You've all seen those films I take it? The one where the future hero goes through a brutal montage. Being physically and mentally abused by his/her mentor. Carrying huge blocks of wood for no apparent reason etc etc.. But in the end this trial by fire forges them into a hero! The master of their sport/ saviour of their village/ allowed into Gentings Casino while obviously drunk and so on. Well that is very much how the academic publication system works.... Apart from I have to assume the hero stage comes later. Much. Much later. I am currently in the sobbing in a shower while holding a flannel stage. My publication came back from the journal of tropical ecology..... With the suggestion I resubmit it as a short communication. Which basically means I have to strip a 8000 word document down to about 3000.... After all the time I spent on the damn thing it feel as if I am cutting the arms off my own child. But it has been done and I have defended myself from the reviewers comments. Most of which were along the lines of "you should do another field season". Yes, because I have a spare 2k to fund that just laying around! But after all this I think I may have found a home for my publication! I got the comments back from my submitted short communication and I am pretty sure it will be accepted with some minor changes!! Even though the few changes are cutting more stuff out. Soon I will be a real scientist!! In the summer of 2015 I rekindled my role as a Science Leader with the British Exploring Society on an expedition to the Peruvian Amazon, or the Manu National Park to be more specific. For those of you not in the know, Manu is the area where Charlie Hamilton-James "Bought a rainforest", a very good documentary I urge you to watch if you can.
The exped began with a day in Cusco, which pretty much entailed loading up on as much alpaca merchandise as humanly possible before going to find Jesus (as statue of Jesus over looking the city, not a late in life religious conversion), followed up by eating the local "delicacy" and I use the phrase "delicacy" as loosely as it can be used. Guinea Pig is widely eaten in Peru, with millions being cooked up every year, according to statistics but as Mark Twain said "lies, damn lies and statistics" because who the hell would eat Guinea Pig more than once?!? Imagine getting a very bland and meager portion of chicken and stretching it over a rat skeleton, then wrapping the whole thing with vulcanized rubber and burnt hair. Ok, so you've imagined that? Well that my friends is the Peruvian "delicacy" of Guinea Pig. Sharing 5 of these with a group of 12 however was one of the most hilarious things I have ever witnessed, particularly upon hearing the phrase "Eat the eye balls, they actually taste nicer than the rest" and yes, yes they did. After an 8 hour bus journey over the Andes (everyone covered in Alpaca based paraphernalia), we were bundled into boats on the banks of the Madre de Dios river and down stream we went to our base camp for the next 3 weeks. Base camp itself was situated just down river from the Manu Learning Centre which is part of the Crees foundation (Give them a google, very good organisation). We were very close to the bank allowing for some early morning bird watching sessions along the banks and some VERY necessary washing sessions. The main aim of the expedition was to survey and explore the forests surrounding base camp, over the many day trips and night walks we proceeded to do this. Observing numerous amphibians species including glass frogs, cane toads, poison dart frogs, cane toads, monkey frogs, cane toads, numerous tree frog species and cane toads. Including a few nights at the wetlands, a small marshland area very close to the Manu Learning Centre. Here we were treated to a frog based orchestra, which was on of the most impressive nocturnal sounds I have heard yet. All different tones and sounds reverberating round a very small area (think one football pitch), easy sound unique to the numerous species surrounding the wetlands and water ways. A glance up gave a fantastic view of the milky way, rivaling the views I have seen in the deserts of Africa. One particular adventure included scaling the Pini Pini ridge, this entailed a trek up to an elevation of 1200m from our base camp at 400m. Sounds relatively easy, but imagine doing it on a game trail (nothing more than mud) and at 32 degrees and 100% humidity. However the view from the top was spectacular and the cloud forest upon reaching the top was worth the walk, the ground essentially being replaced by a spongy root layer that bounces as you walk on it. Many of these walks of science or exploration rewarded us with glimpses of some of the jungles more intriguing residents such as: Spider monkeys, saddle backed tamarins, cane toads and hoatzin. Spider monkeys being a particular highlight particularly when one member of the expedition observed one "pissing and eating at the same time", then declaring said animal to be his "spirit animal"... Well, moving on! I could easily write about my expedition in Peru indefinitely, but I will probably end up using too many superlatives and start using phrases like "inspirational", "moving" and "I found myself", when it gets to that point ladies and gents I will have to shoot myself, so I shall bit you adios from this retelling of Peru. Hopefully I will be there again soon! Huge thank you to all involved in the expedition, the fantastic young explorers who made the trip easy, the YE's who donated pictures for this blog and to my fellow leader James, couldn't have done it without you! Also a big thanks to anyone who actually bothers to read my blog posts! Well ostracized is probably not the correct term to use in this case, but I do love my melodrama and alliteration. I should have used "politely and respectfully redirected" but not really a catch blog title, I am sure you will agree! But yes, to all editors of the Journal Oryx, I apologise for the term "Ostracized" the rejection of my paper was fully justified and you gave me some very nice hints of how to proceed, no hard feelings what so ever. Not that anyone from the upper levels of academia would ever read the nonsense I write on here! I don't even spell check half of the thyme (See what I mean??).
