for the road cutting. Fiona et al were not wrong, the very very recent cutting was amazing. Massive karst features extended down from the surface to varying depths and widths. Fascinating stuff.

After travelling around the south of the island observing possibly the highest outcrops on the island (up to to 40 meters in places); we decided to called it a day and have a beer or three and great dinner.

The next day was more of the same, looking at reef rocks similar to Nicholls Town Point and generally confirming the knowledge in the literature. It is so much better seeing and describing these outcrops yourself than reading a field guide about it (which listed outcrops we couldnt find!). You gain a greater understanding of the environment around you and what was in the past. Great trip all round!

Next up a trip to fresh creek to stay on a house boat for 3 days! Sounds exciting but 24 hour sampling does not....

Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud...

Lake near Red Bays

One of the wonderful parts of this Bahamian adventure is the wallowing in various shallow lakes and ponds that have a blanket of algal mats to stand on which is overlaying the holey and sharp limestone.  These algal mats are not designed to take the weight of a human (in fact any macro-sized creature) and always give way underfoot, where you either encounter the treacherous bedrock or an aromatic hydrogen sulphide layer of mud (it smells worse than rotten eggs) and carbonate which is rather sinky.  However the lakes themselves are often very beautiful to look at.


Lakes in carbonate environments are a big deal in the oil research world at the moment, stemming from a large oil discovery Petrobras made a few years ago in an ancient lake environment.  The carbonate rocks formed in these lake environments are referred to as lacustrine and often are helped along by microbes living in the water and the mats.  Research into how these lacustrine carbonates form has been building momentum over the past decade and it is an area of interest for both Maurice, Fiona and Alex so in terms of BAPs projects its pretty high up the agenda.  The thing we are most interested in is how the life processes of the microbes (i.e. photosynthesis or put more simply, breathing) affect the water chemistry and in turn how that might affect the precipitation (formation) of the carbonate muds.

I left Fiona and Maurice to investigate the lakes on a previous day and they came back all positive with sediment cores, water samples from the lake and such from a small lake, on the road stretching to the west of the island (towards the settlement of Red Bays) past the wellfield area.  Then myself, Miles, Fiona and Mike went to have a further poke around and to place some logging sondes into the lakes (we eventually found two lakes of interest very close to each other) to monitor the temperature, specific electrical conductivity (which is a proxy for the amount of total dissolved solids in the water), dissolved oxygen (the amount of oxygen in the water), pH and turbidity (how cloudy the water is).  These sondes were placed overnight to give us an indicator of how the water chemistry changes when there was no sunlight and it gets cold (cold is a relative term here with below 25C being classed as cold!).

Miles taking the Manta into the lake

As well as placing these sondes, we collected sediment pore water, which are the waters that sit within the algal mats and the underlying sediments, and also placed some refresher sized pills of carbonate rock at different depths in the mud to allow for the microbes to have a new home to live on, so we can then bring them back to Bristol and study what types of microbes live in these lakes on the underlying rock.  TO understand the microbes in the lake water itself we also undertook some biological oxygen demand experiments (BODs).  These experiments allow us to measure how much oxygen the microbes use (by breathing) over a measured period of time.  This gives us an indicator of how active the microbes are in the water, high BOD means lots of breathing microscopic creatures loving our lake waters.

All this sounds very easy to do, just placing some equipment in, taking some waters out, measuring a few things. Sorted. Well if only life were that easy...A number of difficulties stood in our way, the first was the road scraping which separated us from the lake.  This almost was as deep as Fiona is tall, so a jolly little swim across a very smelly moat was in order.  

Mike and Miles wadding through the scrap back to dry land!

The second was once we were over the scrape then the "ground" under foot became less and less firm and more and more precarious.  Injuries and comical positions to be stuck in plagued us all at this point. The most notable were: Fiona bruised her knee "running" after an escaped water sampling bottle (all in the name of science!), Miles twisted his ankles on the rock and me getting stuck up to my hip in sediment and having to get a little assistance in removing myself from such a position (Fiona was more interested in how deep the sediment could get to and wanted to measure my leg rather than help me out!).  The third was battling against the rain to make sure we could measure the BOD correctly.  Why is it when you want rain, like at the beginning of the trip, its dry but as soon as you want dry calm weather you end up with a thunder storm.  Finally wedging the pills into place at the correct depths in the sediment involved a number of trip and a lot of thinking outside the box.

Pills placed inside a core of sediment which was then replaced into the lake

All in all a wondrous wallow in the mud, looking forward to counting those microbes once I am back in the UK!

There’s so many projects that we are doing here it’s difficult to keep track of what field work relates to each and who is doing the project. There are all the never ending areas of KT’s PhD, Fiona’s various pet projects, George’s Masters, Didi’s pet projects and eventually my Masters. So it was nice yesterday to do some work that directly related to my project. In truth its overlap between mine and KT’s projects, but all the same it was good to see the data your collecting and knowing you will be using it later.

We were using our YSI logger to profile boreholes around the wellfield. The wellfield is a large wooded area to the West of where we are staying. It is situated on the area with the most freshwater and a system of trenches and pumping stations extract water slowly for the use of local towns and settlements. Within this rather remote and wild area are a scattering of boreholes. They range in date back to the 1970’s and go as deep as 40m down. Within these is where we get direct access to the water under the ground, Groundwater.

