Science Volume II: March Madness

Volume II: March Madness

aka

The Joys of Field Work

While March Madness was in full swing back home, we were over here experiencing a much more literal March Madness.  I don't even know where to begin.  We were slated to start Robby's collections March 9, a Monday, and in the week leading up to that a bombshell landed.  As you know from our previous posts, Robby spent many months getting permits from each of the local municipalities and after lots of texts and personal visits managed to secure all of them.  Well, there is an overseeing body called the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) and Robby's advisor had said months back she was not sure if he needed any permits from them, but to ask another professor in the department.  He did and he was told no there is no reason to get a permit from BFAR, the only time you need to talk to them is getting a permit to take your samples back to the US.  Ok, noted. BFAR will come later.  

Well, while Robby's advisor was giving us our lesson on otolith extraction, she mentioned she had a student that had interned at BFAR and wanted Robby to check with her.  The student gave us an email address that ended up not working, and so Robby searched online and finally got a number and called.  Things are never easy here, or quick.  Once on the phone, BFAR said he would need a permit and to come in so it could be processed.  When he went to get the paperwork he was told it could not be typed up because the person who writes these (mind you it is a  template that only needs to be changed to be tailored to Robby) was out on vacation and "would be back soon."  

So Robby went back several days later to check in with BFAR, and was told that actually, now,  he needed to get a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) signed by the President of FIT and the Chancellor of UP (among others) before they could even begin processing the permit.  These documents had to be written, signed in 4 duplicates, notarized, and shipped from the US to be signed by the necessary parties in the Philippines.   All of this had to be done before he could start collections.

Yea, bombshell.

So after discussing the length of time this would take to possibly be done (weeks if not months), we decided that we would have to just begin collections outside of the MPAs only while this MOA was being prepared.    

Well, this MOA had to go through the legal departments at both institutions before it would be signed by either official and of course a meeting had to be secured to get those signatures.  Robby's advisor Dr. Turingan sprang into action at FIT and thankfully it was Spring Break so he had some flexibility and time to get to work on it.  Oh I forgot to mention, UP handed Robby a MOA and said "here this is one we did in the past, why don't you use it as a template to do yours?"  It was in hard copy form, and was pages of legal speak.  How in the heck was Robby expected to do that?  Robby and I were feeling pretty defeated.  Luckily we eventually got in touch with Dr. Turingan and he said he would handle it (Robby just had to type up the entire example and send it to him).  With that, Robby turned his attention to Pangasinan and getting his collections started in Anda and Bani.

On his way up to the marine lab on Monday in Bolinao, where he was going to be staying to rent the boats and do the dissections, he stopped by Bani and picked up the spear guns he had commissioned to be made, they were perfect!  At least something was going right!  

Two large, three medium and two baby spears (the babies are the only ones I am strong enough to pull back and load, it is some serious rubber on these spears!)

Just for some perspective on size

I unfortunately couldn't be there for the start of collections as I was waiting for a package to arrive with some of my supplements for my head.  On Tuesday, however, I found out that the package had in fact ended up in Thailand somehow and an international inquiry needed to be submitted to bring the wayward package here to Manila.  I decided not to wait for it and left for Bolinao on Wednesday.  When I arrived late Wednesday night, another bombshell was dropped.

I got to Bolinao at around 9pm after 8 hours of traveling on those lovely, unnecessarily loud, aircon buses and was, understandably, exhausted.  However, when I arrived I could tell something was wrong, Robby looked some mixture of baffled/upset/angry/stressed/defeated.  Eventually we made our way up to the dormitory and Robby let me in on what had happened over the past two days.

Anda, the municipality he started collections in, had told Robby he would not be allowed to use local fishermen to help with collections.  Robby had recruited another graduate student at FIT to help and was just going to do it on his own.  Well between the two of them, they collected 15 fish in two days.  To put this in perspective, Robby needs 270 fish from outside of the MPA for his project (and another 270 from inside).  So, problem. 

Beyond that, due to prices that were quoted to us changing last minute (as in after Robby had already been there for two days), the cost of staying and working at the Marine Lab changed from roughly $10 a day to about $110 a day!   The room rate, originally negotiated for us to be $4 for each room (girls and boys sleep on different floors), changed to $40 total.  Then, the boats went from being free because we would be partnering with others at the lab, to no partnering due to funding issues on their end and so Robby was left with the full bill for the boat.  So the two days Robby had already worked sent our field budget out the window and made it absolutely impossible to be able to afford to do collections in Pangasinan, especially considering how slow the collections were going.  

