The Adventure Has Begun

First things first, the Pakwan Festival video is finished!  Unfortunately all of the video taken with my camera couldn't be used (the marching band performances) due to an issue with the file format, but everything from the GoPro was usable so Robby has compiled those videos!  Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJv5C1-AiXQ

Now on to new things! We finally got out of Manila and into the field to do some actual research, or at least the first (or 50th) step toward actually starting Robby's research!  It was essentially a recon mission: we had two weeks to travel to each of the 13 municipalities where Robby was considering conducting his research to scout out the Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in each one and each town.  We met with each local Municipal Agriculture Officer (MAO), who is in charge of the protected areas, to organize visual surveys of each MPA as well as get any and all information they had about it (GPS coordinates, establishment date, enforcement policies, fish survey data, etc.).  This proved to be a lot harder than, at least I, originally thought as this information was not always readily available, or known.  

On top of that, we also had to figure out the logistics of doing field work in each municipality. This required figuring out the answers to dozens of questions about day-to-day issues such as: "Where can we buy ice for the fish samples?", "Is there a local restaurant or place where we can eat?", "Where can we stay?", "Where can we dissect fish?", "How will we get around?" (a much bigger problem than you would think!), "What boats can we use?", "Where can we get SCUBA tanks filled?", and, above all else, "How much is this all going to cost!?"

We started our mission in Pangasinan, the province that contains the marine lab associated with the University of the Philippines Marine Science Institute (UPMSI).  We figured, logistically speaking, this would be the easiest region to do work in and Robby had gotten permission from three municipalities here: Bolinao, Anda and Bani (Pakwan Festival = Bani!).

Bolinao is the northern most tip in Pangasinan, Anda is the island east of that tip and Bani is just above where the arrow is pointing.  Remember, Manila is that black dot.

We used a hotel in Bolinao as our home base and rather than staying at the Marine Lab, we booked a room for $11/night right on the beach!  It is the building you see in the picture below, absolutely beautiful location.  Only issue was that the bathroom was detached and after my first use, when I went to fill the bucket up to flush (most bathrooms here require a bucket full of water to be dumped in for the bowl to flush, there are no handles to press), a giant wolf spider was behind the bucket.  As freaked as I was, I couldn't help but smile because we were definitely not in Manila anymore!

That's our room on the left at Rock Garden Resort

The first morning we were both so excited to be out of the city and near the water! So much so that shortly after sunrise Robby took the snorkeling gear and went out in search of a reef and I took a walk down the beach.  Turns out, right off our shore was just a GIANT seagrass bed.  Robby walked for straight out for 30 minutes and it never got deeper than his waist!

If you click to enlarge the photo you can see waves breaking way out in the distance, that, evidently, is where the reef is located.

On my walk, I came across locals collecting mussels and other sea critters from the sand at low tide.  

Some people had these paddle boards that they would take out over the shallow seagrass beds to go fishing.

After spending some much needed time in the water, we got to work.  Robby headed to the Municipal Hall to talk to the MAO and I set up my hammock to finish the Pakwan blog.

If you can call this working...

Around lunch Robby came back with great news, we would be able to take a boat out that afternoon to see the MPAs!  Our excitement was short lived because the weather turned windy come the afternoon.  We were still taken out on the boat, but we could not get in at the core zone of the MPAs as the waves were too intense due to the wind.  This meant we were only able to get in at the buffer zone.  Evidently, the MPAs here have a "core zone" where no fishing is allowed and a "buffer zone" where fishing is allowed.  The core zone is all Robby is interested in, as that is the area that is protected from fishing, which meant the day was a bust.  We had to pay for the boat, but could not actually conduct the visual survey.

What we were able to see in the buffer zones also left us a little concerned. We did not see many of his target species, or very many fish at all!  Additionally, Robby had a spear gun with him that had been made by someone at UPMSI for him to test as the prototype gun that would be made for his collections.  We tested it out in the buffer zone of the MPA, since fishing is allowed there..., only to find that the elastic used to propel the spear forward was not nearly strong enough to actually spear a fish.  Another complete bust. We weren't sure what to do because we couldn't just purchase a spear gun as you would be able to back home (we looked, trust me) and Robby needed a functional gun, several really, in order to do his collections.

  

We went home that first day with the sinking feeling that Robby's research was not going to work, and that he had potentially wasted three months getting permission from locations where the MPAs didn't suit his project.  To try to cheer ourselves up, we attempted to watch the footage of Robby spearfishing that I had filmed with the GoPro.  It turned out that I completely failed. Instead of filming him, I filmed the water a foot below him. So, aside from the occasional fin kicking into the shot, I got absolutely no footage of him or the spear.  It was a rough, rough start.

