Final Days

The Much Anticipated Inside MPA Collections Video is now done!  Check it out since we didn't have it finished in time for the previous post:

https://youtu.be/uBx_3QNSgj0

Alright, and now it's time for your final, farewell blog!  Starting from where we left you last.

After several days of being confined to our apartment, Robby and I recovered from our Dengue Fever and were able to begin dissections on Monday (June 22), a week after we had planned on starting.  Our schedule was completely shot, but we decided to just do the best we could and see how things ended up.  On our last sick day Robby and I were staring at the giant bag of otoliths (we were storing it in a nook next to our beds) that we had already dissected.  There were 900+ of them, each inside a small tube, and we decided we should probably organize them in some way so that when Robby arrives back in Florida he could easily find what he needs.  They were all just in a giant bag so we decided to make bags for each species for each MPA. 

We began by making piles of each species. 

Then we lined them up in numerical order to make sure we had every one.

As we were doing this, we made a horrible discovery.  We began to notice black/pink/white/yellow substances inside some of the tubes.  At first we thought it was just the tags (some of them would get dirty before we put them in as we laid them on top of the fish before taking out the otoliths).  Then we realized that actually, no, it was mold!!  About 80% of the otolith tubes had mold growing in them!  Some of them were so bad we couldn't even read the label, so we had to figure out which fish it was based on where we had holes in our line up of tubes.  It was a huge pain.  Robby and I had not been drying the otoliths after we cleaned them and were putting them in the tube after about 15 minutes of sitting out, which was apparently not enough time for them to completely dry.  As a result, the moisture allowed the mold to grow.  Such a silly mistake.

So we went from having a nice plan with rest days built in that would still let us finish everything before I left July 9, to losing 6 days of work to Dengue and then finding out that we actually had much more work than we thought due to the moldy otoliths.  We needed to go back through and clean the mold off of each and every otolith and create new, clean tags and put the otoliths in new tubes.  Then we needed to clean out the moldy tubes to use them for the rest of the fish we had to dissect. Lovely.  Things just really never go as we plan here. There was no way we were going to finish before I left.

We decided to get into the lab and start dissecting during the week and spend Sundays cleaning the otoliths because we were not allowed to be in the MSI building on Sundays (not sure why), which meant we couldn't dissect.

So Monday to Saturday this is what our days looked like:

First thing we would head to the giant walk-in freezer and take out enough bags to equal 80-90 fish.  We had them separated into bins from each collection site. Pretty much everything you see in this picture belonged to us.

Then we would head to the fish museum/dissection room (on the left is the room and work benches we dissect on, on the right is the room that contains a bunch of fish in glass jars which is the fish museum).

The fish museum!

Rows, on rows of fish!

Everything from deep water fish to coral reef fish!

Pretty impressive collection.

We stick the bags of fish in the sink to thaw, and then get to work preparing everything else for the day.

This includes filling bottles with formalin for the ripe gonads Robby will dissect out (remember there is a student at UP using the gonads for her project).

We then prep the lab notebook, listing out the  information for each fish, and then make an ID number for each fish we are going to dissect, starting with 001 and going on up.

Then we cut out a tag for each of the fish that will be dissected and line those up on the fish board.

We then organize our work space making sure we have all the tweezers, scissors, scalpels, etc that we may need and begin working.

We have been downloading RadioLab podcasts to listen to while we work since music bothers my head and quiet just drives us both nuts since our tasks are so repetitive.  Thankfully this podcast is really interesting, basically mini audio documentaries on a variety of topics from WWII to science to criminal cases.   It keeps our minds occupied and I'd recommend to all of you as well!

Once work began the lab started to look like this. My station was on the left where I measured the lengths and weight of each fish and photographed them.  I then placed the fish in rows for Robby to dissect out the gonads.

His station is just a dissection tray filled with fish guts, a more precise scale to measure the weight of the gonads and the bottles of formalin to put any of the ripe gonads in.

Once the gonads are removed he lines the fish up on the counter for me to then dissect out their otoliths.

Once I'd finished taking all the photos, measuring the lengths of each fish and their weight we would break for lunch.

Generally an exciting lunch of hard boiled eggs for Robby and a chicken sandwich for me.  Not many other options, though we did get fresh bread (called pandesal) from the bakery every morning which was delicious.

