Working days

The seahorse research consists of getting to know the substrates the seahorses live on, like sponges, sea urchins, hydrozoans and sea pens. Since sea horses are only a couple of cm, you have to look well to see one. Because of the fishing activities, the number of seahorses have greatly diminished and so far we have not even seen one. Others have, so it's just a question of continuing and being lucky.

Six years ago you would see several sea horses during one survey, now we see 1 sea horse on every 2-3 surveys. The survey consists of a transect in the water of 50 m. With a group of 5 people you put two ropes of 50 in the water and 2 people zigzag along one rope looking for seahorses and substrates, 2 people zigzag a transect along the second rope and the fifth person reels in the rope again.

In a morning or afternoon we do transects on 2 different locations. The other part of the day you can join in on some land based activities. These activities are mostly beach cleanings. In Sihanoukville and the surrounding islands the sewers lead directly into the sea (you can even see the sand getting dark brown in some spots of all the nutrients of the excrements) and garbage is thrown everywhere on the ground and in the see. That means that, depending on the wind, the coast can be full with plastic, rope, bottles, etc. Other activities include a snorkel survey were we look for invertebrates and snorkeling to clean garbage in the sea like fishing nets which are attached to rocks or coral.

As ecologists we do have some issues concerning the land based activities. We are only cleaning other peoples garbage, which is fine, but unfortunately the organisation we work for does not do anything to protect the reef or take preventive measures against the garbage thrown everywhere, also because the municipality and the people are not very cooperative. Because the project might move to another place in a couple of months (where the municipality is making an effort to be a clean city), we are a bit reluctant to set up our own activities because they will probably not carried out for long. Dolf is going to try to build a weather station which will measure wind direction, and force, temperature, air pressure and humidity. We have bought some equipment and downloaded some articles to start building.

The village has 1 small school, but 3 Dutch teachers just arrived and are going to teach the school children and teachers for 1 year, so Annelies still has to see if she can do something with environmental education. Khmer is a difficult language to learn so that will be a challenge. At the moment we have 1 Cambodian general manager who speaks English and 1 English manager who speaks Khmer, so communication is sometimes interesting.

On Friday you can choose to go to the mainland or to Koh Rong. If you stay on the island, you do a fun dive in the afternoon, while the others take the bout to their destinations. The visibility is not really great and because of the overfishing there are not always much fish swimming around. The interesting part of this is that you look at the smaller things you normally overlook, like invertebrates and nudibranches.

The Cambodians are very friendly people, but because we are with so many volunteers and do not speak Khmer, we mostly hang out with the volunteers. The temperature is increasing and each day is over 30 degrees, rising to 40 in April. Because we live next to the see, we almost always have a cool breeze. That means we will probably adjust our travel plans and make some short trips in extended weekends. Cambodia is not a really big country which makes it relatively easy to travel around. There are more than enough busses to each destination. Visiting Angkor Wat in over 40 degrees might not be a good idea. We will probably spend Christmas on the island, since everybody is travelling at that time.

Living on Koh Rong Samlem

Finally a message from us. The internet connection is not good enough to post blogs.  Last weekend we were on neighbouring island Koh Rong,  but the internet connection of the whole island was off.
We have had a good time up to now.  Dolf is in training to become a dive master and Annelies has joined the survey team to investigate seahorses and their habitat. The first week the weather was sometimes too bad for diving, with high waves, wind and choppy water but it has definitely improved by now. The climate change is noticed here as well, because from November onwards the sea is supposed to be flat.
We live in very basic conditions. We share a small two room bungalow with four people in bunk beds. The second room is our shower which consists of a big ton of cold water. The living room is under a big roof with big tarps as walls.  They are usually open to let the breeze in.We will add some pictures in our next blog to give you a better idea.
We live together with a group of volunteers that varies in size. We started with 30 and are now down to 20.
Some volunteers stay two weeks, while others stay for several months. Most are European but there are also people from the states, Canada and Australia. The food is actually pretty good, but is of course always accompanied with rice. On the mainland you can buy lots of different fruits and there are many western restaurants. In sihanoukville you can find food from every European country because a lot of Western people started their own restaurant. We just bought a kilo of rambutans, comparable with lychee. Dragonflies are also really good. Search for a picture on the internet, both inside and outside, because they look pretty weird.

We live next to a small village of fisherman. Unfortunately, bigger trawlers from Thailand and Vietnam have largely depleted the local fish population, which means we are mainly measuring the recovery of the reef. The local kids catch squid using lines from their small foam boats and the village fishermen have only long boats. There is a 300m sustainable fishing zone around the island but unfortunately the patrol team is undermanned and paid extra by the big companies to close their eyes when a trawler comes along. However, the marine life is still abundant and interesting to discover. Tomorrow we will post a blog which describes our work more in detail.