On the up side, we came home to a beautiful resort that we had completely to ourselves! So we had that going for us, which was nice.

The next morning, we were scheduled to go to see the MPAs in Anda, but woke up to howling winds and were told the weather was too bad to go out.  So instead, Robby headed down to Bani to talk to the MAO there and try to see their MPA while I stayed at the resort.  Robby had a very successful day, which was a relief! He was able to find all of the information he needed from the office, and was even taken out to the MPA. Unfortunately, this meant a 45 minute tricycle ride from town, which he had to pay for.  I should note here that having a car, or tricycle, of our own would have made this process soooo much easier, but you cannot rent a car out where we were, and public transport is basically how everyone gets around.  And so, this was the first of many, many rides we had to pay whatever price was quoted to us to get where we needed to go.

Robby was taken to the Bantay Dagat's (Fish Warden's) home where he was able to ask the people in charge of protecting the MPA about enforcement.  This was always a delicate conversation, as we were trying to discover exactly how well the MPA was actually protected from illegal fishing activity and didn't want the question to come out as: "Sir, how well do you actually do your job?".  

To solve this dilemma, we came up with a list of questions to try and gauge what enforcement is like and how well protected the areas are from fishing.

As Robby was talking to the Fish Warden, some of the local fisherman came over to him.  They got into a discussion on spearfishing and, consequently, the fishermen brought out their spearguns.  These had thick elastic bands on them and spears that were made from a metal that would not rust (another problem we were having with our spear).  They also had a variety of sizes which Robby knew immediately would be helpful to spear some of the smaller species he needed. So he asked if he could pay them to make him several spears of his own, figuring that fishermen depend on spearguns for their livelihood and thus probably make pretty high quality spears! (Editor's Note: this was by far the best decision I have made since arriving in the Philippines, as will become clear later)

We had arrived in Bolinao on a Tuesday evening and by Thursday night we had a decision to make: do we (A) head to Zambales early Friday morning and attempt to meet with the northern most municipality, Santa Cruz? or (B) stay and pray the weather calms and we can get out in Anda?  We  couldn't afford to lose a day if the weather was bad again, and so decided to head to Zambales.   When we woke up, however, the water outside our windows looked like glass and there was zero wind.  Despite being completely packed up and having no ride secured to get us there, we texted Anda and told them we'd like to go out to their MPAs.  Fortunately we were able to hire a tricycle driver from our resort to take us the 45 minutes by land over to Anda where we were met by the head Bantay Dagat.

After telling us his name (albeit too quickly for either of us to pick up) he asked if we had our own transport and could just follow him on his motorbike.  We just looked at each other and had to laugh as lack of our own transport was causing yet another bump in the road for the second time that day.  It was fine though, as there are always trike drivers around willing to give you a lift, even though often they can charge whatever they want and we have little say in the matter.  We've tried negotiating or playing them off of one another but they don't try to beat the others price.  They are in it together, it seems, and will all quote the same price. Sometimes you can get them down a little, but generally they will drive off if you can't agree on a price, but I digress...  

We followed the Bantay Dagat to town proper, the central "downtown" area, and there was a pavilion housing tricycles heading to all parts of the province.  After a lot of discussion we were told to get in a tricycle that, we assumed, would follow the motorbike our bantay dagat was on to wherever the MPA was located.  Our trike driver set out on his own and after 15 minutes stopped at a store only saying something about his uncle.  Well the store was called "Uncles Store", out in the provinces each of the stores are named after the owner:

Nancy Store 

Elacion Sotre

The Bantay Dagat showed up to Uncles Store after about 5 minutes and went inside, bought several liters of gasoline stored in an old plastic water jug, and proceeded to strap this high explosive onto the sidecar of the tricycle we were sitting inside of, which was comforting.  To add to our concern, once we started going again, the paved road quickly ended and we found ourselves on a dirt road with large rocks and potholes which our driver deftly drove around.  Robby and I were keenly aware of the highly flammable liquid strapped behind our heads as we started descending down to the water (we assumed) on a very narrow, very bumpy road with a very steep drop off.  Oh and I should mention the Bantay Dagat was again nowhere to be seen.