Under the island rain percolates through the soil and rock and forms the fresh groundwater of the island as the water table. Below the freshwater however is salty sea water which, as Andros is an island, comes in from the oceans at depth. The fresh water, being less dense then the salty sea water, floats on the salt water in the form of a lens. Like a contact lens shaped piece of ice floating in water. This freshwater lens is physically and chemically highly responsive to changes in rain, tides and water removal by pumping. KT is interested in how the chemistry of the freshwater changes with depth and time and I am modelling how the fresh water flows underground. Getting access to the groundwater is problematic as, annoyingly, it is underground.

It is here that the lovely boreholes across North Andros come in handy. Using the YSI we can lower it down the boreholes and it records pH, Specific Electrical Conductivity (SEC, which is a proxy for salinity), Temperature and Depth every second! This gives us a highly detailed insight into the structure of the water below ground. This also gave me and Didi the lovely job of spending a day lowering the 5kg logger down 30m boreholes at a rate of 2-3cm every 5-10s.

The logger is lowered on a metal cable which has to be rotated and held manually at the top, whilst in the midday sun. Understandably this resulted in a lot of hotness. We persisted and with the help of classic 80’s pop and homemade Palmbrellas we profiled 6 boreholes before our car broke down. Didi and I now been in about 8 car breakdowns. In 3 different cars. Garages make a lot of money on Andros. We spend a lot of time sitting in the middle of nowhere waiting for rescue.

This is highly interesting for my project as you can see the top and bottom of the freshwater lens and flow areas within it. As water sits in the rock it dissolves the rock around it increasing its dissolved content, thus having a higher SEC. The lens therefore has SEC variations within it depending on how long the water has been in the rock and where it came from. It is not a simple distribution however. The many caves, tunnels and fractures within the limestone create zones of faster flow. Waters that flow faster have spent less time in the rock and therefore have a difference in conductivity. The YSI profile picks out these conduits of flow like a vegetarian picking chorizo out of their risotto, nom nom nom, and I use this flow data to model the rock and the flow within it.

A post from Maurice

The Bahamas conjures up exotic holidays with continuous sunshine and blue skies, swaying palm trees, flash hotels, diving on colourful coral reefs or getting bronzed on the wonderful deserted sandy beaches, where you might bump into a celeb (category B tho’), a place where no-one will believe you are going to do some work. And the reality? We are on Andros – not a tourist destination (unless you are into bone-fishing), but it does have its charms. And we are here in the wet season too although people do not believe that either! And we have been working hard! Up early every day, sometimes before 6, as the other day to catch a boat for Joulters Cay – a classic location for carbonate sedimentologists, with the spectacular ooid sand bars, beaches and tidal deltas, and the extremely young (1000 year-old) cliffs of cemented oolite – and yes we were lucky to go there but the sun hardly came out and one of us (whose name begins with F) was up to her neck in a pond measuring a bunch of parameters. But we did 'catch' some conch, not that they could run away, which were duly eaten after much hammering of the shell to extract the animal, and bashing of the meat to tenderize it (actually I had to pass on it - conch did not agree with me last week!). 

The local people are extremely friendly here – always waving and tooting at you as you drive past, and they are exceedingly helpful – especially if your car breaks down – as has happened several times for us. The insects however are a pain – the mosquitoes, doctor flies (so called cos when they bite it is like having an injection) and the ants – actually crawling across my screen as I write now!  

But the sedimentology is wonderful to see and gives one plenty to think about, and the hydrology /hydrogeology fascinating. I have learnt a lot there. Perhaps it is surprisingly, since I have written sections in books on the subject, that I have never been to the Bahamas before. It was just that the opportunity never came up, so it is a great privilege to be here now and with a great bunch of enthusiasts…. my Bristol Andros chums – many thanks for the company, the banter, the debates – all good fun, and I also have the tee shirt - marvellous.   

-Maurice Tucker 

Joulters Cays

Nailed down the methods for surveying the well field trenches after 2 days of trail and error. Scientific, educated guesses that is and should now be able to continue data collection with efficiency and accuracy.

Today we hired a boat to take us to Joulters Cay, perhaps the youngest rocks I will ever see. Only a 1000 years old, the beach and aeolian ridges form 3 main islands less than 10 miles North of North Andros. With my aim to compare the facies distribution of the Cays with the geology I have already seen on Andros. And KT was there to sample any freshwater ponds.

My initial impression was disappointment to be honest. Coming in from the east side a spit land grew closer as we powered through a mill pond of ocean. The small beach cliffs reared straight up from the coast followed by dense vegetation instantly inland.

Cool morning at Lowe Sound

The Cays

The impressive thing about these rocks is that sediment formation, cementation and dissolution (?) all happens in the smallest time frame possible and provides a fantastic modern analogue for the Geology of most of the Bahamas.

We found large freshwater ponds and even house wells which got KT all excited with beach cliffs and microbial mats to excite Maurice.

We then travelled around the headland to amazing tidal channel and sand flats behind the ridges.

Oh my God, amazing vista:

Just fantastic to look at and to study one of the only places in the world to see carbonate rocks and features being made, also the comparison to the older lithologies on Andros are strikingly simular (may just add a section on this in my report!).

Due to this areas great scientific importance, samples of the sand itself had to be taken along with microbial mats. Overall a once in a lifetime experience, that wont be rivalled for decades to come!

Geology done.