Well after waiting 3 months for my article to go to review in the last journal I submitted it to (I withdrew after 13 months because, I was bored of waiting for nothing), I submitted to Oryx and it has now been listed as going into review...4 days after I submitted. A brief glimpse of Karmic realignment? I will tell you in 13 months give or take 4 days!
My plans for a PhD project are slowly coming to fruition, after a lot of help from friends I am slowly managing to whittle away the issues and form a well thought out project proposal. Funding is the biggest issue, how am I supposed to work out the cost of research I have never done at a location I have never done!! Its a thinker thats for sure! But the benefits of being able to do my own topic are never ending and I did actually manage to cut 12k pounds out of my initial cost estimate. The initial cost estimate being a load of tripe, where I completely over estimated the cost of everything and assumed being financially prepared was a good look in academia..... WRONG! I should have listened to my inner Yorkshire man and been as close to the mark as possible!! This is conservation boys and girls!! be cheap, as cheap as possible!! And then steal off your friends so you can be even cheaper, a few traps here and a few cameras there, no worries! Anyway, heres hoping As you may or may not know. I submitted my 1st ever paper, thats right! 1st ever paper in January of 2014. For those of you who understand the importance of this, I am sure you appreciate the importance of this day, for those who don't well you know where the door is.... However, was not good in the land of academia. I sat and I waited, all through Thailand I waited. I got back from Thailand to find that I had finally gone into review. So I continued to wait, and wait again. I went to Central America and still I waited. I then sent a polite email asking about the progress of my publication, I received an exceptionally rude response, so I decided to go back to waiting. I waited all through Namibia. My second author emailed, he was fobbed off. So we waited some more.
We waited through Christmas Island, my 2nd emailed again in January. No response. So we threatened to leave, we received reply emails but nothing came of that. So yesterday, the camels back was broken by the massive straw of unresponsive editors! I formerly withdrew my paper. Only to receive an ackowledgement email less than 14 hours later, typical! Now Nicholson, Hassall and Frazier (2015) is free to wander the plains of academia to find another new journal to settle down in.... Hopefully for a permanent home, before it gets shot through the head and consumed by vultures (metaphor has gone astray). I am also finally typing up my findings from Thailand and hopefully my second paper should be submitted in the next few weeks! Christmas Island is well known for its crabs, surely you must have realized that by now? But one crab in particular makes a spectacular appearance. It is often comment on about how spectacular the Red crab migration is, I have to say I found the migration an anti-climax. The spawning however was completely different!! In the small hours of the morning millions (yes actual millions, Christmas Island has approx 80 - 120 million red crabs) swarm down to the beaches of Christmas Island to spawn. here the females pile onto the beaches and down to the surf where they gingerly make their way up to the surf (they can't swim or breath under water) to release their eggs. This is the highlight, the females must do what can only be described as a "Jigg" to release their eggs into the sea. Imagine this but on a scale you can't actually imagine and then you have the image, but you won't because you can't!
The spawning marked the end of my tour on Christmas Island, I don't think I could have ended it any better! The project itself would probably not interest the general public so I will steer away from that and talk about... well what else is there to talk about on Christmas island other than Crabs!! The Robber Crabs (picture below... the great big huge ones!) cover the island and as soon as evening comes around... out they come! Crawling round the grounds of the pink house.. even climbing onto the pink house!! They have started getting into the rubbish bags we leave outside, even though they are left on a platform 1m from the ground. The start of the rains has them out in even greater numbers and now the infamous Christmas Island Red Crab is making an appearance.
