A Mud Lobster's holiday to Ban Tale Nok

My apologies for the prolonged silence on the blog. Don’t mistake silence for inactivity. Lots of things have been going on. Most importantly, your corresponding Mud Lobster joined Jim and Ning’s excellent adventure to their Mangrove Action Project (MAP) site in Ban Tale Nok, Phang Nga province, where they are attempting something similar to Bang Lang Da. MAP has been working hard over several months to get the Dept for Marine and Coastal Resources and other local authorities to agree and support a rehabilitation effort in their particular pond and to allow the use of a tractor. There have also been protracted land tenure issues that have still not been fully resolved and consequent tension within the village.

Most of the village has been very supportive of MAP’s intended rehabilitation effort, and on 9th-11th August they put they hoes where their mouths were and got digging, as permission for tractor use in a mangrove was denied. 30 villagers helped, working 8-11.30 and 2-5pm in sun, rain, high tides and everything in between. Essentially the effort was to dig into the top of the mud walls and re-slope these walls so that they were more horizontal, thus providing a much greater area at the appropriate height for mangrove growth, and particularly Nypa palm. Nypa is useful to them at they make with great skill cigarette papers and roof sections from the leaves.
Always enjoy my trips with Jim and Ning to BTN, where I perform several roles, including jester, driver, bag carrier, official photographer (yes I know Shell, Benjol I wish I had your clicking skills) and help with some of the technical aspects. Measuring the change in soil heights allowed us to ensure we had regraded to about the right height. And we answered the question about salinity with a salinity prism – almost fresh water. Much was learnt about they way the villagers liked to work (altogether in one group and the same time on the same bit of pond) and how much we could do in three days (a lot). Inspiring and humbling to see just how strong some of the fine ladies of Ban Tale Nok were, despite the 33 degree heat. The homestay is always an education, and they always always cook well.
The other task at this pond was to widen the sluice area to allow the water to move quicker and drain better. What was not attempted at this stage was to deal with the pond floor. This is soft sloppy mud and needs to be channelized, as is happening at BLD. Tune in after Ramadan when we return for more fun.

Dr Balaji, at last

Last week we got the great news that finally Balaji has been awarded his doctorate from Bharathidasan University, Trichy, India. Balaji visited Krabi and the site 9th May and is the director of OMCAR Tamil Nadu. Many congratulations, Dr Balaji.

Daily Mud - An Update

So what’s been happening on site, other than the fabulous Italian Job (Naucrates' visit, not Rossi)? The last two weeks have been largely digging and signing. As suggested earlier the focus has been on channel 2, which runs diagonally across the pond. In consultation with Jim from Mangrove Action Project the decision was made to try to deepen and widen this channel to aid drainage and produce more hills.
The tricky part is digging around the sluice gate – the lowest part of the site. Even at low water this is often part submerged, and water from the rest of the site slowly drains out via here, necessitating digging underwater. In itself, digging in knee-deep water is not a problem when widening the sides but it’s hard to judge the evenness of the deepening as the water is never clear. However digging is impossible if the water is too deep (below, where the water at Hill T would be chest deep), or if a lot of water is still draining out of the pond due to tide or rain (Thursday 23rd!). So when the opportunity arose, channel 2 near the gate was widened and deepened. If not, other parts of 2 and 2C were excavated. This included extending 2C further east another 6 meters and making 2C much more curved, by widening more on the opposite side to the nearest hill, which are placed on alternate sides of the channel being dug (below). All this digging has produced more hills. We are at ‘X’, almost out of letters. There’s been a lot of activity at home therefore to make enough signs to label the new hills, produce signs for hills have not been labelled to date and replace broken ones. White cardboard-like plastic has been used and permanent markers.

Hill C and I continue to thrive. To my surprise the two Test Planting plots (green signs) on the pond floor (also Rhizophora apiculata) also seem to be struggling along but surviving. Both have had a random sample of 15 plants tagged and these are being measured for height leaf numbers and condition. Bang Don and I both thought that these dibblings would die as the soil is saturated and sloppy.

Other Dibbling and Planting
As a test a Nypa palm wilding of approx 30cm has been transplanted from a poor site near the pond onto Hill X. This will be monitored in the usual way. Hill O has received one R. apiculata volunteer, but no buds yet. Test Planting Plot 3 (green sign) has been established with Bruguiera cylindrica and Ceriops tagal. Again a sample will be tagged next week and monitored for progress, to compare against Hill L and Hill E respectively. Hill F also received B. cylindrica dibbling and Hill Q R. apiculata. Hill N has received a Nypa seedling that has been grown in a mix of soil and clay in my own garden. 24cm tall its progress will be monitored but so far it looks happy in its new home.

Charts and Tides
One final minor triumph. The below is a schematic of the pond at cross-section. It shows the heights of the hills, pond, datum point and average channel depth. What observations onsite confirm is that our measurements correctly predict that at very lowest high tides (from Tide.com) only the channels are filled with water and there is no inundation of the pond floor itself. So the pond is just on the boundary between mudflat, in the Watson sense, and mangrove territory on the slope from dry land to the sea. So what will happen in the next couple of weeks? Channel 2 will be completed. On Friday I tried to dig out a big piece of mangrove trunk that ran across the channel, partially blocking it. At one end is Hill X. So by digging I tried to find the other end, but to no avail – the end remained buried in the mud. So the log will be sawn in two and removed that way. More species will be dibbled, as they come into season. Avicennia sp of all three species are now available, and there are two Xylocarpus granatum in my garden at about three feet that will be transplanted onto their own hills. Watch this mud.

