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Published: November 26th 2008
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I'm in the lovely Tram Chim National Park, doing my ISP on the Golden Apple Snail, which is an invasive species. It has been a great experience so far! We got here a week ago and have accomplished a lot. Sara actually finished her research. I still have two more days of data collecting. All the people here are very nice and friendly; they are also super eager to practice their English with us, and so in return, we practice our Vietnamese with them. We've had some funny exchanges as a result. They also have an easier time understanding me than Sara (cause I'm from the "South" and speak more slowly?) and that's amusing, since Midwesterners are supposed to have the "best" "American" accent. Oh well.
Every morning we go with our "research assistants," who are really way more than assistants- they know where all the snail eggs are, and everything else we need to know about Tram Chim, to breakfast in town. Then we come back and either go on the boat, where I observe my snail grazing experiment or on motor bikes, where we tour around the park where it's not flooded and survey the distribution of Golden
Making the cages
first you rip it... Apple Snail eggs, which are bright pink and much easier to find, measure, and count than the snails themselves, which had been my initial plan. Hai, my assistant, really enjoys using the calipers to measure the eggs, and I record the data. I've been able to see a lot of the park that I probably wouldn't have seen just visiting here, as we did previously. And it's been great!
For the snail grazing experiment, I put 0, 2, 4, and 8 snails in different net cages in four different areas of the park- in the wild rice, the grass called panicum, this other reed called eceloris (which I still don't know how to speel... oops...) and then around some Melaleuca trees. In some of my cages the snails have laid eggs, but mostly I just judge their impact by how much vegetation is gone. I started out counting stems every time, but that's rather tedious, so now I just do "percent damaged" instead. It's much faster and probably more useful, in some ways. The cages are all in around a meter deep water, so to observe them, I have to hop out of the boat and walk around in
Homemakers
Then you sew it.... some of our research helpers the water and vegetation. The first day I made the mistake of wearing shorts, and my legs got scratched up. They're fine now, though.
Another aspect of research we were warned about was the tradition of drinking rice wine.... We escaped it the first day we were here, but the second and all consecutive days, until today, we drank plenty of rice wine.... The first day some men from the ministry of the environment or something were here, and we drank with them after lunch, and sort of ate a little while drinking with them, but I must admit, the rest of the day was completely wasted (no pun intended). The next day we drank with the same men, always having to say, in Vietnamese, "I (younger than you) invite you (older than I man) to drink rice wine with me" or they would say the opposite to us. Needless to say, we got pretty good at that phrase, and it wasn't as bad as the first day. We drank at lunch some days, and at dinner other days. One evening, around ten, the men from the ministry were looking for people to drink with- ie us. So, we
Wetland Construction
then you make the cages went to their room and had some warm 333 beer. Pretty gross. There I learned the useful phrase- "I cannot drink anymore. I am drunk already" (even though I'd only had one beer, saying I was drunk already was the funniest and best and only excuse they'd accept). So that phrase served me well for a few days, until last night.
We were invited to some random people house (friends of friends) with Hai, his wife, and some other couples we know. The food was delicious, and we only had to have half a shot of rice wine, and then COLD beer which is such an improvement over rice wine! But still, I don't really enjoy beer, so I drank one, and about half of another, saying all the time, I'm drunk already, can't drink anymore, which of course wasn't really true. Then, when they wanted to do toasts, which would sort of force me to drink, I started toasting with pieces of pomelo and cookies. They got a big kick out of that, but I ended up having to finish my beer anyway. It was a fun night, though. Til we got food poisoning, but we're all better
Still setting up
in the wild rice now.
We also went on a little trip deep into the park to see a nesting colony of cormorants and Oriental Darters, which are a rare species. There were around 300,000 birds, but half of them were flying somewhere (around the park? to the park? away from the park? it wasn't clear where). Still, it was an awesome sight to see. Except I think we scared some of the babies to death because we kept seeing them fall out of their little nests, and they can't swim or fly.... so they drowned... I think. We also saw already dead birds hanging from branches and floating in the water. It was kind of gruesome. But I guess that's why they lay two eggs, so one can die, and it's not a total lost. Morbid. But we were in the midst of them, and they were flying all around us, and it was such a cool experience!!!!
And now I'm finishing my research, and getting ready to head back to Can Tho on Thanksgiving day. It'll be nice to be with friends.
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Michael Huston
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Drink Rice Wine with Us
Fun blog. We figured you would just go ahead and eat the little baby birds. Perhaps that's what happened to all the disappearing snails. Do you really remember what you ate? Have fun! (and perhaps a little less Rice Wine)