Next dinner! And seeing as we are poor students we were taken off shore to dive for conch. Before this trip I have never had conch but now I love it! Im not sure why, but it tastes great and the it is the local dish (along with land crab) on the island. It is so popular entire islands are made up just of conch shells!

Finally a swim around the reef and too much free diving, too quickly made me ill and had to sit back on the boat...to get sea sick. Everything was OK after we got back under way and up to speed.

Everyone is sun burnt! Torso has never been so red!

ALL GO!

So its been all go here for the past few days.  Miles and Fiona arrived in the Bahamas on Monday night and I joined them for a meeting on Tuesday morning.  We raced around Nassau trying to get our additional equipment to the mail boat but due to the amazing amount of traffic it took us forever and me and Fiona missed our flight...Oh well!

We ended up having a late lunch at a harbour side cafe where Fiona learnt how to crack conch (more to come on this at another time!) and then for our afternoon off we took a photo log of a new road cutting.  I was not dressed for such a task but struggled on regardless (because I love the rocks...).  After spending the night we touched down on Andros and I am not sure we have stopped since (right now I we are waiting for the guys to return so we can have dinner).

We have had tonnes and tonnes of rain which has made me very happy (and wet) as its good to sample the hydrological input into the system.  The geologists have been mapping some rock (I will leave them to talk about it in more detail).

Its calmed down today and tomorrow we are....wait for it.....having a day off! Well, a kind of day off.  We are all heading to Joulters Cay which is a very special and amazing place for carbonate people as it is oolitic sand and was only formed 1000 years ago (very early in geological time).

SO EXCITED!

and to make my day...

Woke up at 6:30 to pick Fiona and KT up from the airport yesterday, and they said they got me a treat, which arrived on the mailboat this morning from Nassau: 

GOOBER grape!!!

My childhood PB&J =s

Then, guess what else I spotted today in our house...

DIVE GEAR's in the house!

Woot~!

Anyway, field stuff - multiple rainfall events made Mike & I drove out to the field FOUR times the last three days to collect our samples! Yesterday we were out with Fiona until 11pm to collect them - head torches necessary.

It's all for the science, people...

Two weeks in

Some more rain today. Not as hard as before, might have got enough for a rainwater sample in the bucket outside the house. To catch nothing but uninterrupted rainfall the bucket is placed up on a table, away from any vegetation or building whi h could affect the results of the water chemistry.

It has generally been dry the last few days, however further rain is forecast in the next few days and with the rain pattern so variable who knows when the geosciencitsts will get their samples! 

I have been trying to run more often now, the high tide in the evening doesnt help but it is a great escape from the close confines of the house.

KT will return with Fiona today if all goes as planned; with Miles arriving the next day, if I am not mistaken. This will be when the BAP team is at its full strength and its easy to see its going to get cramped in here! Even with 4 people in the house and Maurice in another room it is hard not to step on each others toes, with the full 7 it could be..... interesting.

Two weeks down!

1st Thunderstorm and flat tire

We had rain at long last, which KT was ecstatic about when we bumped into each other from the long day in the South of North Andros Island.

From an early start (as usual) we drove for about 2 hours down the whole Queen's highway to Behring Point and some sampling sites at a primary school. Then to Cargill Creek Settlement and on to guardian bluehole. This bluehole is near the sea but contains more organics in the water and we didnt want to swim in it!

Afterwards was a long drive back with me and Maurice stopping to look at outcrops along the way and the Geoscientists stopping for the downpour that slicked the road to smooth glass...with potholes.

At night: LIGHTNING!

The next day: great outcrops cut short by flat tire.

The outcrops in and around Morgan's bluff were the largest we had seen on the island but the lithology was nothing new to comment on so we headed back to the truck to find a flat tire!! We limped into the local port and went into a noisy bar to ask for help. Luckily a very kind barmaid drove us back to the motel... for a small fee.

Some hard luck on the tire ripping open and when telling the story to the truck's owners, they were understanding and paid for a replacement. After fitting we had to insist on having the car serviceable and reliable before we start using it again.

They said work would be done this evening....but I would be very surprised to see that happen to be honest, "soon" is a common saying for "some time in the next week".

cold beer is good however

Geological wanderings

So for the past two days we have been showing Maurice around the island.  He arrived on Thursday morning from Nassau, with some important glassware in hand kindly lent to us from Mike Swann from the Water and Sewerage Corp (I cannot thank him enough for this!).  Once back at the villa, he unpacked some more important equipment from a heavy suitcase and then we left him in George’s capable hands to be shown around the well field area. I took this time to teach Didi and Mike how to process samples but more on that another time.

After lunch I decided to take everyone to one of my favourite places on the island: the DUMP!  From the first time I was on the island I wanted to go to the dump, but Fiona never had the same enthusiasm as I did for this potential sampling site.  I love a good/bad landfill site after working for a landfill company in Bosnia and Herzegovina for a few months after I finished Uni.  Once I was finally allowed to visit the dump on my second visit (before Fiona arrived I went there in secret with Emma!) I realised that actually it was quite an interesting find!  They cut through a aeolian dune ridge (a sand dune) and this gave a great exposure for Maurice, and the rest of us, to look it.  The words cross bedding, keystone vug and laminated crusts were banded about and I am proud to say I understood each one.  I am being constantly taunted with the fact I am not a geologist but a geoscientist.  I felt suitably at home with such geological terms, so thus far I see no drawbacks with being a geoscientist as I am doing geosciences in the Bahamas after all!

