Seagrass in Zanzibar

Hi, as you all know by now, we have already come back from Zanzibar, so this'll be the last blog post. The trip to Sweden went well, it was very uneventful. Now I think it's about time I tell you what our project is about and exactly why we were in Zanzibar. I’m going to use some nerdy biological terms, sorry for that! It’s also going to be longer than usual, so if you get bored from reading it I suggest you scroll down to the end of it where you can find a video I made with the editing help of my sister Murielle. First a little basic background:

We've been studying the ecology in seagrass meadows. You probably already understand that seagrasses are plants in the sea. It happens, however, that people confuse seagrass with seaweed which is what algae are called sometimes. Seagrasses are not related to algae; instead, seagrasses are flowering plants (the group of plants that usually grow on land) that rarely have flowers but uses clonal reproduction via their rhizomes (roots). This way of growing makes the seagrass form "meadows" that has the appearance of grasslands on land, but the seagrass grows in the water in shallow coastal areas. In Sweden we only have one species of seagrass, but in tropical coastal areas there are several species that sometimes grow mixed together.

In the tropics the seagrass meadows are closely associated to mangrove forests and coral reefs. Among other effects, the reefs and the mangroves protect the coast from the strong wave action of the open ocean and the seagrass with their epiphytes (mostly algae and bryozoans), that grow on the seagrass, takes up nutrients which makes the water clear. Both the mangroves, corals and seagrass are extremely important habitats for invertebrates (seastars, sea cucumbers, shells etc.) and fish. Since the fish from one ecosystem often migrates to one of the others (eg. to search for food or to reproduce) it is very important that all three parts of the system are not disturbed by for example overfishing. From a human perspective, it is also very important that the people living in tropical coastal areas can continue fishing for invertebrates and fish, since it’s their primary source of protein and they make a living out of it. A lot of science has been conducted that focuses on the ecology of mangroves and corals, but not so much on seagrass.

In our project we aim to discover how different variables in seagrass meadows affect each other and see what effect protection against fishing has on the seagrass meadows around Zanzibar. To do so, we needed to collect data about the seagrass and animals by visual observation and also take physical samples of seagrass and sediment on as many places as possible around Zanzibar. The data we collected on each sampling point had to be collected using the exact same method for all points, and the original goal was to complete sampling on 10 points in 10 different sites, resulting in a total of 100 sampling points. In the end we managed to complete 60 sampling points in the sites Chwaka Bay, Mbweni, Chumbe Island, Prison Island, Nungwi East and Fumba.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, we had some problems with the project in the beginning. The biggest problem we had was being able to do the visual observations on the same day we were taking physical samples. We had to do it on the same day because we couldn’t leave our markers for the sampling points (a weight attached to a float with a flag on plus transect lines on the bottom) in the ocean over night or longer. It turned out visual observations, i.e. seeing fish in the water at least a couple of meters away, could only be made during neap tide, because that’s when the tidal current is weak and the water is clear. The physical sampling of seagrass, however, could only be made during spring tide which happens two weeks after a neap tide. That’s when the tide makes the water low enough for a person to stand on the bottom and use muscle strength to cut through the strong rhizomes of the seagrass using a machete. The seagrass species we’re focusing on in the project, called Thalassodendron, is a species that often grows much deeper than a man can stand and has the thickest rhizomes.

After trying for one and a half month to make everything work at the same time during spring tides we had to abandon taking samples of the rhizomes. We also had to give away the isopropanol we had bought for preserving those samples (worth 700 Euro). Floriaan was the one who was supposed to write a thesis about the animals that live among the rhizomes and in the sediment. When we abandoned that, we started focusing on the epiphytes that grow on the seagrass (algae and bryozoans) instead, and this will be the focus of my thesis. Floriaan got my old part of the project, which is studying invertebrates that live on the bottom; seastars, sea cucumbers, shells and such. This group of animals can be called epifauna, “on-the-bottom-animals”. Elisa will still write her thesis about fish.