So there go those sites, now what?  What else is going to fall apart?

The project looked like it was going to fall flat, and we were both at a complete loss as to what to do.  No permit to collect inside the MPAs and we couldn't collect outside (or at all) in the entire Pangasinan region.  All we knew was that this was the last night we could afford to spend at the marine lab and that the boat needed to be canceled for tomorrow because we couldn't afford it.  As for just moving to the next research site, we had told Zambales we would be starting until April, not March, so springing that change on them seemed impossible as well because they had asked for 1-2 weeks notice before beginning.  We also did not have all the gear we needed with us as working at the marine lab afforded us the use of tanks and other equipment that we would need to bring with us to do work in Zambales.  So many problems!

Well, my parents and sister got some very panicky text messages and helped ask some questions and give some perspective on what we could maybe do, running through alternative options and timelines.  While I was talking to them, Robby called his advisor in the US and discussed the issue.  Dr. Turingan had a suggestion we had not even considered, he agreed with us that Anda and Bani would be cost prohibitive and to drop them, but he told us we could go to Zambales and start buying fish from the market as these would qualify as "outside of the MPA" collections.  I did not like that idea, mostly because we would not know exactly where the fish were caught.  Were they actually from outside of the MPA?  Were they even from the municipality?  Robby assured me this sort of thing was done and considered an ok practice so we went to bed with the plan to move camp to Santa Cruz (top of Zambales) in the morning.

The next morning we headed to SeaSun resort and were welcomed by the staff and were given a room without any issue.  They also arranged for us to hire a tricycle driver for the day who would take us to the municipal hall to alert them of what was going on, as well as take us to the market and shuttle us between there and SeaSun where we would be using an extra freezer to store all the fish we were buying.  They also told us that the local fisherman leave from the SeaSun beach at 5am and that we could ask them in the morning about catching our target species for us.  We went to bed feeling way more optimistic than the previous night - field work is such a roller coaster!  

Robby woke up bright and early to speak with the fishermen, but it turned out they only caught flying fish and could not help with collecting the reef fish Robby needed.  Oh well.  We went to the municipal hall when it opened at 8am and were told the MAO was out of town but that someone would be down to help us in "awhile" (a Filipino way of saying "shortly" that always leads to some confusion on our end as to how long we will actually be waiting).  We were shortly hooked up with a local guide who then brought us to the market and walked around helping us buy fish.  

Off to the market!

We had to sift through a lot of fish to find our target species.

Everyone was incredibly helpful and and we were able to get bags full of fish!

Our guide then took us to a local fishermen to inquire about them catching our target species and us paying them directly for the fish they brought back for us.  We had created these sheets (seen in action above) before leaving Manila to help communicate the fish we wanted to target:

These photos proved to be exceedingly helpful at the market as well as we could compare the fish we were contemplating purchasing to the photo of Robby's target species.

We had these attached to our belt loops and kids and adults alike couldn't help but grab them and take a look at what we were searching for as we meandered through the stalls at the market.

We also included the size ranges Robby needs and how many from each size class are needed.

As we need to dissect out the otoliths and gonads, fully intact, we also made diagrams explaining where to aim to avoid hitting these two areas.

These papers proved exceedingly helpful time and time again, it also helped us learn the local name for the fish Robby is targeting as the fishermen would say oh you need that and point to the photo.  The fisherman eventually said they could not help us and that we should just go to the market where they unload the fish and buy from the ladies there.  Our guide wasn't deterred and recommended we go talk to the aquarium people about getting fish from them.

Just for some background, although the aquarium trade is legal in many areas, it can be just as harmful as over-fishing for food resources.  The trade involves the catching of live fish which are then bagged and shipped all over the world.  Beyond the simple act of extracting resources, fishermen often use cyanide to catch the fish, resulting in low survival rates for fish in transit, massive coral damage and death, and serious health problems for many of the fishermen themselves.  Despite cyanide fishing being illegal in the country, about half of the fish exported for the aquarium trade from the Philippines are contaminated with cyanide.  So it is obviously still a large problem. Nevertheless, our guide was not only well aware of who these traders were, and brought us to their operation to talk with them, despite his obvious dislike of their chosen livelihood.  Robby and I were speechless.  We went to be courteous (and also because we wanted to see what this sort of operation looked like), but with no intention of buying any fish from them to use in the study.  