We then visited a road cutting which showed us the beach deposits which underlay the aeolian dunes (sand dunes at the dump).  There were some cracking bivalves just sticking out the rock and some lovely burrow/calcified root features all over the place.  The whole day felt like I was on a very well informed field trip, it was great!

Friday, we headed down south to investigate some of the karstic features I have driven past so many times but never really investigated.  The team started to fracture (pun!) with George and Maurice wandering off to look at interesting features whilst Didi, Mike and I took some water samples.  However, it was a real treat to see Maurice in the field looking at the surface dissolution features and getting excited about them.

I enjoyed my wandering into geology but am now starting to crack the geochemistry whip and get some sampling done.

cats and dogs

Verdict for today: Hectic! 

(Though I am sure to repeat myself in days to come for the remaining 6 weeks)

So.... Everybody got up by 6am. George woke me up by throwing a pillow onto my face (!!!) - which to be fair is proven to work.

We drove down south to the end of the island for an hour and a half, past Fresh Creek to Cargill Creek. Since I was the designated driver I get to be in control of my (beloved) iPod in order to 'focus' in avoiding the crazy some-knee-deep potholes. Actually, more of so I can sing along awfully (to deafen my poor passengers ha ha). 

Details will be posted next time as it is now 11:11pm and I am on the bed slowly drifting to dreamland. 

What I can tell you is we got back by 8ish pm, made dinner, did some work before crashing into our respective bedrooms by 10! (almost onto the bed with our field clothes to be honest!).

Anyway... The event of the day was when it finally RAINED.  It was 5pm sharp and I remembered Katie told me to pull over. And we immediately parked by the roadside - took out the GPS, tarp, rain sheet, bucket, beaker, sampling bottle, alkalinity bottles, probes and multi-parameters in an instance!

Mike was just very ecstatic to be drenched under the rain, after the crazy work out in the hot weather the whole day that (Katie suspected was) could have given Mike a slight heatstroke.

The rain was done sampled and measured, and Katie couldn't be happier, she quickly resorted to dancing in the middle of the road! -_-

One of the route when we went borehole-hunting. Very densed jungle indeed. Now this does make me miss home (Malaysia) 
=(

Oh I bruise like a peach!

So for all you who are interested in seeing the dog bite, here is my very bruised leg.  Please keep in mind I have a very very fair skin and i bruise easily.

[Didi sings Natasha Bedingfield's I Bruise Easily in the background]

Guess who's here

THE one and only Maurice Tucker arrived early this morning. 

He came in with his luggage to unpack some lab and field equipments brought all the way from Bristol for us. 

Just minutes after he settled into his room, he was up and ready to head out to see dissolution features (karstification) in the field (trenches), despite his long-haul flight. 

I asked him if he needed some rest first or if he was jet lagged, and he said "Nope, not at all..."

Now people, that is what I call a true geologist...

:)

George Barker, general handy man and a waffler

KT's anti biotics are strong so she decides the rest of the team should go out in the field ALONE, while she prepared the lab more and sets up things...not sure what but very important things I am sure.

Our mission, should we should to accept (but we didnt have a choice), was to check all the rain collectors for any samples because KT "thought it rained last night". And for me to see more of the well field to assess the trenches potential for further surveys as part of my project.

Nothing out of the ordinary to report, we do what we are told, but I have a short memory so most things have to written down for me and try as I might to write down the directions to the various boreholes, trenches and sampling sites I have little idea of where we are going! Lucky for me Mike was driving and Didi was navigating who seemed to have a better understanding of the warren of dirt tracks that criss-crossed the wellfield. 

After that we lunched on pasta and sauce KT cooked us because we took a little longer than planned, which was very nice and after a 30min siesta. My odd job odyssey began.

After doing general lifting for the ladies of the house I was tasked with opening a screw on a hand pump. Completely impossible to open, no chance. So equipped with a list of things to buy plus the WD40 that was needed I started errands, along the way finding a new hardware store. When I got back ( and opened the pump) I was sent a second time to buy more things for the project, most important being the AA batteries for all the probes etc, which are terrible in the Bahamas for some reason. Lastly came washing sheets of plastic with super clean deionised water with Mike. Cleaning the sheets is all very well and good but surely if anyone touches the sheets, even the corners to hold it, wont this affect the chemistry of the rainwater collected? I am sure Fiona will tell all in a comment below!   ;) 

After all this me and KT went back the wellfield to speed survey some trenches. Most had a poor potential for my project; but the excursion was not a complete loss: KT discovered one of the pumps has been reactivated, contradictory to what I have been told for the last few months plus we found some trenches with an incredibly thin vadose zone; which made KT very excited for Mike's project...for some reason.

Finally KT persuaded me to drive down the Red Bay road to watch the sunset. Big Andros Skies!

Very beautiful sunset got my photographer in me going:

In the woods on the Red Bay Road

Broke out of the trees into the swamp plain outside Red Bay settlement

Called Skyscapes in the photography world?

Things are not always what they seem...

The day starts early. Technically it's an hour lie in from the normal 6am but still damn early. Grogginess reigns supreme, with Mike dropping a glass full of water onto the floor, smashing glass across kitchen. KT was not pleased, hopefully the last breakage of the trip ( though probably not, I am here too); Didi, being used to all night work-a-thons, stubbles into the kitchen, eyes glazed and vague smile flutters across her face at my "good morning" before slumping off to get coffee. Mike made poached eggs for breakfast after my ant-cereal crunch; very good, thank you Mike!