Now I’m going to describe what one day of fieldwork was like:

We started in the morning by carrying bags containing our field equipment from our apartment in Stonetown to a hired taxi. The equipment consisted mostly of plastic bottles filled with wet sand, attached to rope, which were used to keep the markers in place on the bottom. With the taxi we picked up our hired local assistant and travelled to a site, for example Chwaka Bay. At the site we met up with a local boatman (they usually didn’t speak much English) and we all helped out with carrying our equipment to the boat, which was on deeper water. We also paid the boatman some money for gas so we could use the engine. We then asked him (using our assistant’s translation and by showing pictures) where there’s a Thalassodendron seagrass meadow in the area. The boatman always knew the area very well and during the trip there we all put our sunscreen and snorkeling gear on. We then jumped into the water and located the exact location of the Thalassodendron. Then we got up in the boat again, moved the boat to the center of the Thalassodendron meadow, and Floriaan noted the GPS coordinates of the central point. Then, using random coordinates that he had prepared in advance, he inputted waypoints in the GPS so that we could place out our sampling point markers in the real seagrass area. He then guided the boatman to steer the boat to the waypoints and me and Elisa helped with putting the markers in the right places.

Floriaan to the boatman: “Can we go… that way?”

Floriaan to Michaela and Elisa: “Ready on marker no. 1… Chug!”

I and Elisa chugged first the weight and then the bottle with the flag that’s attached with rope to the weight, into the water. “OK!”

Floriaan to Michaela and Elisa: “Ready on marker no. 2…” and so on. We put out six markers one day, and worked on those points, and then the next day we put out the remaining four.

When the markers were all set out, we jumped into the water again to set out transect lines starting at the marker point, all in the same direction. Each of these consisted of a 25 m long brightly colored rope with six bottles filled with sand attached to it, to mark every 5 meters. When they were set out we got up in the boat for a 10-minute break and to leave the transects undisturbed so that the fish would continue acting as normal. We drank water, ate bananas and chocolate chip cookies, and refilled our sunscreen. We also made a plan of which order we wanted to do each transect.

Then Elisa got into the water again and swam to the first. She slowly swam back and forth along the transect counting and identifying each fish that passed within the transect, and noted them on her underwater slate. This was of course hard to do when for example a school of tiny fish swam by. When she was ready she gave the “OK” sign to me and Floriaan and then continued on the next transect.

Floriaan swam along the transect counting and identifying sea cucumbers, sea urchins and seastars. This was hard to do in the Thalassodendron because the seagrass was long and covered all the epifauna, which meant he had to dive down to the bottom and comb through the seagrass with his hands to uncover the animals. He noted them on his underwater slate.

One transect without seagrass.

I stopped every 5 meters, by every bottle, along the transect line and estimated a percentage cover of plant species (seagrass and algae) and sessile fauna (sponges, corals and anemones) in a 50 x 50 cm quadrant, and noted this on my underwater slate.

When the visual observations of all transects were done, we took a lunch break; more cookies, a roll of Pringles and bananas, mangos or watermelon, drank more water and refilled the sunscreen again. On the basis of my cover estimates, I decided which of the six quadrants had been most representative of each transect. Floriaan then carried a very heavy 1 x 1 m iron frame to the representative quadrant I had chosen and placed it there to mark our physical sampling spot. He then dived down and combed through the seagrass in the 1 x 1 m quadrant, looking for shells to identify and count. He wore gloves for protection against the spines of the urchins and the shells that could be potentially lethal. He picked some of the harmless shells for later identification. Floriaan then placed a 25 x 25 cm iron frame inside the big quadrant and dived down several times picking all seagrass shoots within it. He then dived down again with a plastic tube which he used to take a sediment sample with. It was very hard physical work that Floriaan had to do because he’s obviously the strongest one of us and also most skilled at snorkeling down deep. Elisa and I assisted by handing him tools, putting the samples in plastic bags and swimming back and forth to the boat to label and drop off the samples in a cooler box. When the sampling of all transects was completed we swam back to the boat for another short break. After the break we swam out to the points again and rolled up the transect lines and the markers carefully so the ropes and bottles wouldn’t get entangled, and then carried them one by one to the boat.