Mangrove Italian for Beginners

On Saturday and Sunday mornings Thai TV broadcasts an excellent programme called English Breakfast, in which various points of the English language are explained in a humours fashion. Examples might include the crucial and profound difference between expat and expert. We had our own version this week; Italian for Mangroves. It was our great pleasure to welcome Monica Aureggi and Claudio Conti from an Italian NGO Naucrates. The Italian duo runs a project that has been active on Koh Phra Thong, Phang Nga province for several years. Monica, who speaks excellent English, tries to monitor and promote the protection of sea turtles. Claudio, whose English is more limited, is studying and restoring the very biodiverse local mangrove ecosystem. Both have a huge amount of knowledge in their fields. Experts not expats.

Monica and Claudio live on an olive farm 50km outside Rome for most of the year, visiting Thailand twice a year to work at Koh Phra Thong. So we were thrilled that they took the time to visit Krabi on their way back home, together with Ning Enright from MAP and Barry Bendell.
First we took a boat trip round the estuary mangroves. To the bemusement of our regular boatman Bang Non we pulled in at many places to look at trees, pull off leaves, head-butt bulbous fruits and photograph flowers. [That low scrubby bush was Brownlowia tersa, Claudio. Sorry.] Then to lunch. Monica is happy to indulge in all Thai foods but Claudio is less catholic in his consumption... unless we were in an Italian restaurant, of which Krabi has at least three good ones. Lunch thus became another Italian lesson of slow eating, delicious food and tiny coffees. The meal concluded we headed to the site at Bang Lang Da.

After the obligatory coffee – a drip-feed of which is a good way to keep Claudio calm and happy – we toured the mud. K’ Ning declined to dance in the dirt but charmed the local crab group, which joined us at the pond. Monica kindly translated from the pond edge, also keeping clean, as we talked through the plan and what had been done. Needless to say Claudio immediately understood the activities and had some piquant observations and advice, all of which will be followed through as fast as I can dig.
We also discussed the idea with Bang Don of trying to combine crab fattening in semi-submerged boxes in the pond. Traditionally combining the two properly has been tricky as mangroves need a daily flush of water, where most crab ponds have impounded water. Watch this blog.
At the end, Claudio looked at the site and the digging and in deliberate and perfect English said to me, “You are a mud lobster!” From anyone else this might be an insult. From Claudio it was an honour as well as being perfectly true as mud lobsters are ecological engineers, digging burrows that are 2-3 meters deeps and producing huge hills in the process, which various mangrove species then colonise. Dinner was at a Thai restaurant called Gotung. Claudio performed his dinner table trick of eating raw spring onions in lime juice as way of adding a bit of oral aggression to fried rice.

Thank you for your visit. It was a pleasure and an honour. Come back soon.

Daily Mud: Quiet but active on the Western Front

So what's been happening in the dirt of Bang Lang Da? There's been a lull in the MSc report writing process as a first draft has been submitted to the supervisor. While the comments are eagerly anticipated, the free time and good tides have been used carefully.

A sample of 15 plants from both the two test planting plots (green signs) have been labeled and measured. These are plots where propagules are dibbled into the existing pond floor, rather than on a hill, to allow growth comparisons.

Hill E's Ceriops tagal has burst into life and the Ceriops is leafing nicely. As has Hill L's Bruguiera cylindrica.But the main work has been a lot of digging to widen and deepen Channel 2, including 2C (blue signs). This is tricky work as working low down on the site near the sluice gate means that water is flowing over where the digging is being done the whole time. Digging underwater is difficult. It's heavier work and hard to gauge which bits of the channel bottom need further excavation. So it needs a low tide, when the pond has had time to drain, and no rain. Yesterday there was hard rain for a significant part of the afternoon, so the attention was focused on widening the whole of 2c.

Was Noah's Ark really a Pond?

And just when we thought

we had a reasonable understanding

of what is living in the pond,

more animals appear.

Please forgive the quality of the photography. Some of it was taken while chasing these chaps across the mud.

Biodiversity and Barry Bendell

The second visitor of last week was the multi-talented Barry Bendell. Originally from Canada, he now lives in Trang, southwest Thailand, is the thickness of a blade of sea grass away from finishing a PhD on the aforementioned at James Cook University in Australia, knows more than most about marine invertebrates and speaks (and reads!) Thai. So what better person to go hunting for bugs and grubs with in the filth at Bang Land Da. Well accustomed to working with communities in Thailand, Barry spent a good while with the fine folks of the village at the coffee shop, explaining to the assembled bemused what the kitchen sieve and the ziplock bags were for.

We then headed into the mud to do an initial quick-and-sticky audit of what’s in the pond. This baseline data will help us to see if there are changes biodiversity over time and compare inside with just outside the pond. The process is tricky as there are no indicator beasties that allow us to see biodiversity changes on a sliding scale, as there are fresh water fish species in the UK, which indicate well the level of pollution in the water. And we wanted to keep it simple so other communities attempting the same thing could follow this example. So with my breaking shovel (“Welded, na!! Really strong, jing jing!!” Phaa!) creaking like 1970’s garden furniture, we dug up various holes, crab casts, channel bottoms and sieved, photographed and noted. Sadly the pond snakes failed to make a gala appearance. But there was plenty to keep us occupied.

Mid way through our study the pond’s major source of disturbance appeared and starting collecting snapper shrimp for us. Thus we headed home with some bizarre polychaetes in a bag, for further study. After a feed at the night market and a modest beer we photographed what turned out to be a pair of spoon worms, performing stomach yoga. Finally, the ever-benevolent Bareee (as pronounced in Thai) released our exercise troupe into a nearby stream.
Thank you, Barry for your expertise and good humour. See you again soon.