This is typical and is soon becoming the norm on Andros, contrary to popular belief.  For the last few days, facebook has been covered with photos of the BAP team having fun in the sun and for it I have been getting a lot of stick from friends and family members saying "Your're on holiday" etc. This is typical image that creates this sort of chat:

The Bahamas as everyone back home know it, Nicholls Town Beach.

However this is not representative of the fieldwork so far. Don't get me wrong here, times like the ones pictured here were amazing and are images and experiences I will remember for the rest of my life but (and it's a big Bahamian but) this shows less than a tenth of our time spent here, where the pictures are a little different, mainly picturing Geology in my case:

My project= Dissolution Features in Trenches, this one is huge and got me and KT all excited

For photos of Geochemistry in the field, look to Didi's posts which show tedious science happening right before your eyes!

(By the way for anyone coming to Andros in the next few weeks we have hand signals for sarcastic and patronising, to define when we are being sincere or joking around; all explained later when we decide what the system is!)

As I type, KT is turning the living room from a lab to a "working laboratory" which consists of clearing all the crap and general debris that has been dumped by us youngsters over the last few days.

Mike's ant hunting continues with asking me to seal a hole in the wall of the house with silicon sealant. This ant hunting now goes beyond a "pet hate" to aiding the advancement of science as the ants are trying to contaminate the lab! (KT swearing at ants running across a table) Of course the ants are oblivious to the troubles of man's quest to gain a further understanding of the world around them and just want to eat my bloody cereal!!!

More science to come with the arrival of the carbonate juggernaut and my supervisor, Maurice Tucker ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Tucker ) tomorrow!

and F -6 days!

Running is a dangerous sport!

After a bubbletastic day in the field on Monday and some fine lateral reasoning on our 'Thinking Step' I thought I would treat myself to a lovely sweaty run along the stunning beach we have at the end of our road. I am not a big runner but I do find it clears my mind after a slightly stressful day (I am developing a new found respect for all teachers and lectures on this trip!).

Until this trip I had never ran on a beach before and the first two runs I did were fantastic. The freedom of not wearing trainers and having the warm sea lapping on my feet as I ran was just unmatched by any other running experience I’ve had. So I’m sure me waxing lyrical about the wonders of beach running in the Bahamas is getting a little too much so let me explain why running is such a dangerous sport. Well, its dangerous when wild dogs run after you on the beach and even more so when they decided that you look very much like dinner, probably a pair of chicken drumsticks, and take a nibble on your thigh! Being a little oblivious to things I just continued running back home thinking that my leg hurt.  Once I got back I got ready for my shower and realised that actually the nipped me.  Mike and Didi sprang into action with the first aid kit to hand and helped me clean it up, while George googled rabies.  Nothing is more worrying then when you ask someone the symptoms of rabies the first thing they tell you is partial paralysis and death!

As I was cleaning the wound my panicked students went off to find one of the lovely ladies who runs where we are staying, Ms Shelly Bowleg.  She came in and had a look at it and informed us that people have had issues with this dog before and not to worry but if we wanted to in the morning she would come with us to the clinic.  The final stage of our first aid involved the application of iodene to the wound.  Mike and George greatly enjoyed inflicting this pain on me, revenge for a day of trying to sample perhaps? or just sadistic students? Who can tell?

On Tuesday, Mike and I left Didi and George in the field and headed to the clinic, after seeing the nurse my wound was dressed and I was given some very strong antibiotics (I'm up to date on my tetanus shots and there has not been a case of rabies on the island before) which make me very drowsy and giggly, much to everyone's amusement! Here is an image of my dressing as I didn't want to gross you all out with my very iodened wound!

A dressing which is a little over kill for the size of the nip

So lesson learned from this....running is a very dangerous sport!

Le field.

A show-and-tell yesterday left me out in the field to sample without Katie's supervision - a test to defy steep learning curves under the scorching heat? Perhaps.

So George and I went to site numero 5 to sample both the borehole (called Baby Deep?) and trench.

Machete was left out of this, for a very good reason only known by the team. Even though by the end of the sampling, both of us mutually agreed on its uselessness anyway. For now, at least.

So the bubbles that witheld the team yesterday was long bygone, the solution in which Fiona will be happy to hear. (but to Katie's slight dismay)

Sampling the trench was easy - lower dipmeter attached to pipes leading to flowthrough cell with three probes stuck on it and to a pump at the other. I am thinking of building a Y-shaped wood to allow low flow pumping out of the middle of the trench instead of its side, to minimize organic debris into the flowthrough cell, lest it'd mingle with the Conductivity, pH and DO probes.

Then, comes sampling the Baby Deep borehole. That went very well the first 5 minutes, until (what I thought) it went chaotic. The conductivity went 'crazy', going up 1 microS/cm per second to well over 100microS/cm!

It could be a conduit flow, where the recharge of the groundwater at depth came from a isolated saline source?

ERRATIC BEHAVIOUR! ARGHHH!!!
[Yes I have the tendency of treating my fieldbooks (since Year 1) as my diary]

Anyway, we are going to pick some chemicals up (12M of acid of 37% concentration =s) from Daquin, a Bahamian local so we can do proper geochemical work tonight.