We did eventually make it down to the flat area next to the water and it became clear that this was where the fisher folk and farmers lived.  We passed by cattle and could see the boats off shore and my mind switched from thinking "what in the world have I gotten myself into?", to how absolutely beautiful this country is and how we were witnessing the local way of life that we would have undoubtedly missed out on had we been visiting as merely tourists.  Our tricycle driver dropped us off at a house that had several children (and two adorable puppies!) playing out front.  There are stray dogs all over the Philippines and Robby constantly has to remind me that they are not vaccinated and most likely have all sorts of critters on them.  That being said, it is absolute torture when adorable puppies bound over to greet you and you can't pet them!

We were again told nothing (mostly due to a language barrier) and sat there looking around while we waited for the Bantay Dagat.  He arrived and proceeded to walk out toward the boats which we took as our cue to follow and so began our second journey out to an MPA.

Once on the boat, we were shown a sandbar/island with a structure on it and were told that this was the guard house used by the Bantay Dagats to guard the MPA.  They explained that they have someone out there every night keeping watch over the MPA and that they have a boat so they are able to go after anyone that comes into the MPA.

Guard house and surrounding MPA in Anda

 We were also told that the MPA here was just awarded best MPA in Pangasinan! After our last experience, however, Robby and I tried not to get our hopes up as we motored out to the reef.  But once we got our snorkel gear on and jumped in, our confidence in being able to actually complete his research skyrocketed.  It was the absolute most coral I have ever seen and there were hundreds of fish swimming around us.  

So many fishes!

We spent a looong time snorkeling around. Robby had his GoPro and was filming any and all of his target species that he could find as part of his visual census.  I kept getting upset with him for failing to film all of the beautiful fish swimming around us! He kept reminding me that this was, in fact, for his work so he had to focus on his species.  I obviously couldn't argue with that, so I decided to let him film and went off on my own around the reef, it was a huge expanse and I figured splitting up would also allow us to see more so I went in search of his target species and whatever other sea life I could find.

Beautiful coral oh and one of his target species - the Jewel Damsel

When Robby decided he had enough footage, we climbed back into the bangka. This proved to be no easy task, as I have very little upper body strength and there are no ladders or other ways to get on the boat besides just lifting yourself up!

This is a bangka (not the one we were on, but so you get the idea)

We were then taken over to another MPA in Anda's municipal waters (I'd like to point out that often times we could not even find out how many MPAs existed in a region until we were out on the boat being shown them, as I mentioned before some basic things were a lot harder to find out than you'd think).  When we arrived they pointed out a boat from UPMSI that was doing work in the MPA.  What took us over an hour and a half by land, and a good bit of money, was evidently around the corner from the marine lab by water.  It would not have been logistically feasible to get all of our gear to Anda by land so it was a relief to see how easily we would be able to travel there from the marine lab.

After doing another visual census at the second MPA we headed back to land.  I was invited into the home of the fisherman who had been operating our boat and was able to change.  When I came out Robby told me we were going to get back to town in the sidecar of the families tricycle.  What this actually meant was we would be sitting on a 2x4 that stretched the width of a cart that had been welded onto the side of their motorbike.

Attempting to give you the full effect.

That's the Bantay Dagat on his motorbike behind us.

As I said, beyond what the typical tourist would get to experience

By the time we made it back to Bolinao, repacked our things, and made it to the bus station, there was no way we could get to Santa Cruz Municipal Hall in time to speak with them.  As it was already Friday, we decided we would spend the weekend scouting out places to stay in Zamables that would be both affordable and logistically workable for Robby's sites.

Just to orient you again, we were headed to the western part of Zambales, a coastline which is just to the west of a mountain range that stretches down the length of the province.

Friday night we made a very rough sketch of the province, broken down by municipality, to figure out how we could meet with each one during the coming week.  We decided that Monday we would just spend going to as many municipal halls as possible to meet the MAOs and ask about visiting their MPAs.  We decided to start our efforts in Masinloc, as they had 4 MPAs and the other municipalities only had 1 each (or so we believed). As a bonus, they also had the only known air compressor in all of Zambales so getting air for our tanks would not be an issue.

(From north to south): Santa Cruz, Candelaria, Masinloc, Palauig, Iba, Botolan, Cabangan, San Felipe, San Antonio, and Subic, our ten target municipalities in Zambales, stretching 135km (83 miles) along the coast with one main road running between them all.  I warned you it was a rough sketch!