After 2 days of travel and another night in an Airport (a running trend with me) I finally arrived on Christmas Island, after a few days recovering from jet lag I was invited to a beach party on one of the most picturesque beaches on the island, Dolly Beach. Very fortunately there was a huge turtle congregation just off shore as we arrived! No less than 9 Green Turtles were amassing off shore. A breeding group or perhaps a group of females waiting to come onto the beach in high tide to lay eggs. I am not sure, but we saw no turtles that night even though there was a huge tide which went under my hammock and proceeded to put the fire out! After packing up from the beach party a group of us decided to go caving into one of the many caves covering Christmas Island. These caves are a no go for tourists, so we pretty much had the cave to ourselves! Apart from the numerous fish that inhabited the Ocean opening at the end of the cave. After a fun filled weekend it was time to get down to work. 12 survey sites were needed by the time October rolled around, so it was time to pick up the machete, GPS and flagging tape to start marking some survey sites. The next month went by in a blur of both time and machete strokes as me and my boss (Melissa Wynn) marked out 12 sites across the 50 square mile island. Not every working moment was spent tearing the forest to pieces, we also spent a great deal of time trapping rats and then shaving them (to know if we were catching the same ones), hunting for geckos and trying to learn the difference between Gecko eye shine and Spider eye shine.. you would imagine that to be easy but at first I assure you it is not! I was also fourtunate enough to be allowed to assist (for a few days) in the reptile breeding program run by Australian National Parks. This entialed the habitat maintence and census's of both the Blue Tailed Skink and the Listers Gecko which are the two species in the breeding program. These two species are only found on Christmas Island but are now unfortunately extinct in the wild as a result of predation from invasive species (species which do not belong on the island) such as Cats, Rats and Centipedes. After a month of work, we finally had 12 site set up ready for the real work to begin, the counting, marking and measuring of as many geckos as we can physically catch at each site. Fortunately 2 more volunteers turned up at the start of October to help out. These volunteers being two of my former colleagues (Charlie Davidson and Tom Howells), now the Australian run research team is 75% British!! After a 4 day lay-over in the UK I was off to Namibia for a 5 week position with the British Exploration Society. We were based a few kilometers from the Brandberg Mountain range which is just east of the Namib Desert. Before arriving at the Brandberg we spent one night at a town called Okahanja before traveling the 6 hours to the Brandberg the next day. I took the opportunity here to sleep under the stars, rather than using a tent. A decision I didn't regret! It was an eventful first night after arriving at base camp, with a hooded cobra passing straight through base camp at night. Our first week in Namibia was focused on training and acclimatization to the desert environment (42 degrees Celsius in the shade). With the 1st week out of the way, I was then set loose into my role as science leader for the expedition. I started by taking one of the 1st groups of students out to a camp a few kilometers away from base camp. I nicknamed this camp,"Watchman" because of the huge stone pillar which resembled a huge man staring over the valley. The planned activities for each of the science weeks with each group consisted of: A few nights at watchman camp, learning about ecological assessment techniques (Transects, Quadrats and Visual Encounter Surveys), a debate about current conservation issues (Panda's - Yay or Ney). A few days near the local village of De Rust to learn about human - animal conflict and a discussion about game park management and the ivory trade. General African Ecology and Reptile Ecology were also general themes I taught throughout the entire trip. After a couple of weeks teaching science in base camp, and finding numerous day geckos and horned adders it was time for the 75km trek across the Namib Desert to the Skeleton coast on the west. The trek started off with a bang as we managed to see a lone bull elephant right on the road on the way to the drop off point and a few minutes later a White Rhino was spotted off in the distance! Two good omens for the trip. The trek was over 6 days most of the walking was done during the early hours to avoid the blistering heat of the day time. The highlight of the trip, for me, was finding a few Namaqua Chameleons in the middle of the desert. This species is a desert specialist and the first wild chameleon I have ever seen! After reaching the skeleton coast, so called because of the high number of ship wrecks, we had a much needed paddle in the sea! Which was freezing but after 6 days in the red hot and wind blown desert no one complained! The final week and a half was spent back at the Brandberg mountain, tracking a family of elephants (which we managed to see from a very picturesque lookout point), finding more and more geckos, walking down dried up river beds, watching a huge procession of goats, a moon lit scout for elephants and African sunrises! |
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