Manjula goes blogging...

Angela's blog reminded me of my first introduction to Africa and African women...

I had just flown into Addis Ababa airport and was waiting for my next flight out to West Africa. It was past scheduled boarding time, and the crowd of mostly well built, colorfully dressed African women with large cloth bundles was getting restless. Eventually, a thin, meek man showed up in front of the boarding gate and announced “Ladies and gentleman, sorry for the delay, only a few more minutes…,” but he was cut short by the women who had gathered around him shouting, “No minutes, no more minutes, much delay already” - the man barely got in a few more words edgewise midst all the rumble and grumble. Finally the women got their way and the man requested women with children to board first. Elderly women pushed ahead announcing “I am pregnant.” The rush to board was explained by the fact that there were no pre-assigned seats and plenty of hand luggage to be stored. Midst these vivacious passengers, the unorthodox boarding procedure, all the jostling, and the impression of boarding a local bus in India, I realized working on sea turtles in Africa was going to be fun…

Posted by Manjula Tiwari at 08:20 PM | Permalink

Every nesting beach has its own personality, and certainly Tortuguero was unique in several ways. But one aspect that impressed me was the dramatic change during the heavy November rains. The beach wasn’t eaten away by the raging surf, instead large sections of it turned into a sandy soup. Walking on the beach at this time had its hazards - the first time my leg was unexpectedly sucked into the beach up to the knee, I had to dig it out with great effort and Luciano laughed really hard and said he had only seen this happen to cars! Several nest excavations had to be abandoned because all we could find was a soupy mess of sand, water, egg shells and rotten eggs, and with the sides of the nest chamber constantly collapsing, it was impossible to tell if we had excavated the entire nest. The water level eventually subsided, but not without lowering the hatching success of many nests that were laid during the end of the season…

Posted by Manjula Tiwari at 09:57 PM | Permalink

All this Gator chat with Michael reminded me of something…

Every time college football season comes round, I cannot but think of the amount of money we could make for conservation from these avid football fans. The Swamp (aka University of Florida’s football stadium) holds about 80,000 people and on a big game day (e.g. Gators vs Seminoles) the stadium is packed to capacity. Now, suppose each person were asked to contribute just 50 cents towards sea turtle conservation as they entered the stadium or when they paid for the ticket, we could make $40,000 for conservation from one game alone!! Okay, even if we were more modest in our request and asked for just 5 cents per person, we would get $4,000 which is an incredible amount of money for many countries. Think about it Michael...the Gator games are a huge, untapped resource for sea turtle conservation ;)

Posted by Manjula Tiwari at 11:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The weatherman predicted “severe thundershowers” for Gainesville today. However, the slow, continuous drizzle since the morning has barely changed pace. And I am reminded of the Guyanese descriptions of rain -“man rain” and “woman rain.” “Man rain” is a loud, heavy downpour that does not last very long. “Woman rain” is a milder, persistent rain that has no intentions of stopping…

I guess this is a “woman rain” day for Gainesville after all!

Posted by Manjula Tiwari at 05:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As another hot and humid summer rolls into Florida, many will be busy on the nesting beaches but some of us here at UF’s zoology dept will be tippity-tapping the summer away at the computer. Of course conversation in the lab inevitably returns to “I’d much rather be on the beach” and from there to the summer we all spent together on Melbourne Beach.

‘Twas the summer of ’96. Several of us from the ACCSTR were at Melbourne Beach, collecting data for our respective Master’s theses- Sarah Bouchard was looking at sea turtles as nutrient transporters, Dan Wood was working on nest site selection cues, Kate Moran was studying effects of the thermal environment on hatchling emergence and I was finishing up a study comparing three loggerhead populations. However, we were all united by a common project - the “pilings project”. Having to carry 49 PVC pipes that stood 1 m high and were 25 cm in diameter, up and down the beach at dusk and at dawn was a very bonding experience!

It was also one of my most luxurious field seasons - we were able to rent a huge, three-bedroom house just a block from the beach, fully equipped with every possible comfort, plenty of movies to watch on television, and our own private beach access and dock on the river. Having the UCF sea turtle crew down the road made living at Melbourne all the more enjoyable - netting for turtles in the Indian River Lagoon with them and swimming alongside the net in the green, murky water, unsure if I would encounter a turtle, shark, or ray made me feel like a real turtler!! Alex Silveira from TAMAR spent a few weeks with us and brought us each good luck wrist bands from Brazil - the guy at our favorite shaved ice place wanted to know which cult we belonged to! ‘Twas also the summer when someone reported me as “a Mexican lady stealing eggs on the beach,” when I burnt toast and filled the house with smoke (for some odd reason no one seems to forget or forgive that incident!), and when a threatening hurricane forced mandatory evacuation of our beach house (not a drop of rain fell and not a cloud was seen).

We worked hard, we played hard, and now we remember it fondly.

Posted by Manjula Tiwari at 10:32 AM | Permalink