See the video for more, these are snapshots from our GoPro footage!

The woman running this just had bags and bags of fish inside her house.

They were bringing in bags of others from somewhere else as well, these are Damsel fish (one of the target species).

They also had nudibranchs which are super colorful worm-like critters.

That's a lion fish (looking very much dead), people letting their aquarium lion fish go back in the US is the reason they became an invasive species and have taken over reefs from Venezuela up through Maine.  

The fish hardly had anywhere to move, it was pretty upsetting.  I'm not sure how they keep enough oxygen in the water so the fish don't die.

They also had another of Robby's target species, the Brushtail Tang.  

It was interesting to note that the two species we could not find at the market we did find here.  Part of Robby's research is looking at pressure put on fish populations not only from fishing, but also from the aquarium trade.  This solidified for him that two of his target species were indeed taken off reefs for the aquarium trade while the rest are fished out. We thanked the ladies for their time and left, feeling pretty uncomfortable with what we had seen but didn't have much time to process it before we were hit with new problems.

After a full day of "fishing" we came home and, reeking of fish, were very much in need of a shower.   We went to our room to grab what we needed (the showers are in a separate building) and saw all these tiny things moving on the ground near our toiletries.  We soon realized that they were actually all over our room - floor, couch, table, bed sheets, pillows, you name it!  They were crawling all over all of our stuff and as I was bending down to shake them off and figure out what they were, one dropped from the ceiling onto my chest. 

I freaked out.  

Robby said it's the first time he's ever seen me get unnerved by a bug. Evidently when they are covering my things and continuing to drop onto me from the ceiling, that's my limit.  

I left immediately after that to go tell the staff.  The language barrier was pretty evident because they told me to wait a second, grabbed a broom, and then followed me to the room.  Once they went inside they got the full picture and, realizing how inadequate a broom was to deal with the situation, left to go alert the woman who is in charge.  She came and told us that it was due to the rain that the bugs were coming inside through the ceiling (it has yet to rain since I have been in the Philippines mind you...), but she said she would move us to one of the aircon rooms for the same price as our fan room (they are in a cement building, not a bamboo hut like ours).  We moved there, it was bug free but the bathroom, which was conveniently (or not so conveniently) in the room, stunk.  It was as if the septic tank was directly below our drain and overflowed into the bathroom on occasion.  We had to hold our breathe when we went into the room, but were finally able to shower.  About 30 minutes later, it started pouring.  I guess the bugs were heading inside for some cover!

Robby received a text message from his advisor that evening saying she wanted to have a face-to-face meeting with him to discuss his new plan/schedule now that Pangasinan was out.  She had been in Bolinao with Robby, but waited until arriving in Manila to ask for this meeting so Robby had to get on a bus and head back to Manila.  I stayed in our stinky room for the next two days, and since Robby took our internet, I just binge watched episodes of Seinfeld Robby had on his external hard drive.  My days were much more relaxing than his.  He was running around trying to figure out if he could get tanks and other equipment we had thought we wouldn't need until April as well as having several meetings with his advisor.

The trip to Manila ended up working out well in the end.  While my package was still lost in Thailand, Robby's mom had sent him one that had just arrived.  Inside were two scales that we needed to take weights of the fish and their gonads during dissections.  She also packed in an insane number of gummy bears and other candy so Robby was in absolute heaven (Editor's Note: THANK YOU MOM!).  I should tell you that the reason his mom had to send the scales was that here in the Philippines we could not find (or buy online) any scales that went down to the 0.001 gram and the scales we were finding that were less precise were hundreds of dollars.  We sent two to his mom from Amazon for a total of $25.  Oh, scales and waterproof paper.  Waterproof paper is a luxury that does not exist over here either so we bought lots of sheets and had them sent over as well.

It was on this day that our luck started shifting in other ways.  Masinloc told us that it would be no problem to start collections earlier than planned and that we could start at the beginning of the following week.  As Robby was still in Manila, I packed all of our things and headed down to Puerto Asinan.  This was the resort we had scoped out back in February during our recon mission. 

We don't travel lightly, I had to pack up two bags full of dive gear, one backpack full of clothes, a backpack with my computer, two coolers, a box filled with spearguns and a pop-up bug net tent.