Afterwards, we had a very nice trip with the boat back to our taxi, where our driver had been napping during the day, and then we drove to Stonetown. From the taxi we carried our weird bags and iron frames along the touristiest street in town back home to our apartment. There we put our samples in the freezer, rinsed our snorkeling gear, showered, inputted our data in our computers, prepared coordinates and labels for the next day’s fieldwork and went for drinks while watching a beautiful sunset and had dinner at one of our favorite restaurants.

Since we didn’t have much time for labwork in the end, and the labs in Sweden are better equipped, we did as little labwork as possible in Zanzibar. We took subsamples of the different seagrass species, and preserved them in tiny bottles to take to Stockholm. The rest of the seagrass shoots we scraped to separate the different seagrass species from the epiphytes that grew on them, and then we weighed the seagrass and epiphyes to get the wet weight. We also put them in a drying cabinet and then weighed them again to get the biomass data. We did some labwork at home in the apartment too, where we picked out tiny leaves and twigs from the sediment so we got only sediment and then we homogenized it and preserved in tiny bottles to take to Stockholm.

The lab in Zanzibar.

An epiphyte from a seagrass leaf.

The sediment- and seagrass samples are now in the lab at Stockholm University, where we soon will analyze them. The analysis includes finding out the nutrient content of the seagrass, organic matter content of the sediment, the size of the grains of the sediment but most time consuming will be identifying (using stereo lens or microscope) and making cover estimates of all the epiphytes that grow on the seagrass subsamples. The data of the epiphytes is for my thesis, but Floriaan and Elisa said they'll help me out. When we’re done with the labwork we will do statistical analyses of all the data we’ve gathered and eventually write excellent reports about it.

Thanks for reading this blog. Zanzibar was an incredible experience and a dream come true, I loved it, it made me feel much more alive than in my safe Swedish home and I wish to go back to that tropical paradise many more times. If you get the opportunity to come to Zanzibar, don’t just stay by the pool at your resort or luxury hotel! Buy the book “The Seashores of Eastern Africa”, a snorkel and mask, maybe also fins, and take a boat to any coral reef where you’ll see beautiful things.

Now the promised video:

Cheers!

Michaela

Residents in Zanzibar

Hello, it's Michaela writing again! This time I wanted to tell about some troubles we have with the police here.

Two weeks ago another MFS student, let's call her "Girl from Gothenburg", was returning back home to Sweden after having done fieldwork here for a similar seagrass project. When she was about to get on the ferry to Dar Es Salaam she got in trouble with customs when she told them she was a student for Institute of Marine Sciences, while she was here on a tourist visa, which me, Floriaan and Elisa also are. For this reason the immigration officers confiscated her passport, but she tried to take back her passport from the officer. This made the officers very angry and Gothenburg Girl then called a PhD student, who is the supervisor of two other Swedish MFS students and lives with them in the same apartment as us, for help. The PhD student who was in the harbor doing interviews with fishermen for her research came to help Gothenburg Girl. Unfortunately, when they were talking to the officers the PhD student’s tape recorder, which she had been using during her interview with a fisherman, started recording the conversation from her pocket and when she tried to switch it off the officers noticed the recorder, accused her of espionage, confiscated her recorder and demanded a trial. There was big excitement at IMS and I, Floriaan and Elisa who at that time were in the lab at IMS working with our seagrass samples, saw immigration officers on scooters surrounding the entrance of the institute. Gothenburg Girl, who I had been taking out money for since she had lost her ATM card a few weeks earlier, asked me to help take out more money for her so she could buy a new passport. I and she then sneaked out of IMS, jumped into a taxi to the ATM, I took out money for her, and she managed to buy a new passport and instead took a small airplane from Zanzibar to mainland and was safe in Sweden the next day.

