A Concrete Topic

Hello everyone. It has been a busy couple weeks with meetings sending me back and forth from Auckland, phone calls and emails to various members involved in my project, and countless hours milling over the design for my project. Suffice it to say, I am now dug in deep to my project and I would like to share a little with you; to explain what I will be doing for the next 2 and a half years that I have remaining on this side of the world.

It may come as a shock to some, but I am not working with crabs, nor crustaceans, but still working with marine invertebrates. My species of study this time will be the green-lipped mussel (Perna canaliculus for you scientists out there), and endemic species in New Zealand that is of great economic importance. This species supports are large aquaculture industry, but despite this, its abundance in the Hauraki Gulf around Auckland is incredibly sparse. Back in the early 1900 to 1970's there was a dredge fishery for this species which forms extensive beds, and as time progressed, the harvests grew until their crash when dredging became unprofitable. To this day, remnant beds of these mussels are virtually absent from the area, with only a few very small spots. This has removed such benefits as water filtration and forming a habitat that other animals use.

A group of scientists, environmentalist, and members of industry have come together to attempt to restore this lost habitat back to the Hauraki Gulf. They have enlisted my help to design experiments that would produce proper protocols to establish new mussel bed habitat. So for the last few weeks, we have been arranging the purchase of large quantities of mussels, ropes and mussel socks, and building cages to help test the sustainability of the beds. In just a little over a month we will be embarking on an effort to put those mussels back on the ocean floor and monitor the sustainability and colonization of the beds by other animals. In a nut shell, I am determining the best way to "re-forest" the bottom of the ocean. So this is what I have been up too while the rest of you are leaving summer for fall, enjoying your 91st birthday (Nan), and gearing up for Thanksgiving. Miss you all.

Auckland Night Market

Today I experienced the Auckland Night market, an eclectic groupings of food vendors from all many parts of the world. This intriguing gathering occurs every Sunday night, in the basement level of a mall car park of all places. The whole area is cornered off and people arrive, setting up their tents and hotplates, barbecues and tables, offering a little slice of someone's home for all to try.

It was a stupendous experience, and a bit overwhelming, with so many choices that I personnaly didn't know where to begin. The whole place was filled with the smell of foods, an olfactory extravaganza with a heavy influence of fried food. My first choice was an Argentinian dish, an empanada, which was positively delicious. Once we met up with Leo and Natali, who orchestrated this venture, we got down to the hard core eating. They enjoyed some Japanese seafood balls while I had a German bratwurst, tried some churro, and finished up with a delicious spinach and ricotta panzarotti. It was a lot of deep fried and fatty foods, so this is clearly going to be no more than a monthly tradition, but it is definitely on the list of must do things in New Zealand. Aside from the Argentinian, German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese booths, there were multiple Tai, Chinese, Korean, Malaysian, Greek, Indian, Hungarian, and more North American food booths. I will leave you with a picture of my favorite booth; a truck with a wood burning stove on the back for cooking pizza!

Certification

Well, it has been a very long time since I posted a blog. On the other hand, it has been a very busy couple weeks for me here in New Zealand. Since my last posting I have had several meetings with my supervisors, working out the details of my project, which I will try to get a posting up so you all can get an idea of what I will be doing for the next 2 2/3 years. It is kind of hard to believe that a third of the year has passed. The first day of spring is on September 1st here, so I survived a kiwi winter (as if you can call it winter) and I am heading into spring.

I have been living and breathing the material required to perform diving field work these past weeks, which is mostly to do with my absence. I have now completed an Oxygen administration course for diving, a Stress and Rescue course through SSI (Scuba Schools International), and I am (in the eyes of the New Zealand coastguard) now a BoatMaster! Other than that, the dolphins have returned twice, performing their aquatic and occasionally aerial acrobatics as well as a few thundershowers that were so close you could feel the walls shaking in the bunk room. I am sorry that I have been so very behind on the blog, but I promise to pick things up and get one out more regularly.