Saturday, Valentine's Day, we hired a tricycle driver to take us down to Masinloc to try and find a place to stay during Robby's research.  We had a map with us Robby had thankfully purchased before leaving Manila that listed all of the resorts in Zambales.  We did our best to try and find prices online before leaving, but this is the Philippines, and thus not everything has an online presence and even if it does it does not mean that the information you find is in any way accurate.  So, as with most things here, we decided going around in person would be the best way to find out the information we needed and so we headed down to Masinloc.  We asked to be taken to town proper in hopes that they had a tourism center that could give us more information, but we ended up being taken to the Mayors office that was not in the Municipal Hall, but on a plot of land lined with flags and looking out onto this:

You can see why they chose to have their office here and not in the municipal hall

We were told to sit and wait while the men in the office, who turned out to be groundskeepers, looked into getting the tourism point person (we couldn't understand exactly who they were getting, it very well could have been the mayor) to come to the office to help us.  While we were waiting, Robby went wandering in search of a place to buy ice and while looking stumbled upon this beautiful and incredibly large trigger fish for sale:

He couldn't get over the size, especially since we had yet to come across a fish that large and we'd been snorkeling in MPAs where the fish, in theory, should easily be that large.

If you notice there is also a huge block of ice in the photo so Robby continued on until he found the source, where he was able to find a place that could chisel ice down into smaller chunks that will fit in a cooler, as we needed.  Success!  At least on one account.  It turned out the tourism person would not come into the office on a Saturday and asked us to come back on Monday.  After getting that news we decided to take a stroll through town proper to get a snack, some water, a CR (comfort room, remember?), another look at the giant trigger and some time to soak in the surreal setting we found ourselves in:

This is the view behind the shops in town proper, I wasn't kidding when I said the coastline was just west of the mountain range, absolutely gorgeous!

After our break, we decided to just use our handy-dandy map and hit the road.

Both handy and dandy

We would simply point to one of the resorts on the map and our trike driver would drive along the road (thankfully there is only one main road) until either myself, Robby or the trike driver spotted a sign for the resort.  These signs were small little things so we'd often have to stop and ask for directions or double back if I saw something on the map that clearly meant we passed our intended destination.  To give you a sense of what we were working with:

While driving up and down the 30km (19 miles) we got to see a lot more aside from the hotel signs:

Yup, that's exactly what it looks like.

All along the shoulder of the road locals put out rice and let it dry (I can only assume) in the sun.

A lot of farm land with the mountains as a constant backdrop.

Zambales is absolutely gorgeous.

After an afternoon of this, we eventually found a spot that would work out of the twenty we saw, and so we headed back to Santa Cruz.  We went to the mall there for a snack and to scope out the market  where fish are sold and figured we would be able to find another vendor selling ice.  While in search of ice, we found two large parrotfish (one of Robby's target species) and decided we should buy them and give dissecting out in the field a practice run.  Now, I know this will probably be included in Science: Volume II, but I'm going to give you an idea of what these dissections entail.

Before leaving Manila, we received several hours of dissection instruction in the lab with Robby's advisor at UP and another faculty member who does a lot of work with otoliths (ear bones that you can use to determine the age of a fish).  They showed us two different methods for extracting otoliths as well as gonad removal.  Volume II will get into why that is necessary, but for my purpose just know that is what we are looking for when we dissect the fish.  So, a mini tutorial on otolith dissection:

Cut where the gills attach.

Rip out the gills.

Find the hard casing the otoliths (and brain) are housed within and snip it, ever so slightly, without damaging anything inside.

Now, carefully, break open where you snipped so you can see inside the cavity.

Good!  Now that it's open find the otoliths and extract them.

Oh, by the way, this is how big otoliths are.  That one on the left is the exception, those guys toward the right are more the normal size.

Easy!  You got that, right? (That is Robby's advisor Dr. Arceo on the right)

So after our couple hours of training in the lab (albeit on fish that were not the species we would be working on come project time) we decided to buy the parrotfish and dissect them to get a little more practice.  We were glad that we did, because it made us realize some other equipment we were going to need, like sponges and soap to clean our dissection kits!  It was a good practice run, other than the fact that the parrotfish looked nothing like the ones we had worked on in lab once we opened them up.  It took us 20 minutes to even get into the right cavity and then I couldn't find any otoliths, but Robby managed to locate both of his so it wasn't a total loss.  The dry run didn't really help my confidence because in the lab I was finding otoliths without a problem and Robby had taken longer, but with these guys I completely failed.  Oh well, next time I'm dissecting it'll be the real deal so what is there to worry about...
(Editor's Note: I have complete confidence in my research assistant!)

As an added bonus, the resort where we were staying offered to cook up the parrotfish for us!  They took the fish (minus the heads because, well, we had mangled and cut them off entirely before giving them to the cook) and they fried them whole, scales and all, which cooked the meat inside without actually frying it.

I was expecting a fried fish fillet, but what they served up was still delicious!