The day after everything happened; the PhD student went to court, where she for five hours got interrogated by six shouting police officers. They accused her among other things to be hiding that Gothenburg Girl might still be on Zanzibar. Luckily, the PhD student knows the son of Zanzibar’s former president, and as soon as he heard about what happened and came in to the room the officers released her and she got her recorder back. Unfortunately, Gothenburg Girl departure made the immigration officers very suspicious against students that stay on Zanzibar for a longer period and (when I, Floriaan and Elisa weren’t at home) two immigration officers came to our apartment and demanded that the other MFS students show all their documents. They also asked if more students were living here but they said no, which is good, and the officers left the apartment only a few minutes before we came home to the apartment for a lunch break. The PhD student and her MFS students had to pay $150 each for residence permits, but since me, Floriaan and Elisa only had a few weeks left on Zanzibar IMS wanted to keep things quiet around us. Our supervisor said that we’ll “survive for three weeks”. So, since the PhD student and the MFS students were already “caught”, for the past two weeks me Floriaan and Elisa have been pretending to be normal tourists and looking at flights from Zanzibar, instead of the ferry, for our return journey.  A couple of days ago, our supervisor at IMS told us that the immigration officers have increased security all over Zanzibar and that even taking a plane won’t be without trouble. So now we have “turned ourselves in” to Immigration and paid for residence permits, $200 each, although we leave Zanzibar next week. According to Sida and the Swedish consulate on Zanzibar this expence is wrong, since we are not researchers, only doing our Master thesises here, and tourist visas are legally correct. However we figured that it is safer to buy the permits and avoid trouble than risk missing our flight in Dar Es Salaam and getting into trouble with immigration.

Cheers!

Michaela

Food in Zanzibar

Hi there! It’s Michaela writing. Today is February 27, which means we’ve been here for almost two months, so we’re two-thirds through our stay on Zanzibar. I’ve wanted to write a post about the food on Zanzibar for a while now, but I figured we would experience more with time so I would have more to write about. I can tell you right now that Zanzibar has given me the best food and drink experiences of my life, and it’s definitely on the top of my list of things I am going to miss about this place. But first, I’d like to give a quick update on what life is like here and what we’ve been up to since Floriaan wrote last time.

Living in Zanzibar is always with a great mixture of emotions. The good things are incredibly good; except for the food there’s also the view of the ocean, the palm trees, the perfect African sunsets and the people who are so relaxed, super-social and always smiling. The bad things can be very frustrating, but over the past few weeks we have had fewer problems than in the beginning. Now we don’t have to buy new lab equipment anymore and it’s harder for people to scam us for money now that we have lived here long enough to know what things should really cost. I used to have nightmares and panic attacks, caused by anti-malaria medication, but these come very rarely now which is a relief. The apartment we live in has the best location possible; close to all the best tourist shops, the best restaurants and only a ten-minute walk from the market. Close to our place is a diving school, where I’m taking a course, and also an old fort where one week Africas biggest music festival – Sauti Za Busara – was held. Last week we took a day off our work and went to Bawe Island for some snorkeling in the coral reef there, it was even more beautiful than the reef at Prison Island. So there are always many things to do here.

Another good thing is that the research project is doing a lot better now. Two weeks ago finally, FINALLY, after half our stay on Zanzibar, we managed to do sampling at two sites (Mbweni and Chwaka bay) which means we finished two out of the ten we originally planned to do here and we have now started with lab work. Before, when we didn’t have any lab work to do, we used to spend our days running errands around town and relaxing at the many beach-side or roof-top restaurants close to our apartment.  The prices at the restaurants here are lower than in Sweden (a main course costs around 8 euros), but the food is infinitely better.