Sitting down for lunch always made us realize how tired we were.  Generally we both stood to work because sitting and leaning over killed our backs and necks after about 30 minutes.

By Thursday of each week it was all we could do to convince ourselves to get back up after lunch and go back in to finish.  Yes, I'm resting next to bottles of dead fish.  Don't worry about it.

After lunch I would switch gears and start doing the otoliths while Robby finished up the other half of the gonad dissections.

I re-worked my lab space so that I had a spot to dissect the otoliths. I worked on top of a box so that my tray was higher and I didn't have to bend over so much.  Dissecting really kills your neck!

Before getting started on the otoliths, I would create the tubes for the otoliths and mark them on the outside with their respective labels. We didn't want to run into the same problem where mold took over the inside label and then we didn't know which otolith was inside so now they were labeled twice!

After the outside label was on, I then created a new, clean tag to be put in with the otoliths to avoid mold spores entering on the dirty tags.  Live and learn.

Then I got to work dissecting out the otoliths.

Looking at all of the fish to do could be rather daunting, so I just went 6 at a time, and fish by fish I worked through them all.

As I dissected out the otoliths I put them in an ice cube tray that had the new clean label ready and waiting.  I was always so nervous about knocking this thing over and losing hours of work and 18 or so samples!  
Luckily, it never happened!

I would dry each otolith on a napkin before putting it in the tray though.  We were taking every precaution we could to prevent more mold!

I then leaned the tray up to be blown on by a fan so that the otoliths were 100% dry before they went in the tube. No more moldy otoliths! Or at least we hope...

After they dried, I put them in their new labeled tube and then into a labeled bag.  So organized!

After the otoliths came out, I'd cut off the head of each fish to be kept for a potential project that would look at their DNA (another UP student may be taking this on, we aren't currently sure but are keeping them none-the-less).

We worked on one species at a time so that we could get into a "zone" and do all the ones that were similar.  Some of the otoliths were really different in terms of how to dissect them out so it was much faster to do one species all at once rather than hop back and forth between them.

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

I dissected them out and then Robby cleaned them, dried them on the napkin, put them in the tray to get super dry and then put them into their individual tubes.  It went soooo much faster when he was there helping do that part! (4 minutes a fish down to about 2 minutes a fish!)

Once all of the fish have had their otoliths removed,

We would clean up the lab and break down our stations.  This process took so long and we never quite got the smell of dead fish out of the lab.  We did, however, bring a change of clothes so our smelly dissection stuff stayed in the lab and we didn't bring that funk back to our apartment!

The final step would be to bring the labeled bag of heads back to the freezer, then we'd head home for dinner.

I'm sure that was exhausting to read.  Try doing it, on repeat, for weeks on end.  Nowhere near as exciting as being out in the field doing the collections!

The first week of dissections went really well! We started with 1,606 fish and ended the week with 1,200, so we did 406 fish over the course of 5 days.  That comes out to about 81 fish a day!  Our days ended up being about 10 hours long so that is about 8 fish every hour.  If you think back to the first time we ever did a dissection day we averaged about 3-4 fish an hour so we've doubled our speed!  Still, it was going to take a crazy amount of time to dissect all of our fish!

That first weekend we decided to start cleaning the moldy otoliths, so our tiny little apartment was transformed into a tiny little lab space.

First I created new, clean labels for each of the otoliths.

While I did that Robby organized the moldy otoliths into numerical order so we could find them easily.

We bought more ice cube trays and I put a new tag in each spot so that our clean, now mold-free otoliths could then dry out in the trays. 

Then one of us would clean each otolith, taking care to scrape off any mold.

We'd put the moldy labels in rubbing alcohol because they stunk!

Then we would dry the otolith on the napkin before putting it into the tray.

While one of us did that, the other would create a new, labeled tube for the otolith.

Once the tubes were made we laid them out on our couch cushions so they were organized and ready to go once the otoliths were dry (we put the ice cube trays filled in front of our A/C unit to dry since we didn't have a fan).  It was a pretty impressive operation considering we are working in about 300 square feet of space.

Once the labeled tubes were made, we'd clean out the moldy tube with rubbing alcohol and a Q-tip.  
Fun way to spend our "off" day! 

We would switch jobs every time we filled up all of the ice trays as it got crazy repetitive (all work an no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy...)