Neither of us had ever eaten a parrotfish before.  The meat didn't really have a taste and where was no "fishy-ness" to the meat at all.

It did not flake like any of the normal fish we're accustomed to, but instead was a sort of mushy texture

It wasn't bad and they gave us soy sauce to eat it with so overall a pretty great Valentine's Day dinner!

The dogs at the resort thought so too!

Well, that takes you through the first four days of our fourteen day scouting mission!  Whew! It was a complete whirlwind, so Sunday was a welcomed day of relaxing at our resort.  We spent the morning at the restaurant waiting several hours for the cook to return as she had made a run to the market in town.

We were the only guests

And with this gorgeous view from our table we hardly minded sipping tea and waiting for her to get back.

After what turned into lunch, I napped (all the activity finally caught up to my head and I had a migraine and 0 energy), while Robby worked on his speargun.

So you have a picture in your heads of what this spear gun looks like, my hand is holding the trigger, the spear has been shot and is at the bottom and that black elastic is the rubber that gives it the momentum to shoot.  The hook at the end of the elastic you pull back and it hooks into a notch that has been made in the spear.

Robby ended up putting zip ties along the rubber to get rid of a lot of excess and thus make it more taught (sorry I have no pictures of the gun, complete fail on my part, so below are screenshots of video clips from our practice spearing).

You can see the trigger better here, and the spear coming out of the front of the gun. The zip ties can be seen up toward the front as well.  I'm handing it to Robby because the rubber is too strong for me to pull back on my own and hook into the spear... I have no idea what I'm gonna do come time to actually do his research!

Robby came back to report that the gun was shooting faster, but that the spear was now completely rusted, a whole new issue that mostly meant we needed to be very careful handling it.  I joined him on his second trip out to the reef to test the spear and took the GoPro to attempt filming him for the second time.  I also brought the net Robby had purchased at a pet supply store to attempt catching some fish with it.

Robby loading the spear (a red filter is on for shooting underwater, so I promise the color is not because Robby has murdered a lot of fish)

And he was off!

I quickly ditched filming Robby to attempt catching fish because they kept sneakily swimming down into crevices in the reef making them impossible to catch.  I tried for an hour.  Nothing.

This was the net I was using. The flimsy little thing just bent as I would go after a fish so moving quickly was impossible

Robby had instructed to just pin them under the net, but the reef is just all crevices for them to sneak into which is obviously what makes it such an ideal habitat for the little guys.  Jewel Damsel again!

I eventually accepted defeat and found Robby again and asked to have a go with the spear gun.

I took the gun and immediately started pointing it at the damsel fish I had been attempting to catch with my net.  After many misses I finally hit one, but it only nicked the fish, injuring it but not killing it.  I screamed (Robby got it on video) and proceeded to scream something along the lines of "Oh my god the poor fish!  We have to find it!  We have to help it!  I just hurt it, we can't even use it!  He's gone and now injured for no reason!  Robbyyyy!".  All of this bear in mind was through my snorkel so he had no idea what I was so upset about, he hadn't seen that I had hit the fish.

I'm not sure what I expected to happen once the spear made contact with the fish.  In my head it would go from swimming around to dead on our dissection table.  I had not considered what would happen in between.  I still don't know what I'm going to do when I have one that the spear has gone through but is still alive and moving just with a spear through it.  I'll eventually become numb to it I'm sure, I have no issue with dissecting, but for the time being I just called it quits after that experience.

Post pointless injuring, the murderous red is now fitting.

Scene of the crime (on a different, happier day).

Come Monday morning we were back at it, with the plan to start in Santa Cruz and work our way down the coast hitting as many municipalities as we could.  You may be wondering why Robby and I couldn't just call, or at least text (since, as you may remember, that is how business is conducted here), each of the municipalities to get the information we needed and coordinate a time to go out on a boat to the MPA.  Well, we tried doing that and got no reply so we came to the realization yet again that we needed to go to each place in person to get what we needed.

I waited outside while Robby went into the office at Santa Cruz. He eventually returned with answers to most of our questions and a boat for Wednesday.  Success!  Candelaria was next, but the MAO was not in so we were told to come back after lunch (lunch is noon to 1pm everywhere in the Philippines) so we got on a bus and headed to Masinloc.  The way buses (and all other transportation methods) work in the provinces is that people just stand in the road and wait for whatever comes along.  Remember there is just one main road and it goes through all of the municipalities so you stand there waiting for however long it takes for the next vehicle to come by.  Oh and when you want to get off you just say loudly "Para po" (not sure on spelling) or, stop please!  So depending on how often people are waving the bus down or asking to get off equates to how long it will take you to get where you are going.  You may be beginning to see why we desperately wanted our own transport...