The Zanzibar kitchen is mostly famous for the many spices they use; the most important one is clove which adds a great taste to their tea. The many spices are mainly used to season their stews which are made with fresh seafood, chicken, mutton or beef (pork is basically inexistent on Zanzibar) and served with fried rice or pilau rice. The locals cook mainly on charcoal grills which add a wonderful smell to the streets, especially when they make red curry chicken skewers. It is very simple, down-to-earth cheap food they cook, and they have the luxury of always having fresh tropical fruits and vegetables grown completely without pesticides which makes us very happy. The fruits have also given me the best drink experiences of my life since the juices are always fresh-made. This makes the cocktails amazing and the coconut-drinks are not only for show, they’re very tasty!

When we decide to cook at home we always start by taking a walk across town to the market. The market is a very vibrant place with various sounds and smells. The prices are generally very low and the taste of the fresh mangos, pineapples, passion fruits, watermelons, papayas, limes, chilies, green peppers and cucumbers cannot be compared with the ones we get in Europe.

The food at the restaurants is very tourist-friendly with many Indian courses to choose from and some Chinese food. At one of the Indian restaurants here I tasted the best coconut curry ever which had one piece of extremely strong chili which made us all cry. Since one-third of the tourists here is Italian, pizza and pasta are also very easy to come by and there’s an Italian restaurant by the beach that serves genuine Italian ice-cream. We’ve heard about many other good restaurants close by, but still we haven’t tried them all.

We eat out almost every day, mostly for dinner, but the restaurants have excellent breakfasts and lunches too. Here’s an example of what I usually order and an example of what I could order when we go out:

Breakfast/brunch: Spanish omelet with grilled tomato and flatbread toast and spice tea. Or: Fruit salad (mango, watermelon etc.) with yoghurt, müsli and a glass of juice.

Lunch: Grilled sweet baby squid salad with bread buns and a side of fried vegetables. Or: Juicy tuna burger with French fries and a tomato and coriander salsa.

Drinks for watching sunset: Banana and passion smoothie. Or: Kilimanjaro beer.

Dinner: Grilled seafood platter with rock lobster, crab claws, calamari, octopus and prawns. Or: Chicken coconut curry with fried rice and chapatti bread.

(Tuna and prawns is NOT sustainable food, but here it’s very hard to avoid)

Floriaan mentioned in the last post a dinner we made with barracuda. It is now my favorite dish of all time and it’s better than any food I ever tasted in any country. We all like it so much we now repeat that same dinner every other week. Today we had home-made calamari curry for dinner, and I think we’re going to try many more interesting things during our last month too. All the food experiences I’ve had here on Zanzibar have inspired me a lot and I think I’m going to return from here as a much better cook than I was before.

Second week in Stonetown

Hi there! This is the first post by Floriaan.

We have moved in to our new apartment in Stonetown (right across the hall from the other one). The moving itself wasn’t such a hassle but since our cleaner mr. Ali isn’t a very good cleaner I spent half of the next day cleaning, chopping of palm leaves that grew into the living room, removing dust and cobwebs and spraying insecticide. But now the apartment is fresh and clean.

The night before we moved in we had a party with the Swedish girls that used to live there, since one of them went back to Sweden. So we went to the market and bought some fresh barracuda, cooked it in the oven with butter, parsley and wine, and ate it together with honey/sesame potatoes and homemade garlic bread. It was delicious! The food was also accompanied by a perfect punch made with fresh tropical fruits, served from a bucket.

The day after we planned to do our first real sampling, so we carried all the sampling stuff to the harbor and got on the boat that took us to a place called Mbweni. When we got there we found the seagrass we want pretty quick and set out our sample points. But then when we were about to start the visibility dropped. At a certain point you couldn’t see your own hand 10 cm from your face. We waited for a little bit in the hope conditions would improve, but alas that was not the case. We headed back empty handed and hoped that tomorrow would be better.

