Why am I here?

As some of you know, I have gone to Madagascar. Time has already become quite fluid and I have little remaining sense of how long I have been in particular places here doing particular tasks -- yes I have this problem in general, but it is more extreme now -- I think I arrived on or around 7 Aug 2010. And while I routinely ask myself "why am I here?" in many places and contexts (including often when waking up), the topic now is not so existential.

The simple, straightforward reason I am here is to work on a cetacean survey of the west coast. This is one segment of a larger (3-5 year) project to survey all the Malagasy coast. However, the entire west coast is clearly too much for this trip, and probably what we will get done is the southwest coast and north to Morandava in west central Madagascar. This is partly because of the length of the coast, and partly because there are many details to be worked out, much protocol to be developed (though we have quite a good protocol for the visual survey already), much equipment to be prepared, and generally 10,000 (I counted) obstacles to be overcome.

The survey is mainly to assess the presence, distribution, and abundance of cetacean species in Malagasy waters. Some information is already known from shore-based work in three areas -- Tulear in the southwest (where I am now), Nosy Be in the northwest, and Antongil Bay in the northeast -- and from an aerial survey done earlier this year. However, there is not much infrastructure throughout Madagascar (roads, petrol, towns with hotels, restaurants, etc) so it is extremely difficult to carry out a coastal survey from terrestrial base camps. Thus this survey is ship-based.

The ship is the Zanj Explorer, a charter vessel working mostly in Mozambique (running diving and surfing charters), run by South Africans (zanjexplorer.com). She is a 22m, single-hull, sailboat with a broad beam of around 5m. In the pictures on the website they managed to make her look like a party boat, but in person she is much different. There is a fair bit of room aboard, but there is already a lot of equipment occupying that room -- not ours, but rather the generators, air compressors, diving gear, fuel tanks, water tanks, etc, required by the well-equipped charter vessel. Oh, and did I mention surfboards? There are surfboards stashed everywhere. The crew are surfing fanatics, and it looks as if there are at least three surfboards per person aboard.

The Zanj at anchor off Tulear

Zanj sailing downwind in Beaufort 5 and making 5-6 knots under sail alone.  Slow but fairly stable.

We have a scientific crew of six -- three Malagash (Norbert, Boris, and Tahine -- all pronounced with a French accent (e.g., Norbert rhymes with Camembert) and three American/Europeans (myself, Sal, and Pina).  Sal is the P.I. -- the survey is his brainchild, he got together all the funding, and he has organized everything.  Pina is the acoustician -- she will mostly be sitting below staring at three computer screens, monitoring the output from the towed hydrophone array, and directing the recording and processing of that output in at least three different computer programs.  She will also be choosing which sounds to input to a real-time localization system.  I am something of a jack-of-all trades.  I talk to Sal about the survey design and the consequences of dropping one or more transects (and the weather and the consequences of the boat being short-handed and on and on), I do the electrical engineering and hookup (not the sound hookup, but the electrical power running to all the electronics), and I am currently participating in and overseeing the visual survey half of the data collection.

The ship's sailing crew is currently four -- Grant the captain, Ian the "chef de cuisine" (so listed on the manifest we had to submit to the port authorities), and two deckhands, Ryan and Craig.  This is a bit short handed.   The engineer, Gas, had to leave after a week for medical reasons (a huge loss to us both for ability and personality) and there arguably should be one more deckhand.  There is also an observer along from the Department of Fisheries -- required unexpectedly, and learned of only after our arrival, as a condition on our permit to operate.  The requirement was daunting at first because the space is very crowded (though if you wanted to sleep on a surfboard you would have a vast choice of berths anywhere on the boat) and we had no idea who we would get.  We got lucky though -- the observer is easy going, friendly, always in good humor, and has a great rapport with the other Malagash.  It is more difficult for Sal, Pina and me to interact because we speak little French and he speaks only slightly more English.  I still do not know how to properly pronounce or spell his name.  Norbert assures us that his name is unusual even by Malagasy standards and that he has trouble with it to.  Norbert is probably just being polite.

The foredeck of the Zanj.  The brown tube is the hydrophone array -- a 17m plastic tube filled with four hydrophones at precise spacings, pre-amp electronics to boost the hydrophone signal before it reaches the shipboard electronics, and brown oil.   That is Ryan in the background, Pina in blue, Grant in red, Sal in the cap, and Craig in the foreground.  Craig has a bandage on his head because he had gotten mugged a few days before trying to get back to the boat in the wee hours after a pub crawl with Ryan.

Despite in general wanting the survey to be free-running and not tied to any particular port, we are at the moment starting from, and rather strongly tied to, the port of Tulear in the southwest of Madagascar.  It is also spelled Toliara, but no matter the spelling it is always pronounced too-lee-ARE.