The home stretch

So we enter the final week of the BAP trip, 7 weeks flew by so quickly, still much to do.

I have completed my data collection and I am now a full time slave for KT and now, for the first time, Mike as well.

To give further cred to his hydrological model,the BAP team have just finished a day-long, tidal logging excerise= slowly (very very slowly) lowering an expensive CTD logger (conductivity, temperature and depth) down boreholes across the island  in a rough East - West cross section. The logger does all the data collection automatically every 5 seconds and produces excellent plots of conductivity with depth. This was done every hour, for a whole day!


Needless to say it was hot, hot work in the midday sun.

Next for me is endless lab work. Joy.

Diving at Conch Sound

Video stills from our last dive at Conch Sound - when we were installing the Levelogger by a Blue Hole to monitor the tidal sequence over a span of three weeks.

Video which was used is a GoPro.

Testing the video

Prepping for shore dive entry

  

Taken by George from the surface.

Attaching the logger to a boat wreck.

Helios Lake (Part 2)

Beautiful sunrise welcomed us through the window panes (I was still sound asleep, of course), and we had to head out early!

Low-lying mist across the mangroves across the creek.

Fiona and I rushingly packed for an overnight stay at the Blue Hole for twenty-four hours sampling and profiling (or rather, be mosquitoes' dinner, supper and breakfast!).

At Helios, and from afar you can see large and grey low-lying clouds, with roaring thunders in a distance.  From the anomalous wind direction, the storm was definitely headed to our direction.

And it did - the strong winds were vicious. Meanwhile, work has got to go on nevertheless despite the T-storm. Gran titration, YSI Profiling and sampling w depth. It was a risk swimming because of lightning within proximity, but I was still happy to get in the water to resume working - Lowering secchi disk (for turbidity measurement) and adjusting depth of sampling.

Thank god for Mike and George for setting up the tent for our 'work station'.

  

*sings Raindrop Keep Falling On My Head*

Gran Titrating in our tent-turned-outdoor-lab

The weird pink suspended layer whose
depth fluctuates at about 4-6m

The only hint of civilisation in the area.

When T-storm stopped - George went back out to
survey the remaining Banana Holes

By 6pm, the rest of the team left to continue lab work at the houseboat - leaving Fiona and I for our 24-hour duty - which means sampling the water every six hours and YSI profiling every hour. 

We had leftover from last night for dinner, continued profiling. I attempted to have an hour's sleep but my poison wood allergy reacted again and this was the day before I went to the hospital to get it checked.

And did I mention how we had the most bug-infested day ever - as soon as the horseflies decided to take a break and the mosquitoes quickly take over. Just imagine hundreds of them trying to drain your blood dry! =s

Sunset at 7:30pm which Fiona took on my behalf when I was in the Blue Hole.

The moonlight at 3am 

Fiona having 'Fiona-time' with
pen and paper and thinking-alouds
under a mosquito net.

Lowering a YSI Profiler down the lake takes about
half an hour

Keeping warm under the tarp.

Stayed awake until 9am!

[...to be cont'd]

Looks like we are not in Kansas anymore

On Monday, Mike, Didi and myself headed down to the farming community on North Andros.  This is an area of the island south of the wellfield and has a surprising number of small farms.  There are two distinct groups of farmers: the Bahamians and the Mennonites.

The Bahamian farmers have settled in an area called the BARC, Bahamas Agriculture Research Centre which started in the 1970s when an area of pine forest was cleared for farming.  There are about 16-20 farmers in this area  (with the farms being between 40 and 80 acres) and most have been established and worked the land since the BARC started.  Its a wonderful small community with its own church and other amenities.  The main crops it seems are fruits (lots of limes) and root vegetates and corn. There are probably more but I am not so good at identifying crops I have to say!

Everyone we talked to was very welcoming and let us sample their wells next to the homes but as it was quite damp outside they were less keen to show us the wells they use for their crops.  We were told on a number of occasions that the water in the BARC is the best on the island and that people stop by to buy a few gallons of water from them sometimes.


The Mennonite settlers have only one large farm which is north of the BARC.  This farm is quite different from the other farms and a sight to behold.  It was like being in middle America, with cows and everything!

Kansas-wannabe

Exactly how I felt about the stench!

We went to sample from the farms boreholes which they use to water the crops with and we noted that we were not the only creature interested in these holes, it seems like the cows and the horse also have been making use of these lovely holes.  That was a treat for all three of us to pump, what a way to round off a lovely day.

