Shark Tails

#lamave’s oslob #whale #shark research team discussing...

Mon, 13 May 2013 23:03:14 -0400

#lamave’s oslob #whale #shark research team discussing data collection… Another day at the office ;-)

Sharing the view of #bohol island in the #philippines with a...

Mon, 13 May 2013 06:45:08 -0400

Sharing the view of #bohol island in the #philippines with a motorcyclist. Such a beautiful day x

The other day, Ale, Jess, Kate and I had the pleasure of...

Thu, 09 May 2013 03:24:56 -0400

The other day, Ale, Jess, Kate and I had the pleasure of attending an arts expedition in Cebu City (I know - THE CITY - I’ve escaped the province!).

The art exhibition at Turtle’s Nest Gallery in Cebu City was organised by ‘Artists for Nature’ and was centered on biodiversity decline. The group of artists which host art exhibit fundraisers for various eco orgs, very kindly decided to raise funds for our LAMAVE whale shark project, while simultaneously raising public awareness about the serious issue of biodiversity decline.

It was a wonderful evening - such a lovely venue, felt right at home ;-)…

….a big thank you to all that attended and of course a huge shout out to Artists for Nature for their hard work, passion and dedication, we loved it :-)

Juggling pans at boiling point.

Mon, 06 May 2013 20:48:28 -0400

The past few weeks have been HOT, summer has hit and my life, which usually hovers around simmering point, has over boiled and seems to keep scalding me. Indeed it seems that at the moment, just like an out of control cook, many of my dishes are overheating and for the life of me I have no idea where the switch is to turn them down…no idea at all.

Fortunately I’ve worked out that if you keep switching the pans/roles in your life, then you avoid one pan exploding, however this does mean that the rest of your dishes are always pretty hot to handle….and my goodness stumbling around the village juggling hot pans certainly paints quite the picture, especially when you’re known to be as clumsy as I am ;-)

Indeed it seems that, ever since we’ve moved into the village, I’ve been truing my hand at being mum, patient, mechanic, whale shark researcher, data nerd, artist, chef, doctor, nanny…so many roles, that for a while I think I lost “Sally” in a pile of labels, that is until I realised that the real me, was attempting to sneak out of the house and into the sea, a ‘then-forbidden’ place for a girl on ‘dry-ear arrest’.

As you can imagine ‘dry-ear arrest’ does not suit me and after a week of battling my desire to jump in the sea and actually managing to stay on dry land, it was time to see the doctor once again to hopefully have the OK on my ear. Not too tricky.

Not too tricky, unless you live in Leyte, where I believe, though correct me if I’m wrong, the day is not complete without a random spanner in the works. And on this particular day, it seems the mechanic with the spanners went to town! While Dan and Ev, the newest members of our team were out on the water chasing sharks, Verena and I were at home. I had my ‘i-need-to-go-in-the-water’ hat on and Ve, well Ve took a turn for the worse. A not very well feeling in the morning, spiralled into a full blown fever during the day, hot flushes, and a temperature dancing around 40 degrees C and I was getting a little worried. I think I won’t be the only one going to the doctors this evening. As the day went on, I become more and more like a worried mum, and once Evelyn had returned from the boat, we managed to get Ve, who was as floppy as a pancake and clearly on another planet, into the car and off to the doctor. Fortunately the doctor was in town today, and as we rocked up in our little van – now with steam coming from beneath my seat – of course the radiator decided to over heat today of all days – Ate Amie from the Pharmacy’s face looked more than a little concerned as we half carried Ve to the doctors room. Her face, which must have been a mirror image of mine, showed wide eyes and a look of concern. The doctor wasn’t there.

The thing about the Philippines is that usually a text can solve anything. Filipinos love to text. Fortunately so do Filipina Doctors – “it’s going to be okay, she’ll be here in 20 minutes”…

20 minutes later and ve has been administrated antibiotics for an infection and we’ve been told to keep an eye on her fever (Phew no dengue!)…I got the ok on my ear and so having spent another small fortune on drugs we drove home to be reunited with Dan.