The next day we went to the harbor again, but the weather wasn’t much better. So now since we don’t have any samples we also don’t have any lab work. We now spend our time snorkeling at the beach nearby, organizing our sampling and practicing our methods.  We also went to the market a lot and we are getting better at bargaining for a fair price. And of course we sometimes go to any of the amazing bars or restaurants around here, like the sunset bar at Africa house(see pic)

We also spent one day as proper tourist going to Jozani national park. The park consisted of 3 parts: Monkeys, a mangrove and a forest. We paid a small entry fee and a guide first took us to see the monkeys. They were very playful and curious and came very close. You just had to be careful not to stand directly under them since they may poo or pee. Then we went into the mangrove part. This was very interesting because we heard a lot about the mangroves in that part of the Island during the tropical course at uni. And now one year later we were actually walking there ourselves. Last part was the forest with huge mahogany trees and plants none of us had ever seen before. After the tour we took the dala dala to the East coast to have a lunch and lay at the beach. We also went for a swim but this was a bit short due to a load of tiny Portuguese man of war(a type of jellyfish) in the water.

Today we hired a boatman to take us to prison Island, a popular tourist spot and one of our sample locations, to find the seagrass and try some of our methods. After a while we were done with the work for the day, so we went and snorkeled around the coral reef for a while. It was very beautiful with tons of colorful fish and other marine life. Then we got tired and decided to lay on the beach for a bit. When we got hungry we went into the private part of the Island to have some lunch. We had to pay an entrance fee but with this we could also go into the tortoise sanctuary where you could just walk between the giant tortoises. I now have a bit of a sunburn(even with the factor 50 protection) but it was totally worth it.

city life in Zanzibar

Hi there dear readers! It's Elisa here. I think it's about time I also write something in this blog…

My mates here have already been writing about what's been going on over here during the first weeks, but I guess you'd like to read some new stories, am I wrong?

First of all, I gotta say that life here in Zanzibar is not as bad as it sounds, but you have to take things easy, dip yourself into this hakuna matata mentality they all have over here, and, of course, realize that you're not in Europe anymore, you're in Africa now, and that everything here is different.

Needless to say, there are lots of handicaps that make any research here even more complicated than usual… from arranging a meeting with your supervisor, to get hold of some sampling gear, everything can take what it feels like forever. But as one of our supervisors told us after one of our days of desperation for not being able to get things on time: "if ecological field studies in a developing country were easy, everybody would be doing them". So I guess we just have to try our best, and feel lucky for having this amazing opportunity!

But despite all the chaos we're encountering so far regarding our project, these last week we've finally got some time to chill, relax, and enjoy life in Zanzibar as any other tourist.

Last Monday we left Nungwi, and we finally moved to our apartment in Stone Town, even though it's not our real apartment, just a arrangement until the 27th when the girls staying in our apartment leave. By the way, those two girls are also Swedish and I already knew them from before; what a small world! (ok, maybe not such a big coincidence considering that I already knew one of them was coming…).

Anyway... what was I saying? Ah, yes, moving to town… Well, we have been here for more than a week now, and I can assure you that it has made a huge difference for us! Now we finally have a place we can call home, a place on our own, where we can spend the time doing whatever we want.

Living in town also have some other advantages, like having more than one shop where to buy food or being able to go to the ATM any time you need more money (if any of the six ATMS in town works of course...). Here there are also lots of great bars and restaurants where one can have a drink or a meal for a pretty fair price while enjoying an amazing view of the bay. One of those places is the Africa House, a fancy hotel located only 4 minutes away from our apartment and where, in a terrance on the second floor, they have the Sunset Bar with lovely views, great service and drinks served in a coconut! (we still have to try those though…). We have decided that the Africa House is the place where we'll have all our meetings from now on; because, why would you want to discuss about work at home or at the office when you can do it sitting on a comfy couch, contemplating the sea, and with a waiter coming to your table once every 30 minutes to bring you a new drink? But in case you are more up in the mood for a Friday night out, let's go to Livingstone's! Awesome bar by the beach, where one can sit outside listening to the murmur of the waves and have a drink, or go inside where locals and wazungu chat a dance together in a fun mixed atmosphere.