We've gotten used to not having a car and have become pretty good at packing all of our stuff into these tiny tricycle sidecars!

Oh, and when I say "pop-up bug net tent" this is what I mean!

I arrived at Puerto Asinan with no issue and began unpacking all of our stuff and making our field "home", and Robby was going to meet me there late that night.  While I was trying to fall asleep, I kept thinking I was hearing something.  I chalked it up to the fact that I was alone and just making myself hear things, or that it was the water beneath me doing weird things with sound (yes, our place is on stilts over the water).

That's our cottage out there across the (for whatever reason) wavy bridge.

However, mentally talking myself out of it did not work and I was convinced something was in the room with me.  While thanking god that I had my pop-up bug net tent for protection (hah), I shined my light out and into the corner of the room where I definitely saw something moving.  I didn't have my glasses inside with me and now that I knew something (and something large, though without my glasses I could not tell what) was out there, I was not about to go get them.  I laid back down, unnerved, and waited hoping I had scared it away, but moments later heard rustling from the corner.  I racked my brain to figure out what I had unpacked into that corner, but all I could come up with were my contacts and supplements for my head.  I put the light on again and squinted and swore that I saw a tail and became convinced there was a giant rat in the room.

At this point, I was wide awake and just starting continually hissing, banging on the bed and randomly shining the light in hopes to scare it off.  As soon as Robby arrived, I had him inspect the corner and he picked up my ziplock bag full of pills and, sure enough, the damn rat (Robby insisted it was likely just a small mouse) had chewed through the bag and started eating my pills.  It also chewed up the corner of my contact lens box - nothing was safe.  The ratmouse was clearly hungry.  We tried to move everything else we could think of to places the ratmouse couldn't reach and moved the furniture to cover up a hole in the corner we thought it was coming up through and then we went to bed.

The next day we had more food as we had gone shopping at the local market for bananas, eggs and some other things.  I rigged up a system using our sturdy scuba BCD hangers and hung the bags of food from either end.

Thank you Girl Scouts for teaching me the ways of animal proofing your camp!

I went to bed confident I had beaten the ratmouse.  Unfortunately, we woke up several times throughout the night hearing it (I'm convinced it is a them actually) scampering around the room and across the ceiling.  We were also absolutely freezing cold, evidently being over the water offers little to no warmth and, for all our stuff, we had not packed any warm clothes.  In the AM I found a hole in the front of my backpack.  I had forgotten my bag of nut mix was still in there. 

Ratmouse 2, Robby and D 0.

Night three I was 100% certain no food was in nibbling range and that no more items would be destroyed, but I woke up wrong again.  This time it had chewed through my Camelbak nozzle.  On the up side, it somehow managed to gnaw a spot that allowed the hose and nozzle to still function without water leaking out.  Several rounds of alcohol were applied before I put that thing near my mouth though!

Ratmouse 3, Robby and D 0.  

While the nights were spent battling the rodents, we did manage to spend our days actually doing what we'd come for: science!  Science Volume II was supposed to have been written by Robby, but the resident scientist is too busy with his work and has been unable to write this up so I jumped in so this could be published before April is over...

So onto the science!  Collections began that week and consisted of us hiring two local fisherman and a boatman to take us out to go collect fish outside of the MPA.  We brought our laminated photo sheets with us and explained the need for all species and different sizes of each to the fishermen.  The reason a variety of species are needed is so that Robby can look at fish that are carnivores and herbivores to determine if the benefits of MPAs differ between them.  We are collecting both outside and inside of the MPA so that we can compare fish populations that have fishing pressure (and aquarium pressure) on them, to populations that are in a location free from such pressures.  Robby is going to look at the age and sexual maturity of the fish inside and outside of the MPA.

Unfortunately, you can only tell the age of a fish by looking at its otoliths.  Remember those tiny little bones from the blog when we were dissecting fish?  Those were the otoliths, or ear bones, and they have rings like the rings of trees.  The rings are made up of a deposit that is laid down every year which can be read under a microscope so as to determine how old the fish is.  Sexual maturity is determined by dissecting the fish and taking out the gonads.  Gonads are in different stages depending on if the fish is maturing, developing, ripe or is spent.  Determining if the gonads have been spent or are immature is near impossible as they are incredibly tiny in either case so the ones that are most important are the ripe ones (full of eggs or sperm and ready to be released).  The hope is that by increasing the sample size, we will catch enough ripe fish to be able to tell at what age they are reaching sexual maturity and the sample size also needs to be large enough so the results are statistically significant.