Wee :)

1st Sampling Day........ almost

Ants had found the bin. They’re a little pet hate of mine, for some reason I find them really annoying. I think it’s the way they sneak in through little holes and brazenly walk around in so many numbers, swarming all over the place. The bin however is about the best place for them if they do insist on being in the house and this was what I met stumbling into the kitchen this morning. Fumbling around with the coffee jar I started to attempt to create a decent brew out of our very eccentric coffee machine.

                This was supposed to be the start of the first proper field day. Proper sampling, proper methods and proper research. It didn’t quite pan out as expected, which is apparently how all proper field work is carried out, by overcoming the obstacles you didn’t predict.

The start of the day was good. KT took us through the preparation procedures for geochemical water sampling and explained the theories behind them. It was very satisfying to combine some the intensely frustrating procedures with the chemically logical and practical reasons behind them. Seeing it all come together in 3D in front of you.

Learning to calibrate, clean and put together the flow through cells, pH, DO, Conductivity and Dip probes and meters took most of the morning. Next came preparing the sampling case, methods and procedures upon arrival at the borehole you wish to sample. All of this was dutifully noted down and brought out in the field later, though with much more sweat.

Fortunately by the time we had worked through everything it was midday and an early lunch coincided perfectly with the football! I think KT and Didi were in the villa somewhere during the game, but me and George were definitely glued to our TV which gives everything a slightly peculiar colour, a bit like viewing a normal TV through 3D glasses.

       The 'Field'

Into the field we went and KT let the students navigate through the pine forests to the borehole. A tricky knack of navigating by overgrown logging roads from the 60’s, but this time successfully managed. Initially all was well; we found the borehole, found the groundwater and set up the pump fine. Then bubble problems began. I always liked bubbles, they’re round, shiny, floaty and one of the main characters in Finding Nemo. KT has now however instilled in all of us a deep hatred for bubbles. They are there to irritate and you can’t even throw things at them.

There was a steady stream of tiny bubbles passing through the cells and interfering with the meters. The origin of the air leak was crafty though and when fixed in one place would move to another. After much tinkering with the new Flow Through Cell, pipe joinings, seals, meters and data recording we decided that we needed to return to the Lab to sort this problem. We sat out on our ‘Thinking Step’ in front of the house and worked through it slowly. Problem joints and seals identified we set out in Apollo 13 style to fix things with the contents of our tool box. In the end it was quite a simple bodge. A little tape here, some accurate brute force there and we were sampling the water out the bucket and into the garden like nobody’s business. Looking forward to using it in the field tomorrow in fine style. 

First Days on Andros

“You’ll need to hurry. The plane is full and leaving early.” Not the usual flight time adjustment you hear from the check in guy. And so ensued a mad dash for the gate. Burette in one hand, laptop in the other, walking boots flailing from side of my backpack we sweated our way across the Nassau Lynden Pindling International Airport. Piling into security we jammed the one x-ray machine with all our kit and jostled with a Bahamian family also caught out by the unexpected eagerness of the pilot. In the end it didn’t matter and I found I had brought my pen knife and a litre of water onto the plane with me.

A tube with wings would be an accurate description. Seats smaller than the most budget University coach, you could touch both walls. 15 passengers and 2 pilots, we could see right into the cockpit. An odd mix of people, mostly black Bahamian, 4 Americans on holiday diving and fishing and us all crammed in together. It was remarkably friendly with everyone chatting away and introducing themselves. It was at this point I noticed one of our boxes of equipment wasn’t being loaded.

I have never seen such a response from KT about anything else. It was as if her own child was being left behind.

“We need that box! Don’t let him take off!!”

“What’s the problem ma’am?” Came the relaxed response from the pilot 5 seats in front

“I need that box. It’s very important. I need that box” shouted KT, attempting to stand.

“Yes ma’am, soon.” said the pilot as he closed the cock pit door and we taxied out onto the runway.

And that’s how our flight to Andros started. Rushed, sweaty and throwing up unexpected problems. It seemed rather prophetic, we shall have to see how accurate.

 The flight was a short half hour and very smooth with entrancing views of the Bahamian jewel like islands splayed out below us and Didi asleep within 5 minutes. The landing was a bit on the bumpy side, the arrivals section of Andros Town Airport was also the only room of the airport. We then learnt the meaning of a Bahamian ‘soon’. Whilst the next flight that the box would be brought over on was fortunately that afternoon rather than the next morning, the scheduled time was as fluid as the Bahamian accent. Every check with the desk resulted in a ‘Soon Sir’ and a time that seemed to have been picked out of the air. Our rented truck arrived though and, 3 hours after first predicted, the flight with our box on arrived.

So once again reunited with our equipment, we started our hour drive north to Nicholls Town with KT at the wheel. Tropical rain, potholes some un-nerving driving from the locals and we arrived.  After checking around for any open shops we headed to the nearest bar for some food, here the whole journey became worthwhile. A wooden pavilion on the beach front, 4 bottles of Kalik, 4 servings of landlady Smitty’s fresh Conch Fritters and all was forgotten. We could relax and look around us. White beach in the moonlight, the Caribbean Sea lapping gently on the sand, smiling friendly locals and a warm breeze. We had got to Andros.