Shopping is one of the other things that we are quite enjoying from being in town. So many shops, so many cool things! But we should be careful and try to save some money, and also, we still have about 2 more months here... so for the moment we just bought some clothes we needed (or wanted). Souvenir shopping will be done later on, although there are so many things I want that I have no idea how will I manage to fit any stuff in my rucksack! Also, we still need to improve our haggle skills before we dare to buy in any of these little shops… one should never pay what they actually ask for!

And I think that's all for the moment. Tomorrow we are moving to the new apartment, and a new weekend is almost here! Unfortunately our project is not going much better for now, so wish us best luck! Hopefully next spring tide will be able to finally do some proper sampling.

We´ll be back soon with more news!

Elisa.

PD: sorry there're not many photos in this post, but we haven't taken that many here in Stone Town yet… we'll post some pictures soon :)
For the moment, you can check out my photos on Flickr if you like, or read some more stories in my blog (sorry it's in Spanish!)

Water in Zanzibar

We are on Zanzibar now (Sunday January 15) in a village called Nungwi on the northern tip of Zanzibar Island, and we have lived here since Wednesday 4 January.

So the thing about living in Africa is that it is extremely hot which means we need to drink water all the time. We flew for eight hours from Turkey to Dar Es Salaam where we took a ferry to the biggest town on Zanzibar called Stonetown (hereafter called “town”) where we arrived on Wednesday around 9:30. We had to arrange many things at the Institute of Marine Sciences (IMS) and around the town before we could travel to our temporary apartment at our Swedish supervisor’s home in Nungwi, which is almost 2 hours drive from Stonetown, and get the first rest after our journey. This is when we first felt the strong need to drink water and we always carry around many bottles of water from now on. Because of the strong heat we are constantly sweating and our clothes and sheets are always dirty. Every night there is a power cut that happens all around Zanzibar to save electricity. When this happens at night and the fans in the bedrooms stop it is impossible to sleep and we sweat even more. To make the dehydration worse, all of us have had diarrhea. This is frustrating because it makes the work with our project harder. Below is a picture from our second day in Zanzibar of us having drinks while disinfecting our worst wounds, wearing the first hats we could find to protect us from the sun.

In Africa there is also a water shortage, which we have to deal with in our everyday life here. We cannot drink the tap water and it is not available at all times. Therefore we have to save it when we have it, which we do in a big bucket in our shower room. We wash ourselves and our clothes with a scoop from the bucket and often flush the toilet with the same water. It is inconvenient, but we hope we will get used to it.

Another thing about water in Zanzibar is of course the reason why we are here, to do marine biological research in the ocean which means we are going to spend many hours under water. The first night in Nungwi was short, we did not get the rest we needed and instead woke up early to have a planning meeting with our supervisor Lina about our research project. We moved out of her apartment four days ago and she left for Sweden shortly afterwards, which meant we had to maximize our time with Lina right from the start. We were physically exhausted and suffering from the culture chock and really did not want to start working immediately, but already on Thursday afternoon we went snorkeling in the seagrass meadow, starting to learn the species. We have snorkeled almost every day, trying to refine our method for the fieldwork, but we have also spent some of our time running errands in town. These visits to town are frustrating, because they always involve us having to ask the people at IMS to do things for us. The mentality of the people here is far different from anything us Europeans are used to. The fundi at IMS, the carpenter who is hired to make whatever field equipment the researchers might need, was supposed to make a number of items for us that we would pick up on Monday so we could do our first sampling test in field early on Tuesday morning when the tide was good. The only thing he had accomplished on Monday was scribbling on a paper a list of how much money he wanted for the work and telling us that the material for our plastic sampling corers was going to be very expensive. We then had to go to town to buy material ourselves, and the equipment was not ready until Wednesday. This meant we could not try them out with our supervisor but we went out in the field on Tuesday anyways because we had already rented a boat with a skipper. The fieldwork was further hindered by our diseases and the skipper who was two hours late which meant we missed the sampling at high tide. We discovered big problems with the field methods which we might have to change completely.