Ok that is all the science I can really give you so back to the field!  

We went out with our crew (2 spearfishermen, plus our boat operator) and used their years of experience to find sites away from the MPA that still have fish on them. 

On the first dive I just followed Robby to watch how you spear a fish and see how I felt about it.  

 This meant I was holding his bag so when he killed a fish I had to help him get it into the catch bag and then hold the half dead very confused fish.  It bothered me, but after he got the second one I sort of forgot about the bag and was more focused on the hunt for his target species.  We surfaced after the first dive with about 9 fish, improvement from Anda, and were shocked when our fishermen dumped out about 50 fish between the two of them.  

That is why we hired professionals - success!

(Editors Note: fishermen, although an active part of the problems facing the world's oceans, are also one of the most important resources for scientists trying to study and help protect coral reefs.  Having fished in the area their entire lives, these guys know more about the local reef ecosystem than I could ever hope to, and have been an incredible source of help and information since we arrived in the field. They are often also the most receptive to conservation work [with obvious exceptions] as they have witnessed the negative changes in reefs firsthand; changes that have directly affected their livelihoods.)

An issue we ran into with them though was that they seemed to be killing any fish they saw, not just the target species.  Robby and I pulled out our sheets again and re-explained, but they just said, "Yes, ok. No problem. Lunch then" and then would laugh.  

Any fish, or marine critter I should add.  Squid, hermit crabs, seaweed and just about anything you could imagine!

Unsure of what else to do, we did the next dive and got about the same result, we now had over 100 fish!  At this point we took a break for lunch and saw what they had meant by "Lunch then".  We got off the boat on San Salvador Island again and they began collecting branches to start a fire (in the roots of a tree, not in a fire pit or anything mind you).  

Then they poured gasoline on, lit a match, and, voila, we had our cooking fire.

  They took the non-target species out of the cooler and just tossed them on the fire. 

 Whole, just boom on the fire (look top left of the fire). 

 One of the fishermen had also brought a big thing of rice ("Filipino Power" as they say) and bloody pork.  

When the fish were done they put the burnt things on the table and told us to help ourselves.  I just started laughing and told them we had no idea how to eat that and they needed to show us.  It turns out all you need to do is peel off the scales, surprisingly easy when they are charred, and then use your fingers to pick the meat off of the bones.  Robby and I had all sorts of beautiful reef fish for lunch, talk about a fresh caught meal!  So delicious.  Bloody pork turns out to be intestines, but it was also delicious so we dug into that as well and hoped it would sit well in our stomachs.  Sorry there aren't more photos for this, but I can't bring my camera out on the boat and the GoPro died when we went to eat so check out the video for some footage, but it isn't all there unfortunately!

They brought a hammock to relax in while the fish were cooking.  Definitely not his first rodeo!

I started spearfishing on our second dive and actually speared the first fish I aimed to kill.  It was the tiniest fish anyone killed, which made sense as I had the tiniest spear.

Pretty proud of that little guy!

I was actually surprised by how little spearfishing bothered me. 

 As Robby and I were watching the GoPro footage from the day, mostly of him spearfishing, it hit me.  When the fish are hit with the spear they don't make a sound and there is no blood so it just doesn't seem real.  By the time you get them up to the boat and into the cooler, most of them are already dead and the ones that aren't don't make any noise.  Being unable to hear their suffering makes it just seem fake, or at least makes it so that it doesn't bother you.  Robby claims there is debate among the scientific community on whether fish feel pain (at least in the same manner in which humans do) based on how their nervous system is structured.  I certainly hope they don't.

So, back to the science.

After each dive, Robby and I go through the catch bags and separate out our species

 and put them in labeled bags.

After a day of collections we come back to Puerto and use a room of theirs that pretty much seems like it was designed to be a field lab.

Here is the room, just down the wavy walk from our cottage.

Inside there are two tables 

and a cement counter with a sink.

We dumped the fish, one dive at a time, onto the tables and began separating out the species.

We counted each species,

then recorded how many of each we had.

We had collected a variety of sizes in several of the species which was an excellent start! 