And then there were T-storms everywhere...

The internet has been very sporadic over the past few days due to t-storms (thunderstorms) both off shore and on land.  This has cause great excitement (the rain not the lack of internet) in the camp.  Please expect some out of order posts in the coming days if the storms sub-side.  On Tuesday I woke up to what I thought was the sound of other BAPers snoring but was in fact a rather large rainstorm.  I jumped into action and threw a pillow at Didi to awaken her from her peaceful rest so that we could grab all the bottles we could find and race down to the wellfield.  We grabbed our breakfast and every bottle in sight and raced to the wellfield.

*sings 'Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head'*

Attempting to fix our only Sharpie

The rain had stopped when we arrived but this allowed us to go and collect the stem (water that runs down the tree trunks) and throughflow (water that interacts with the tree canopies) samples from various locations and to sample from two boreholes that would be affected by the rain. Then to my delight (and less of poor sleep-deprived Didi) it started to rain again.  This allowed us to collect more stem and throughflow and to pump the boreholes again to see if the rain had reached the water table yet.  In four hours of running about we managed to collect 25 samples- pretty good going and that was only the morning!


Today, whilst Didi and I were slaving away in the lab, the boys were out geologising in the wellfield when another rain storm hit.  Mike did me proud and prized the geologist out of the dry car and got them to collect rain at different points in the storm as it passed over head.  They managed to collect 2.5 US gallons in about 4 minutes- now that is some heavy rain!

Helios Lake (Part 1)

Where we were last weekend. Arrow pointing to Helios Blue Hole.
(Modified from Google Earth - Click to enlarge)

Last weekend at Fresh Creek was one of the most hectic, but also one of the most exciting i have ever had I have to say! While I try to keep this short and concise, I might have to do this P-log (Picture blog) in parts. Apologies for the late update.

Oh by the way - Do you know that packing 7 people and 3 days worth of supplies & research equipment on a pick-up truck is actually possible?

Okay to be honest we had to make two trips down because the diving gear itself was taking up the whole truck.
We still transported 7 people at one go though.

We drove for nearly two hours down South (thanks to my cat-napping skills I could sleep the whole way - through potholes, bumps and whatnots), settled in the Houseboat and set off on Tommy's boat for half an hour to a little blue hole West of Fresh Creek.

We brought our equipment over from where the boat left us, through a very sharp unstable terrain of very weathered limestone to the blue hole.

There are some very large dissolution features where marine life i.e. small fishes can thrive - called Banana Holes.

Limestone's sissolution feature.

1m deep Banana Hole

And a big Banana Hole next to the Blue Hole where it seems like it's connected
 as evident by large fishes spotted in it.

George and Mike set off to characterise the Banana Holes that seem to be located in a hundreds of metres length of fracture zone, while the rest are left to set up the sampling equipment, profiling machines (YSI, Mantra), soil suction samplers to begin working on characterising the lake.

Why the lake is of importance is because when Fiona, Alex and KT came to profile here, they noted a visibly sulphurous layer of pink (!!). Which is why they decided to come back and sample it and dive through.

The local told us no one has dived there before (excited!).

I couldn't help myself but get into the lake, and the first task was to lower weights tied to the end of a measuring tape and find (roughly) the deepest point to maximise sampling points with depth.

I know, I look ridiculous in that colourful float. 
But reeling measuring tape with weights repeatedly while staying afloat all the time is not ideal.

Fiona and George checking salinity along the transect from the Creek to the Blue Hole.

Then after we finished our work, went back home and watched the sunset for a bit before our late dinner.

Beautiful, indeed.


Day 1 down.


Look forward for the next part :)

Quick update

I am being banned from Borehole 91, renamed the P-Dubz central.

Sweating in the midday heat... then heat stroke

Like a true Englishman i like to talk about the weather:

The weather changed for the worse, or better depending on your outlook. Things are getting hot on Andros and when 30 is the norm here, it is very hot indeed. Today it is 35 feels like 42. Its damn hot.

The desolate karst environment...

This, as some people may already know, is a problem for me who is known to start sweating in a lukewarm room back in rainy England! So after a full day in the sun, even with plenty of water and wearing a big hat, I was delirious.