The last four days, however, things on Zanzibar have become better. On Wednesday we were happily surprised to find our ordered field equipment, though late, made ready by the fundi in town. This meant we had time to buy several handy items in town, among other things a machete for about 1 Euro to take seagrass samples with, which Floriaan was very happy about. In the afternoon we moved out of Lina’s apartment and into new rooms right on the beach where we work. It’s an awesome place where the touristy resorts are not visible and the rooms belong to a turtle conservation pond which means we can cuddle turtles whenever we want. The place is situated a short but very nice walk along the beach from our favorite restaurant, where we have enjoyed fresh seafood and cocktails with a view of the sunset four nights in a row. The only down side is that we have to walk back from the restaurant through the dusty, poor and dark village of Nungwi. Usually this is no problem, there are plenty of people in the street and children playing around, but last night on the last stretch home, two teenagers tried to snatch Elisa’s bag. Luckily the bag broke and the contents (a phone and some mosquito repellent) fell out and the thieves only had a broken bag as a prize.

This might all sound pretty negative, but it doesn’t take away the fact that this place is breathtakingly beautiful and we think that our stay here is a very good experience and we are learning a lot.

Travelling to Zanzibar

First off, we'd like to introduce ourselves. We are all students at the Masters program in Marine Biology at Stockholm University, now doing our thesises for the department of Systems Ecology. Michaela is Swedish, has taken the Bachelors program in Biology and Earth Science and has only been outside of Europe to visit relatives in the Philippines. Elisa is Spanish, did her Bachelors degree in Marine Sciences in Spain and has never been outside Europe. Floriaan is Dutch, did a Bachelors degree in Coastal Zone Management from Holland and has never been outside of Europe.

Yesterday, on Monday, we flew from Stockholm to Istanbul to make a transit for our next flight to Dar-es-Salaam, the capital of Tanzania. At Arlanda airport we had our first problem: Both Floriaan's Swedish and Dutch debit cards did not work when he tried taking out US Dollars from the Exchange Office. We went to his Swedish bank's office at Arlanda Sky City and took care of the problem quite smoothly. The flight was uneventful with a screaming baby in the seat in front of us. Luckily, whenever the baby got a look at Floriaan's face she stopped screaming and just stared in awe at him. Another good thing on the plane was the free booze.

We arrived to Istanbul around 21:00 and started looking for a place to sleep on the airport since our next flight to Dar-es-Salaam would not take off until 18:10 on Tuesday. We found a "Transit information" desk at the airport and asked the woman there if she had any tips on how to entertain ourselves for 20 hours. She gave directions to a room downstairs which looked a bit like a basement with security control. We started thinking we had the wrong place, but luckily a man called for us and started handling our boarding passes. He said something about Turkish Airlines providing us with a free stay at a five-star hotel with free transport and breakfast, but it sounded like he was joking. The following hour we were being ushered around the airport by different Turkish Airlines staff, getting Turkish visas and so on. At one point a woman asked us "How many rooms would you like?" and we replied "One room for the three of us". Of course we want to share everything! Later we realised we could have gotten one room each for free. We ended up in a taxi which drove us through Istanbul for a very long time. Seeing Istanbul at night was very exciting since none of us has been in a Muslim country before this, but the most exciting part was when the taxi pulled over in front of the five-star hotel, with the flashy marble and glass entrance and the neat ushers welcoming us. "No way!" we all said, and with big smiles on our faces a man explained that someone will drive us back to the airport tomorrow afternoon. We installed ourselves in our room and then went down to the Lobby for drinks.


This morning we woke up in the comfy hotel beds to a great view of Istanbul from our window and enjoyed nice showers and a free Turkish breakfast buffet. Being stuffed after breakfast we took a nap and some tea in our room. Soon we'll be heading back to the airport and our flight to Africa.

Cheers from Istanbul!

Michaela, Elisa, Floriaan


For pictures of the hotel there's a website: http://www.akgunhotel.com/ImageGallery.aspx