 Unfortunately, we had left all of our dissecting gear at the marine lab in Bolinao (thinking we would not be collecting and would just be bringing the market fish back there to dissect) so we could not record the size classes that we caught (as we did not have a ruler) and had enough of now.  Once we collected this rough inventory, we packaged them into bags and put them in the freezer.  Some of the fish were frozen already from being in the cooler all day and had frozen in some pretty hilarious poses.

This one was my favorite.

While our cottage was less than ideal for our food, it was nearly perfect for cleaning off our dive gear.  We had enough space to wash our things with fresh water (using the bucket from our bucket shower, of course) and then hang them out to dry in the breeze.

There are two other rooms adjoining this space, but there is hardly ever anyone else staying here.  

Puerto Asinan used to be four times its current size and host weddings, but a typhoon destroyed most of it and the elderly couple running it has been unable to rebuild so most visitors opt not to stay here - fortunate for us!

The lack of other customers meant that the couple that owned the place was incredibly attentive to us.  Our fishermen had killed several Grouper (Lapu-lapu in local speak) and gave them to us at the end of our first day.  As a thank you to the couple, we gave the three fish to them and told them to enjoy it for dinner.  There was a big misunderstanding and they cooked up the fish, sweet and sour style, and served it to us out in our hut with the tables and sink.

We tried to insist she eat with us, but she said no and that she was going to shower and to enjoy.

Robby and I ate one side of that largest fish and were full.  We took it back to their house and told them to please eat it.  They smiled and we hoped that they did.  We think they ate some, but the next night she said there were leftovers and served us one of the smaller ones with rice which filled us both.  Oh and she wouldn't let us pay her for cooking or for any of the ingredients she used!

Our next day out on the water was just as successful as the first.  They had caught a huge squid the day before (as you saw above) and had cooked it up so for lunch we had fried calamari rings and another dish of the squid cooked in its ink.  

Our fishermen are wonderful cooks!

I was tentative, but the squid in its own ink was super tasty! 

 They also had prepared sweet and sour fish and of course, the Filipino Power, rice.  Lunch with them is always delicious!  We did our lunch the second day at this house that is out in the middle of the water (on a sand bar) that is halfway between San Salvador island and the mainland.

It is owned by the ex-Mayor (who is the current Mayor's husband, so really the current Mayor owns it), but they open it up and allow anyone to use it day or night.  Just need a boat to get there!

Gorgeous views and crystal clear water!  It was full of families and friends getting together for lunch, swimming and hanging out.

After this second day of diving, we realized we had no more freezer space and could not do any more collections.  So the next day we packed up everything, including two coolers filled with 300+ fish, and headed back to the marine lab.

As the cost to stay at BML was too much, we went back to Rock Garden and got our room right on the beach.  This resort is about 15 minutes from BML, on the other side of town, but costs $12/night compared to $40/night at the Marine Lab, so we opted to just take trikes too and from the lab.  We got to BML around 3pm, with our own car we would have been there by 11am, and basically wasted the day waiting on public transport.  When we finally arrived, we started prepping for dissections and got to work.  Another group from UP was at BML and was throwing a party,  and Filipino parties = karaoke.  So we spent the next several hours in lab listening to awful karaoke being done outside of the window, being done at an inappropriate and incredibly unnecessarily loud volume because, of course, that is the Filipino way.  I was in rough shape by the end of that day with a raging migraine, but we had dissected quite a few fish all the way through!   

Getting a tricycle home proved to be near impossible, as BML is up a back road well away from town, so we just stood out there hoping one would come down the road.  You would think there would be some sort of system, or trike drivers you could call to come to the station, but of course there is not.  After 30 minutes we waved a trike down and paid whatever he quoted to get us home.  On the way we did the math and realized that minus set-up and clean-up, just taking the hours we worked on fish, we were dissecting fish at a rate of 4 fish an hour.  We had 300, and way more to come (around 2,000 when all is said and done), without even doing the math we knew it would be impossible to do all the fish and all the dissections before Robby had to leave at the end of July (and this rate would slow down once I left in June).  So the madness was still not over. 

We started racking our brains as to what we could do.  Not only were we too slow to stay up with collections, but at Puerto Asinan we could not keep more than two days worth in the freezer (and even that may have been overstepping how accommodating the couple was to us).  Too exhausted to think, we passed out and woke up early the next day to crank out as many fish as we could.

We put in 14 hours the next day and had worked out a system that sped things up: an assembly line!  Here is a brief rundown of what this looked like:

While the fish were thawing in the sink (staying separated by dive)

Robby inputted the data from the night before while I created labels for each of the thawing fish.