So, Masinloc.  Here things shifted, rather than sitting outside and waiting for Robby as I had leading up to that point, in Masinloc the offices had windows and they saw me out there and insisted I come in as well.  Up until that point I had been introduced as Robby's girlfriend, but somehow that felt like an odd thing to do when we were both sitting in the meeting, so Robby introduced me as "Danielle who will be helping me with me research" and so began the meeting!  They were incredibly accommodating and we were able to get a lot of information.  I happened to have a flash-drive in my backpack which helped with the illusion that I was in fact an assistant. We set up a trip to the MPA for Tuesday and continued to make our way south.

A jeepney was the first thing to pass by when we left the office so we climbed in and accidentally passed Palauig which was next in line.  Evidently Palauig is the only municipality where "town proper" is not right along the main road, but is instead on an offshoot that the jeepney we were on did not go down.  So instead of Palauig we found ourselves in Iba.

Iba is the capital of Zambales and thus a bit larger of a city.  We were able to get lunch and then tried talking with the MAO but were told she was out and would be back in an hour.

They had a mall (the stuff big cities are made of people)! 

We then headed to Botolan where the MAO was also not in, but the rest of the staff was, who ALL began helping us in every way that they could!  Two girls started making copies of any and all information they had on the MPA and while none of them could tell us anything about the MPA, they did call someone who did.  Robby was put on the phone with her and she informed him that we could join a boat going out on Thursday morning to do a survey of their own. We found out then that Thursday was also the Chinese New Year so all offices would be closed for the holiday.  The fact that we could join a group already going out meant we would not have to shoulder the cost and we wouldn't lose a day to the holiday.  Another success!

It was during this meeting in Botolan that the MAO in Candelaria texted that they were waiting for us.  This was the office that had told us to come back after lunch, well it was already 2:30 so Robby told them we would be there by 3pm.  We were 52km (30 miles) south of the city so with our own transport we could have been there by 3pm, but we had constantly stopping buses to take us that distance.  After Botolan the plan had been to go back to Iba where the MAO had also been told we would be coming back.  It was going to be impossible to do both so Robby told Candelaria that he was in another meeting but his research assistant was headed there now to meet with him. A promotion for me!

So began my journey back north on public transport.  I grabbed a jeep to the nearest bus station and then waited until the bus decided it was full enough with passengers to leave.  Unbeknownst to me, buses do not skip the offshoot to Palauig that we missed on the jeepney, so around 3pm I found myself on the detour through Palauig town proper.  Meanwhile, I was texting Robby about how late I was going to be, but he had been taken (on the back of someones motorbike since he did not have his own transport) to the MAO of Iba's house to meet with her as she had decided not to come back into the office. This meant that he wasn't looking at his phone and did not know how far behind schedule I was.  I stopped stressing and told myself that no schedule had ever really been adhered to since my arrival in the Philippines so it didn't really matter when I arrived as long as it was before 5pm when they all went home.

Oh how wrong I was.

I arrived in Candelaria, and after finding the correct people to ask, was shown into a room where six people, including the MAO, were waiting for me.  First thing they said was, "we've been waiting here a long time for you."  Evidently, they had been there since after lunch, as in since 1pm waiting for us to come back. It was now 4:30.  We had thought after lunch meant anytime in the afternoon, but that tiny difference had been lost in translation.  I apologized, explained how the bus had taken longer than we had thought and then launched into things.  I quickly learned that I was meeting with the MAO, the head of the Bantay Dagats, the chairwoman of the Municipal Fisheries and Aquatic Resource Management Council, and several others who I am still unsure of their titles.

I started going through all of the questions on our cheat sheet, silently thanking myself for being incredibly thorough when I'd drafted it thinking it was for Robby, and tried to make their time and patience seem worth while.  I asked a lot of questions, everything I could possibly think of and kept asking if they had any for me.  There was a big hang up on what day we could go out, we had wanted to do Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon as we had booked the regions above and below them on those mornings, but they couldn't do it and wanted to do Saturday.  They asked that I please rearrange my schedule to work with them so, having made them wait 3 hours for my arrival, I really had no room to say no and agreed to Saturday with the caveat that Robby may not be able to make it as we were supposed to be in the southern part of the province by then. Crisis averted!