The team were trying to find missing items, one of which was my phone, in the house and a mass tidy up was ordered. The next day I was told what I did to help: I was moving things out of boxes and then putting back in exactly the same place. All the while murmuring a internal monologue the whole time: "This goes here, that goes there, pencils go the stationary bag, machete goes in my box..." and on it went until KT had a shout at me to go to bed!

From now on, no field work over midday!

And by the way...


Fiona has left the building! A relaxing sigh resonates around the house. She left the way she lived here: in a whirlwind of hurried activity. So enthralled by the science, Fiona... forgot her flight? No forgetting is too strong a word; more like wanting to use the time as effectively as possible; so much so that she thought the flight back to Nassau was in the afternoon not the morning.

It didn't end in tears however, after some rush packing and phoning for to share a charter plane Fiona was safely on the plane back home.

Stress cooking!

For those of you who know me, you are probably well aware of my two main stress relieving habits: baking and making loads of to do lists.  Well this morning, after a relaxing semi day off yesterday, I woke up stressed.  Not very stressed but it has dawned on me that we only have 21 days left.  This may seem like ages but there is so much to do in those few days.  The first thing I did to tackle the stress was to make a lovely plan

And the second was to make Hummus....

and then Pita bread.....

and finally Lemon Cake (i hate our oven, nothing ever rises in the middle)

Finally, a good lunch for the BAPers.

Now I feel calm (and full) and ready for an afternoon in the field.

It's been the best of time, it's been the worst of times...

Yesterday Fiona disappeared in a cloud of smoke on a jet plane back to the UK (after getting a charter plane to Nassau, flight from Nassau to Miami and then Miami to London overnight).  Its hard to believe that she has only been with us for just 2 weeks, ONLY 2 weeks and so much has been done, started, changed, developed and altered.  Its been quite a ride.  Our blog post has been all over the place due to limited blogging time (and sleeping time) but don't fret our faithful readers, normal service will resume shortly.

Please do scroll back to see if you have missed out on any of our BAP adventures!

P-Dubz!

[P-dubz : Poison Wood, redefined the BAPS way]

My pet project: To develop immunity against P-dubz
Status: Fail

"Wear trousers!"

"Avoid p-dubz!"

"Don't step on p-dubz!"

"Don't drive into p-dubz!"

And after a while, KT's voice seemed like a dead frequency my hearing didn't want register anymore when the P word is mentioned because I (thought I) was fine the first three weeks. (I love you KT)

Apparently being in contact with the leaves (the stinging thingamajid is mainly the sap from the bark) is enough to develop red or blobby-looking rash which leads to severe itching, burning and deformation!

Initially, I was cautious in the field, although I was in between being vigilant and being adamant about wanting to develop resistance against its sap and leaves (yes, I am crazy like that)

By the third week I decided to care less about the presence of poison wood in paths because I didn't want to compromise getting heatstroke to a reaction i thought I have built immunity against.

Still, no reaction….

Le ENEMY...

Until one night, I was awaken at 4am from my very first allergic reaction. It was horrible I have to admit, having to crawl out of bed to find anti-histamine and cream in the nearest first aid.

And the whole of last week is just me occasionally staring at my very unpleasant p-dubz' rashes - trying my very best not to scratch it WHILE watching it infecting to my thighs and arms which has never seen the light of p-dubz! -_-

WARNING: Even though the gory details have been left out, the pictures below are downsized for the ease of readers and may not be suitable for viewing when you're having meals :P

Pre-gore                                                                                                            The healing process

The indirect contact

Direct contact with the sap

KT made me go to the nearest health centre because for the years she's been here she has never seen so many p-dubz on any one person. As a result, I was given a lot of meds, stronger cortisone cream and stronger anti-histamine =\

And there goes my 'Ninja' status :(

Few days back, while I was applying cream on my p-dubz, KT came up to me with a smug and snidely asked, "Can I please say it?"

"Go ahead," with a defeated look on my (thankfully) p-dubless face.

"I TOLD YOU SO! HAHA" and she walks off.

Also, being the accident-prone I always have been, I got myself a jellyfish sting and of course, bramble scratches which Mike, George and I all have (George calls it the BAPs tattoo - a sign to show how hardcore we are on the field).


Lesson: 
Wear trousers.
Don't go swimming in the sea during high tides.
And watch out for loose rocks (even underwater!)

Evil bramble ramble

Jelly sting! :D

Fell into a hole when the limestone beneath me broke underwater, at the Helios/Heliothermic blue hole!

And had managed to scrape through both my skin and rash scraped in one area.