These labels have a code for the species and a number associated with them so the otoliths and gonads can be identified with this tag to that original fish.  

We also set up the waterproof logbook to record the fish ID, length, weight and information on where the fish was caught.

 My job was to use a fish board (a wooden board with another vertical board on top for the mouth of the fish to push up against that has a ruler screwed into it so the length of the fish can be easily measured) to measure the standard length of the fish (tip to end of body) and the total length of the fish (tip to end of tail).  Both measurements are taken as using the total length, tail included, is not always the best measurement as tails are damaged, don't open all the way once dead or are frilly and hard to get a measure of.  Then I would weigh the fish and assign it it's label.

Finally I would snap a photo on the fish board so the length could be referred back to if need be and the label would be in the photo with the original fish (pre-dissection).

As I finished this process, I would line the fish up for Robby to then begin his portion.

Robby was in charge of dissecting out the gonads of each fish.

Once opening the fish up, he would have to sift through and find them.  This is a photo of them.  Don't see them?  Me either, that's why it is his job.

Once teased away from the connective tissue and other organs (a tedious process as these are super fragile) he weighs the gonads (thanks Amazon!) and determines what stage they are.  

If they are ripe, like this guy's, they come back over to the fish board for another photo shoot (these are also much easier to spot inside the fish!). 

Robby then reweighs the fish without the gonads/stomach/other internal organs and puts the ripe female gonads into formalin.  He is preserving those for a student at UP who is using them for her project.

As Robby finished each fish, he would put them back on my dissection tray to line up for otolith removal.

Once I finished processing all of the thawed fish (or the number I thought we could do) I'd set to work on otolith extraction.

Turns out starting with all the goat fish was a huge mistake the day before, their otoliths are impossibly tiny.  Once I dove into the surgeon fish and damsel fish I started going at a much faster rate.

Once the otoliths are removed I have to scrape away any tissue remaining on them, delicately as they are also very fragile, and then I put them in our handy ice tray to dry (with their label of course).

After the otoliths dry, they are placed in microcentrifuge tubes with a label for storage until Robby brings them back to the US to read. 

When Robby finished with the gonads, he would start helping me with the otoliths.

 And on it went.

A pile of fish after being through our assembly line.

One issue we ran into the second dissection day was fish identification. 

Remember this guy from the previous blog?

Well our fishermen shot them, but we ended up with something odd:

Notice anything?

Take another look.

 Those are not the same fish.  At first we thought the difference was just due to them changing from juvenile to adult or that they just had varying colors.  We could not figure it out.  We looked online and at Robby's Fish ID book and were stumped.  Since we couldn't figure it out we labeled them as the target species and decided we would use my photos of each to go back and re-ID if need be.  As we were heading back to Manila in a couple days we decided could talk to some of the professors there to get an opinion.

We headed back to Manila after one more 14 hour day of dissections, taking with us the 100+ fish we still had not processed.  In Manila the student from UP using the gonads for her project offered to help, so we didn't skip a beat and started up dissections at the lab in the marine science building immediately upon our return.

Having an extra set of hands was incredibly nice, gonad removal just takes soooo long.

For the life of me I can't remember why, but at some point we had to stop using the lab and some of the specimens were brought home and dissected on our counter.

Not a huge fan of that needing to happen.

 The next day at UP another graduate student gave Robby a dichotomous key for his fish and Robby was able to solve our problem.  Evidently we were collecting two different species that looked almost identical, just as we had thought, but there was a simple way to tell them apart.  Their teeth.

One has hard teeth (eerily similar to ours), the other soft filaments for filtering what they eat.  

 With that discovery we adjusted the target species and included the new one as we were already catching a ton of them.  We also crossed off the parrot fish as a target species as there are so many species of parrots and the only way to tell them apart is their coloration pattern (many of which look very similar).  Our fishermen were killing all species of parrots and waiting to determine if they were the correct species until they were dead (parrots are very fast and hard to catch so you have to shoot when you see them) and so we decided we were not catching nearly enough of the correct ones and there was too much collateral damage to justify keeping them as a target.

Having spent absolutely too many hours in the lab we decided to take a break and go see a little of Manila.  We signed up for a walking tour with this man who is a Manila legend.  His tour is more of a moving theatrical performance, but it was incredibly entertaining and really informative.
  