Once all of that was nailed down, they asked if I had met the Mayor, and when I said "no" I was quickly ushered upstairs to his office.  Before I knew what was happening I found myself at a conference table with the Mayor and two others from the previous meeting.  I was completely unaware of what I was doing there but quickly realized I was in charge of the meeting and that he was looking at me expectantly.  I launched into my same questions from my sheet and began my last meeting over again!  The Mayor did not know much about the MPA, but called someone who could answer any questions I had if we arrived at something he did not know.  For example, several calls were made trying to find out where we could fill scuba tanks, only to be told that Masinloc was in fact the only place tanks can be filled.  During this second meeting, the chairwoman from the first meeting was present and she started pulling out all sorts of information from her bag.  She gave me folders/files/books all full of information on their MPA as well as all of the MPA's in Zambales.

This is the spread I was given.

I explained that Robert (yes I had to call Robby "Robert" through the whole meeting, and he had to start referring to me as "Danielle", which Robby has called me maybe 3 times in the 7 years I've known him... it's weird) would want to look over these things and asked if I could hang onto them until Saturday. When everything was done and I finally left the office, I headed for the road to wait for a bus.  It just so happened the head Bantay Dagat was taking the same bus north and he paid for my bus fare!  So incredibly thoughtful!  Everyone I have met in the Philippines has been so nice and I have been treated incredibly well, without exception.

When I got back to the resort I relayed all of this to Robby and his jaw dropped.  He told me I had held the single most official meeting that has happened since he has been here, and that I had also managed to secure a document with all of the information he had been attempting to get from each office we had been to.  As such, I officially secured my position as Research Assistant Danielle!

Come Tuesday morning we found ourselves with the head Bantay Dagat in Masinloc.

The three of us, and our boat operator, spent the morning cruising around to each of Masinloc's 4 MPAs.  The MPAs ranged in success.  The first we figured would work, although the density of fish was not what we were hoping.  The second, and largest, was full of seagrass but had no reef.  We found out later that the Bantay Dagat just did not know where the reef within that MPA were located and were assured we were just in the wrong place and there were plenty of corals and fish there.  The third MPA was a giant clam garden, which is exactly what it sounds like, and was absolutely AMAZING!  We saw more giant clams than I could count as well as tons of fish, including a herd of about two hundred parrotfish!  The fourth site was near a bunch of fish pens that were close enough to cause very poor visibility, so we couldn't really see what fish were actually present.  On the way back we stopped off at a little island called San Salvador.

That's us on San Salvador (Philippines) in 2015.

And that's us on San Salvador (Bahamas) in 2008!

For those of you that may not know, Robby and I met during a marine biology course that took place on San Salvador Island in the Bahamas back in the summer of 2008.  We were paired up as research partners then, and seven years later we are still at it except this time on the other side of the world!

A young us measuring fish as part of our research.

And another of us after our presentation on the findings of our research.

Anyway, back to the present!  After Masinloc we headed south to try and meet with all of the municipalities we missed the day before.  We decided to split up to cover more ground.  I found myself in yet another meeting of 6 or so people, except this time it was because I had been driven out to the home of the ex-barangay captain (I'm not sure what that means) and several other people that were called over to join the meeting.  I was then taken back to the hall to meet the mayor herself and was told she would be joining us for the visual census.  My second success as assistant!

Wednesday morning found us completely packed up to move our home base south, but before leaving we went out to see Santa Cruz's MPA.

Robby with all of our belongings waiting outside the hall for our contact to arrive.

Santa Cruz was the first MPA we had seen with buoys, and huge barrel sized buoys at that!  And yes, you read that correctly, theirs was the first with any sort of marked boundary.  Other municipalities said that theirs had at one point had buoys but that some combination of typhoons and illegal fisherman had destroyed them.

In addition, Santa Cruz has a lot of fisherman.

We were accompanied by five men to do our visual census on the largest bangka yet.  

They even had a bamboo ladder that you could use to get back on board!

I know this has been a long blog post already and, as you are probably piecing together, each meeting and MPA was surrounded with stories of their own.  For the sake of wanting you to make it to the end so you can watched the video, I won't go into as much detail on the rest of our week!  Just know that it ranged from being taken out to an MPA where the guide speared a fish inside of the "no fishing zone", to having to pay for a boat for ourselves and another for the local tourism group to come out and film what we were doing, to being asked to provide food and coffee the day of the visual census for 20+ people that were somehow invited to hep us do the visual census from the beach, to being given food and drinks by the locals taking us out and being charged nothing, to the entire municipal agricultural office closing for the day while they all came out to the MPA with us to watch from shore as we conducted the visual census (aka snorkeled around with a video camera). In short, quite an adventure!