 

 Nicholls Town Beach 

Over the next few days we were shown around the main field area by KT. This consisted mainly of old water well fields spread throughout old and overgrown Pine Plantations. We set up kit, sweated, got used to the car, got sun burnt, sweated, learnt to navigate the old logging roads and sweated. In conjunction with these introductions to our field work we also set about turning our lovely villa into a Lab. Lamp shades and sofas rapidly gave way to titration and filtration tables. Science fast became the inhabitant of our villa and us the lodgers.

                KT quickly became re-established with all her friends from past trips and we met many new people. The news of the island was ‘Crab Fest’ coming up. This was taking place down in Fresh Creek, central Andros. KT mainly wanted to go in order to see if rumours of a traffic jam on Andros were true! We were more interested in the promise of music and food.

                When we got there it was amazing! There’s only 8,000 people on Andros, which is by far the largest and most sparsely populated island in the Bahamas and they had all turned out for this barmy festival. Trucks and bikes everywhere, rum and beer in liberal amount, steel drums, reggae, fire dancing and crab served in every way you could imagine. Not wanting to embarrass the UK we headed straight for the centre of the crowd and cracked out our finest dance moves. Andros had never seen the chicken dance performed better. 

Lazy Sunday

Finally, I am sitting in our field lab on a warm Sunday morning on North Andros and it’s been more of an adventure to get here than in previous trips.  This is a bit of a mammoth blog but I thought I would cover the past week’s event.

So the task of getting everyone and everything in the trip lies on my shoulders, of course with some help from everyone else around me.  This is a heavy burden as I have never had to organise so many people and so much stuff before but I do like an organisational challenge so I thought it would be fine! And in the most part it has been, my stress levels have been a little high and there has been some sleepless night but over half of us are here safe and sound.

The preparation in the UK consisted of some lab work and packing all of the equipment.  I definitely cannot take credit for the packing, this is a skill I have tried to learn from Fiona but the chaos is just too much for me to cope with.

Once packed Didi, Mike, George and myself were off to the airport, caught some well deserved sleep in the taxi and then it was time to send the boys off to terminal 3 to catch their flight via Miami (Didi and I were direct to Nassau via BA, luxury).  We have never flown anyone via the states before and I was nervous about leaving those guys on their own as I know how strict the US customs are.  But I need not worry, the heavy bag (luckily the box was too big for the scales and we didn’t get charged excess baggage) was checked in at Heathrow and made it all the way to the Bahamas without a problem.  Didi and I had a gentle flight, which she (easily) slept for most of the time in the most peculiar and uncomfortable positions.  Each time I have stepped off the plane in the Bahamas Once we arrived there were no real issues with Bahamian customs so off we trundled to the hotel, where I slept and Didi explored.

View of the beach from Orange Hill

We picked up the boys who somehow had only been given a 1 day visa and had to get an extension the next day at the immigration office.  So in the morning we visited the immigration office where they were given a 1 month visa and told we needed to extend this on Andros itself.  This introduced the guys to getting things done Bahamian style, which is pretty laid back, slow and to the outsider a little disorganised but hey in this heat I don’t blame them.  Over the next two days we amassed the additional equipment we needed while we are on North Andros which caused our hotel room to become more and more claustrophobic.

Hotel room full of stuff!

On Wednesday morning came the experience of getting this all to the mail boat, filling the car was like a huge game of 3D Tetris, which was very successful.

The car full to the brim with stuff, literally no room for our little Didi

The mail boat took all our stuff and they stacked it all and wrapped it like pros.  Then it was time for us to fly to Andros.  This time we were flying to Fresh Creek in the south of the island was we were picking up a truck from down there.  I was looking forward to this flight as I have never flown into Fresh Creek before and it would be quite a beautiful sight.  Sadly, the flight started in a rather Bahamian manner with one of our boxes not fitting on the plane and this marred the experience of the flight for me, however, it was still quite a sight flying over the creek and one I would like to repeat with a lower level of stress!  We had to wait for the next flight to deliver our box and in the meantime we collected our truck.  In previous trips we have had a number of interesting vehicles.

The car from the trip in September/October 2011.  It would break down in the rain, not very useful for sampling rain!

But never such a beautiful looking truck as this (i'm sure pictures will follow later)!  Sadly, I made the mistake of judging a book by its cover and the beautiful truck has already had to been taken to have the radiator fixed and the steering is a little off, and there is quite a knack to starting it without stalling (I’m winning in the number of times I have stalled the car, by quite a way!) and driving in 2 wheel drive at any speed makes the back fish tail out and I could continue.  Oh well its ours now and we are going to love it and treat it like a princess.  The drive north from Fresh Creek to Nicholls town, where we are based, is about an hour and due to the pot holes in the road you have to drive at a good speed to bridge them.  As I had almost crashed twice in Nassau, I don’t think the guys were that excited about me driving, esp judging by George’s face for the duration of the trip, but hey I was the only one who had driven here before and I was confident I could do it successfully.  We were following a rain storm so the road was pretty wet and all the pot holes were filled with water which was an additional challenge but all was successful with only one bumpy place.  We arrived in Nicholls Town at our motel/villa DayShell in good time and was greeted by some familiar faces to me.  It really felt like coming home and that I hadn’t be gone for any time at all.  We unpacked our stuff and headed to a local bar for some conch and beer which was a nice end to a manic few days.

I realise this blog is huge so I will give a quick summary of the next few days.  Thursday was mail boat collection day, so we all went off to get the stuff, which was loaded in one big lot on the back of the truck.  We came back to the villa and I started to unpack.  Oh my we had a lot of stuff!