At one point we were put on a horse drawn carriage to go through Intramuros.

I had no idea about the rich history of the city of Manila or the role the US has had here in the Philippines.  We went over everything from island life before westerners, Spanish rule, a revolution for independence that was happening as the US gained control of them from the Spanish-American War, we went over all the changes the US made and how a lot of them actually did wonders for the country (nearly wiped out illiteracy, though changed the language spoken from Spanish to English) and also made it the gateway from east to west and a huge port.  The tour then got darker as WWII was described and the casualties suffered by civilian Filipino's as the Japanese slaughtered them by the thousands when the US came to take back control.  The US also bombed the city to prevent the Japanese from keeping control which devastated a lot of sites that are still in shambles today.  The Philippines never really recovered from WWII and fell off the world stage as the gateway after this.  It was absolutely fascinating, anyone that visits should go through his tour.

Alright, sorry for the lack of photos in this blog, but here is the video to go along with it.  It is at the end so you have context of course!

http://youtu.be/CMAIdFJ_YqM

I'm going to leave you with this fun fact about the US and our involvement in the development (or brainwashing depending on your point of view) of the Philippines.

First, I just want to point this out because I think it is ridiculous:

While under American rule a golf course was built around Intramuros (the walled city, then a military base, in the middle of downtown Manila.  Think heavy traffic and city streets right off the fairway).

What I really want to share with you is about Jose Rizal, the national hero of the Philippines.  During our tour in Intramuros, we were given time to go through the museum dedicated to Jose Rizal, a man who was executed by the state for his role in the revolution (this was still during Spanish rule).  Robby and I went in at different times, and when we caught up to one another inside, we both just looked at each other and said "does something just feel off here?"  

I had just been in a room where the dialogue from Rizal's court trial was on display.  This was the trial where he was found guilty of aiding the revolution and sentenced to death by the church.  In this dialogue he completely denies being involved in the revolution, says he has no idea what any of the plans or tactics are and doesn't really agree with it.  Evidence is presented to support this stance.  Why then was he found guilty and killed?  I think because the church was on a bit of a power trip looking to squash things out, but the larger questions is why is this man considered a national hero? 

Well the answer is that he is who the US wanted to be the hero. The Philippines was trying to gain independence from Spain, a rule that was largely in the hands of priests in the Catholic Church, when the US acquired the country as a territory from the Spanish.  When this occurred, the US set to work Americanizing things.  The Philippines was given a "state" bird, tree, anthem, etc and teachers were brought in to teach English and wipe out illiteracy.  During this time the US also decided Filipinos needed a national hero.  Instead of choosing a member of the military that had pushed for independence in the revolution, and was thus already seen as a hero, they chose an academic who had written books that the revolutionary's had seized upon (the books spoke of injustices from the church onto the people of the Philippines).

The US wanted a non-controversial and respectable hero that could not stir up any trouble (he was already dead).  Rizal had spoken 7 languages and had written several books (many years before the revolution, but that were used in the revolution by leaders to showcase the injustices Filipino's were experiencing under the Spanish church) and so they sort of brainwashed everyone into the story that he was in fact a hero that outed the truth about the Spanish, sparking the revolution, and died for the revolution.  Bizarre.  Even with a museum showcasing his denials, Filipino's have bought into this story and believe in this man.

That church behind the golf course used to be ground 0 here, everything being measured from this point in Manila.

Now, thanks to the Americans setting things straight, instead of the above church being ground 0 in Manila, everything in the country is measured in distance from Rizal's tomb (which is the guarded tomb in Rizal Park from our first blog).  Every province we have traveled to has had a Rizal park or avenue or something in remembrance of him.  The man is everywhere and everyone knows all about him and his heroic actions...

UPDATE: To bring you up to speed on the MOA situation and permitting, as we are a month and a half from when this news was actually dropped, I thought I would just include the most recent progress (or lack there of).  The MOA is still not completed and thus the permit is still not in our possession.  FIT passed the MOA through its legal department and the VP's signature was obtained.  FIT then shipped it priority to us to give to UP (same copy was needed).  Priority took 9 days.  It is now sitting in the legal department at UP with no real estimate for amount of time until it is signed.  We are just crossing our fingers, but they have had it for a month as we gave them a copy as soon as it was drafted and are still no closer to being finished with it.

So you get the picture, yes time is running out and no we cannot do anything to speed things along.  The process is maddening.

With us luck!