This was one of the tasty treats made for us (Suman: sticky rice soaked in coconut milk and wrapped in palm leaves) served to us in the Bantay Dagat guard house.

Just as our treatment from place to place varied, the price of the boat rental was all over the place and the MPAs themselves varied immensely.  Some sites the locals who took us out could not agree upon where the MPA was located, other sites were too deep to see via snorkeling but we were not told this (even though we made sure to ask several times, always) and only found out after getting in.  Some MPAs had coral reef nurseries inside and clear guard houses that we had to alert of our coming as to not be kicked out, while others had no money for a guard house or boats to go after illegal fishers inside the MPA.  We found that often the same question asked to the staff in the office would yield a different answer (or reality) when we asked it again to the Bantay Dagats when we went out to the MPA.

So at the conclusion of our two week scouting mission the only thing we were clear on was that there were a lot of things that still remained unclear.  However, at the end of it all we did learn:

1.) That our patience has grown immensely and that Filipino time is a very real thing (a thing that we sometimes had a hand in, sorry again Candelaria!).

2.) That Zambales does in fact have the sweetest mangoes and they have learned to make incredibly delicious smoothies with them (Robby is currently trying to find out the recipe).

3.) That if you ask enough people, or the same question enough times, you will eventually get the information you're looking for.

4.) That spearguns make for an incredibly awkward thing to travel with.

5.) That if we had our own trike/jeepney/car this project would be a lot cheaper and logistically more feasible.

 and 6.) that Robby's job has taken us to a beautiful location, mountains and ocean, what more could you ask for?

The days were long, and we oscillated between feeling that Robby had the best idea for his Ph.D. work and could not have picked a better location and feeling that Robby picked the most logistically impossible location to do his Ph.D. research and most likely would not be able to pull it off. But we eventually settled on scaling down the project, choosing different target species and focusing on the well-protected and flourishing MPAs while leaving the others for the end as either controls for his study or potential initial data points for repeat studies years from now.

I know I started this post with a video, but we actually had two ready to go for you all!  You made it! Just wanted you to have some context for what you are about to see!  Most of the video is the visual census of Robby's target species so if you want to try and spot them while you watch, feel free!  Here are his main targets:

The "Bullethead" or "Daisy" Parrotfish (Chlorurus sordidus), aka dinner, Family: Scaridae

The Jewel Damselfish (Plectroglyphidodon lacrymatus), Family: Pomacentridae

The Brushtail Tang (Zebrasoma scopas), Family: Acanthuridae

The Twospot Bristletooth (Ctenochaetus binotatus), Family: Acanthuridae 

The Lined Bristletooth (Ctenochaetus striatus), Family: Acanthuridae 

Don't worry I stole the GoPro from Robby occasionally and filmed some other fun fishes so it's not just these guys.  Though he did pick a lot of pretty fish for us to kill, didn't he?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjgw9gomweQ

Well, if you came back to read more after watching, I'm just going to leave you with this fun fact: Rama Beach Resort in Botolan is taking a role in marine conservation efforts in the Philippines.  The resort guards the nests of sea turtles that lay eggs on the beach in front of their resort and when the turtles hatch they put them in bins to then let their guests release into the ocean.  The idea being to protect the turtles from pre-hatching until entry into the water and also to get guests involved directly with nature in hopes to instill a desire to protect our oceans and sea life. They also buy any eggs that people have harvested to sell or eat so that they can hatch and be released.

What this meant for us is that on the Chinese New Year, when Robby went to join the Botolan crew already going out to the local MPA, he found himself on the beach of Rama (as the MPA is just offshore of the resort) at the exact time that they were releasing a bucket of 60 baby turtles!  Timing really is everything!

Bucket of cuteness!

Look at them!!

Unfortunately, I had decided to sleep in (my head was needing a break again) so I missed the send off.  However, Robby had gotten the owner's cell phone number (potential place to stay come research time!), so after showing me the GoPro footage of the turtles from that morning I asked him to please text the owner to find out when the next nest was due to hatch and be released.  To my absolute delight he said they were doing the last nests release that afternoon and to just come hang out at the resort for the day.

So we spent the day working from their restaurant.

And come the afternoon I got to send some baby turtles out to sea as well!

Best. Day. Ever.

The rest of the blog is just turtle pictures...

They were constantly trying to swim as you held them

I was so worried I was going to drop one

Eventually we got to take them down to the water

And set each little one down on the beach

and wait

and wait

until they made it to the waters edge

or a wave came and washed them away

Instinct kicked in immediately

and as soon as they made it to the water

they were all off without a problem

Beautiful thing to get to be a part of!