Unfortunately the smell gave Robby a really bad headache so he made a make-shift mask.  The lighting in our apartment is also terrible so he used his headlamp and I strapped my iPhone to my head as a light (no picture unfortunately, it was effective, but a pretty ridiculous solution none-the-less.) 

Once one species was finished we moved on to the next, lining up the dirty tubes and repeating all of the above.  And so it went, for hours. And hours. And hours...

 Our first attempt at cleaning otoliths took all day and we hardly made a dent in the 900 we had to do.  Losing a week to dengue was so unfortunate!

Come Monday we got back to work in the real lab and started dissections anew.  Oh yea, you bet we had a countdown going for the number of fish we had left after each day!

 Robby and I were going more than a little bit nuts by this point from all the repetition.  Just to give you an idea, we would wake ourselves up each morning by singing:

To the tune of "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall":

One thousand thirty-one fish in bags left to do,

One thousand thirty-one fish.

You take one out, do its gonads

It's not done but it's not in a bag anymore!

Yup, every morning with the new number of fish we had left we'd sing.  Another favorite was:

To the tune of "This is the Song That Never Ends":

This is the day that never ends,

It just keeps happening again.

We go into lab and then we do some otoliths

Then we come home and sometimes sleep a little bit

Oh, it's the day that never ends,

Yes, it just keeps happening again

and on, and on, and on we would go.

I told you, we were going a little crazy.

Week two did have some adventures to break up the monotony a bit though!  For example, one day I miscounted the number of fish we took out of the freezer in the morning. We would generally try to pull 80 to 90 fish out each morning, but that day I read "5" on a bag when really it said "25", so we ended up taking out 127 fish for one day of work.  Yea, woops!  Robby went out and got dinner and brought it back to lab, but by the time we finished everything it was 11 pm.  As we left UP we got to the exit only to find that the gates were locked, the guards were gone and we were locked on campus.  So we had to hop the fence to get out and get home.

Another day the power went out at around 2pm.  I'm not sure if you all had been paying attention to the weather over there but there was pretty much perpetually a typhoon over Luzon (our island) during my end there.

It seemed like every time one passed, there was another in the Pacific lined up ready to hit!

It was just rainy and bad weather all the time! One day this resulted in all of UP losing power, which was a problem because where we worked was in the basement. 

Losing power made it impossible to see so we had to tape our iPhones to the lamps and use the light from the flashlight on our phones to dissect.

Not the most ideal set-up, but it worked and the lights came back on several hours later thankfully!

We finished the second week with 684 fish left to do (sing with me now: six hundred and eighty-four fish in bags left to do, six hundred and eighty-four fiiish!)

We also finished all of the "inside MPA" fish which we felt warranted another ice cream celebration.

Our second week we averaged 86 fish a day.  We did more moldy otoliths on Sunday and I also packed to head home as I was going to leave that coming Thursday.  Unfortunately, moldy otolith cleaning took forever and we only got through 4 of the 6 species by the end of the day Sunday, my last day to be around to help with it.  Sorry Robby!

Remember these are the 6 species we were working with!  Robby will have to do the last two without me.

The third week all of the students at MSI were participating in a sort of field day, so they were divided into teams and competed in sporting events, as well as a singing competition (of course).  We were not recruited for a team, but Darryl (the graduate student who has essentially been hosting us and helping with everything) bought us each a team shirt as a gift.  

Super nice of him!  That is the (original) local language and while there is no direct translation it means something along the lines of "sea people" or "people of the sea".

 He also came and got us whenever something was happening in the building.  One day someone brought in "dirty ice cream" which is just homemade ice cream like the kind sold by vendors on the street, which was ube (a purple sweet-potato-like vegetable) and mango flavored. It was delicious and such a welcome break from our monotonous day!  Another day they were giving out lunch so we were invited to get a hot meal.

A banana and then a box with pancit (noodles with pork and veggies mixed in), fried chicken and, of course, rice!

The third week was a short week, as I was leaving to head back to the US, but we did 300 fish in 3 days.  We were really trying to knock as many out as we could so that Robby would be able to finish without me.  We had gotten incredibly fast and even more stream-lined at what we were doing.

All told we got through 1,222 fish in the 14 working days after being sick.  I had a ton of fun and am so happy my head hung in there and I was able to have incredibly long working days!


It really worked out well for Robby as I wanted to push to see how much my head could handle, and he obviously wanted to get a lot done before he was on his own.  Glad that worked out so well for both of us! 