I'm feeling zen, calm and in control, honestly!

Friday, I took the guys out and about in the wellfield to put up stemflow and throughfall samplers and they got to understand why everyone moves at Bahamian speeds, because it’s so HOT and SWEATY!  As this trip is the hottest I have been on, I have decided that we are going to do a two stage day of up early (6am) and work for a few hours then back here for lunch and then an afternoon working session.  This is going to be the only way we can deal with the heat!

Saturday, George and I went to the wellfield again to investigate where would be good locations for him to focus on in the north as part of his project; this trip was stunted by the fact that the radiator on the car sprang a leak and we had to travel back to the villa to find a mechanic, in the end all sorted but it wasn’t till very late in the day.

I feel like so much has happened so far that it has to been longer than a week that we have been in the Bahamas, but it isn’t!  It’s going to be one crazy jam packed trip.

Nassau & Settling in Andros

Nassau

After settling in at our new location on Andros, the Day Shell Motel, Nicholls Town (it is beautiful here by the way); the team set about locating ourselves with the our new environment; starting with setting up rain collectors for stem flow and through flow (methods explained by KT later). Finding the down-hole loggers in the various bole holes on the island proved a test of memory for KT who left them to collect data from the last time she had been on the island, months ago. Being brilliant as always, KT found these loggers without fail! These pieces of equipment are serious bits of kit that have been collecting data for months on end, measuring the attributes of the phreatic zone.  Due to the strength sapping, midday sun field days are split into 2, morning and afternoon. To avoid the worse of the heat the team awake at the crack of dawn to make the most of this amazing island.  While Didi and Mike were setting up the field lab in the BAP house (the living room to be precise); KT took me out to investigate the karstification potential of the North Andros well field. This also allowed me to test some of the cameras I had brought into the field. The trenches in the well field followed a grid like pattern with cruciforms formed from the meeting points of 4 trenches. Initial surveys of the area were very promising with large features seen in and around the trenches.  Good few days all round!

Initial Surveys & Settling in Nassau

After the long flight to Miami, filled with films and food, followed by US customs (which I found unnecessary seeing as we only spent 4 hours n USA) and a short hopper flight we arrive on New Providence and the capital of the Bahamas, Nassau. We have been staying in the orange hill hotel which has a great honesty policy at the bar; a real relaxed atmosphere, especially since the place was half empty. Bahamian Immigration wanted an extra word with Mike and I but after a long wait with a nice chat we were allowed in the country for a month, with the proviso to extend the visa on Andros later. It has been fun shopping for everything we need, hardly have time to eat, when we do its fried, fatty and delicious.  Weather is hot and humid so work has been slow and consists of moving the many items of the itinerary from one air conditioned box to another.

All is remedied by a cold beer and snorkelling on the white sandy beach outside the hotel!

Taking a very small plane to Andros soon, it’s going to take a long time to get used to the heat

Andros CRABFEST

After a couple days in the field, KT allowed us all to travel down to Fresh Creek for the evening and to the Andros Crabfest, a culinary celebration of Andros’ favourite food, land crabs! All varieties of crab were on the menu plus other local dishes: crab and rice, crab soup, crab salad, crab shells filled with spiced crab mince, crab fritters, fish dinners, fried snapper, cracked conch (shellfish) and cracked lobster! All the food we sampled was delicious and made for a fantastic evening.  

P/S: the weather is extremely hot, over 30 degrees is the norm for this time of year, in the rainy season! Have yet to experience these famous torrential downpours KT has been talking about but I am sure the wait will not be long. 

G

To the end of another beginning

When I was cramming everything for four final papers in a row last month, I could see KT Cooper running up and about, sometimes like a walking zombie who has barely slept (not that I wasn't one myself at that time, but I have brought procrastination upon myself so I cannot complain).

So after my exams and moving out of my own house - work begun for me.

Dolomite from the Madison Formation and carbonate rocks from Nassau, Bahamas were cored, filed and cut into pill-shapes to be placed in various places on North of Andros to gauge its reactivity.

Coring the block of limestone.

A few courier packages came on the final week - Tipping rain gauges, Mantra2 SONDE, Hydrosleeve, Flowthrough cell . . . . and the list continues.

(My) multi-parameter probe (by Hach) also got in just in time for it to be tested and used in the Bahamian island *jumps for joy*. Though I wonder if it would be a good analogue for the hypersaline brine of Qatarian sabkha waters? I'm thinking about precipitates sticking on the probe and corrosion.

My new baby :)

Got taught by Katie as to how to calibrate my new multi-parameter probe meter.

I digress.

What I remember doing was calling up Bahamian port for their maliboat logistics and visa stuff. I was washing wire mesh and other things with Milli-Q water, dessicating pills in oven up to few 100s of degrees and the list goes on.

Washing bottles.

I was in the Geography lab most of the time, but I remember Mike weighing filter papers, George was weighing pills. Fiona did the alkalinity standards. I KT was doing . . . err . . . everything in everywhere?

Titration, oh titration...

Question. How would you pack for a 7-week fieldwork when you're hindered by fears of excessive charges on excess baggage?

Ask Fiona Whitaker. A potential three boxes worth of things CAN actually be packed to one. Unfortunately i do not have a photo of someone's (under)garments being stuffed into chemical flasks/bottles.

Yes, it definitely comes with experience.