Our last moments in our tiny dissection room together.  Such a bummer to be leaving before things are finished here! It just feels very weird to be going before all the fish are done and also knowing things never go as planned and Robby literally is out of time for any more problems!

With 384 fish remaining, Robby has about 12 days of work left to go.  It is crazy how much longer it is going to take for just one person to get through all these fish.  Fortunately Robby has 21 days left in-country and should be able to make it happen!

We finished all inside MPA fish (from all 5 MPAs), we finished all outside of Candelaria and then have these 40 fish left from outside of Santa Cruz.

The bulk of the remaining 384 fish are all from outside of Masinloc, one last final bin of fish.  Wish I could be there when that final bin gets emptied!

Robby and I spent Thursday, my last day in the Philippines, in the apartment.  I think we slept for about 12 hours and didn't wake up until around noon.  We were both, understandably, absolutely exhausted.

We had planned to go to the park and spend the day outside, but a second typhoon was now hovering over us which meant it was rainy and miserable outside.  Go figure.

Since we couldn't do anything fun, I finished prepping the logbook for Robby, making straight lines and the headers for the remaining pages.  A tedious task that just takes so much time to do each morning in lab.

Then I worked on this blog.  Woo! Yay, rainy days!  

Eventually it was time to head to the airport, which meant sitting in lots of traffic to make our way to downtown Manila.  Taxi rides and Manila traffic are two things I am not going to miss, at all.  Excited for there to be rules on the road again!

I can't believe my time here is coming to an end.  While I'm excited to get home to flushing toilets and all the salads and mexican food I can eat (yea, that's what I've been craving, no good greens or tortillas over here!), I'm not ready to leave this lifestyle.  We've had such an incredible time here!

You better believe Robby and I are already brainstorming Fulbright grants we can each write to get us both back here in the near future.

While we don't have a video to go along with this blog (it would just be hours of us dissecting which I can tell you is not at all exciting) we decided to list out all of the previous videos in case you missed them in our other blogs.  So, here you go:

Manila Fish Market (pre my arrival so no blog associated with it):

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EYBGYBXBA8

1000 Islands (pre my arrival so no blog associated with it):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7HM_giTbQ4

Pakwan Festival:

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

MPA Scouting Trip:

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

March Madness:

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

Excursion to Palawan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnw7UeLlN7s

Thailand:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCO7k3OXS44

Candelaria Fish Collections:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ci2PkiD2x2M

Donsol:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFf91Vsqd0c

Inside MPA collections:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBx_3QNSgj0&feature=youtu.be

Well, that about does it for our time here and our blog.  Sorry this last one wasn't all that exciting, but I'm just giving it to you like it was: dissections for days.  Before I get sentimental about leaving, I am going to just sign off and leave you with one last fun fact.

As Robby and I have been dissecting we end each day with a bag full of fish bodies and guts (which emit just a lovely smell). At first we were putting this outside in the disposal bins we were told to use.  Apparently cats and other animals were getting into them, however, so they told us just to keep the fish in bags in the freezer until they came up with a better disposal solution.  Evidently there is not a set protocol for discarding dissected fish at MSI and the decision was made that they would just dig a hole out back to put all of the dissected fish in.  Yup, problem solved.  However, this trash hole, at least at the time I left, had still yet to be dug so we have just been putting the trash in the freezer until we have a hole to put it in.  The result of 14 days of dissections is two shelves full of dissected fish and fish guts waiting in the freezer to be thrown out.

 The smell is terrible, even when frozen!

We just have to laugh and shake our heads at how difficult the simplest things can be here.  Oh how I'll miss you Philippines!

Thank you all so much for taking the time to read these blogs over the past 6 months!  We put a ton of effort into both the blogs and videos and we hope you have enjoyed reading/watching as much as we enjoyed living the experience.  We are looking forward to seeing all of you when we get back!

- Danielle and Robby

P.S. As you may or may not have heard, Robby was able to finish everything and acquire all of the permits to leave the country with biological samples before July 31.  He has arrived back home with all 2,451 sets of otoliths.  Wherever you are right now, please go grab a beer (preferably a San Miguel) and cheers to the fact that we actually pulled this off!  Now on to the next phase! Robby has to saw the otoliths in half and read the lines under a microscope to determine their age.  Sending it to another lab to do this was going to cost $10,000 so looks like he (or we) will be doing that on our own!