Dan?! Where on earth is Daniel? It’s 7pm and its dark. His boat came back at 5:30pm, where oh where could he be? Pacing the kitchen, trying to work out the possibilities of where Dan, a white “Americano” (actually legit this time- a true Americano) could have disappeared to in a small provincial town and I am stumped. A quick run round the village armed with a torch – in the KASAKA hut? The sanctuary? On the sea wall? The waiting shed?! Hmmm nothing. OK plan B Knock Knock…

”Trinity?” (slight panic in the voice)

“o maayong gabii (good evening) sal”

“Trinty, Jen…I’ve lost Dan!?”

Trinity’s face suddenly filled with worry and her jaw fell to the floor (oh my goodness…does she think he’s been kidnapped? Drowned? Oh my goodness!? Breath, totally just having a beer somewhere….but where? It’s not as if there is a bar in the village…is there? They kept that one quiet ;-)….).

OK quick plan – I’ll run home again, hopefully he will be back by now, if not Ev and I will start searching the village in case he’s hurt himself and can’t get home…

Home. NO sign of Daniel

ADRENOPAUSE flushing through my body (Adrenopause: hot flushes brought on by peaks in adrenaline, usually of a distressing nature). Breath. Man I feel like a mum. Is this what its like to have children?! I’m so sorry mums of the world, we all are, this is horrible.

OK torches-check

Phone -check

Ve – she’s ok. Still high temperature, but stable. Ve – “ok?”… “mmmmmuuuugghhhh”

“OK Ev, I’ll do a round of the…. “

“DANIEL!!!”

“Oh my goodness WHERE have you been!”

And as I stood with the look upon my face that most “mothers” have when their children reappear from a period of disappearance – relief, joy, anger – you know the ‘I want to hug you and hit you with a baseball bat at the same time’ look, Daniel went on to explain how Vanessa, one of the tour guides had found him sat outside our locked house (abandoned by the girls) and had taken him into their home and fed him…even though he was still dripping wet from the sea and wearing a rash guard onesie…. Oh provincial life you never seize to amaze me, what with your kind hearts, loving arms and crazy ways.

Thank goodness for community.

#sharks #beer and #conservation Ale,president of #lamave...

Sat, 04 May 2013 22:28:48 -0400

#sharks #beer and #conservation Ale,president of #lamave spreading the message of conservation at an arts expo in #cebu #city

The only way #LAMAVE girls leave the province is via private...

Wed, 01 May 2013 11:27:44 -0400

The only way #LAMAVE girls leave the province is via private boat…thank you very much Jumica and blue star resort in Bohol for ‘shipping’ us back to civilisation. Hello Bohol, hello new adventure! Salamat kayo!

SO much whale shark LOVE at the moment… Not only have...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 01:06:19 -0400

SO much whale shark LOVE at the moment…

Not only have our LAMAVE team here in Southern Leyte just identified the 500th Philippine whale shark on the worldwide ECOCEAN (whale shark identification) library (www.whaleshark.org) ….but we’ve also just had some other brilliant news….we’ve only gone and had the longest individual whale shark match in the Philippines!

P-004, one of the first sharks ever photographed in the Philippines, was identified for the first time in Southern Leyte in 2006…a couple of weeks ago our LAMAVE team re-sighted and photographed the very same shark in Pintuyan waters - a whole 7 years later! Wit woo….go us ;-) - results like this makes all the hard work worth it! :-)

An amazing result underlining once again the importance of the Bohol Sea for the conservation of these giant fish!!

Sunday: Goat Day While Sunday is a day of rest for many, it...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 02:44:50 -0400

Sunday: Goat Day

While Sunday is a day of rest for many, it appears that for goats it is not. Indeed, most of mine, Ve’s and Ev’s morning consisted of chasing this little guy around the house….

“oh look, he’s so cute?!”

“so cute!”

…”wait where did he go…”

“oi! off my bed!”

trot trot trot…”where is he now?”

“argghh the kitchen”

“come here you…out!”

prance prance…”ok he’s gone”

sit down, resume working….

(Ve) “ouch!? Oi! Stop head butting me?!”

“right you!” BANG BANG BANG!

…and finally off he trotted back to dad…which from the picture you can clearly see that by this time he was just as unimpressed with “billy” as we were.

Since we’ve moved into the village we’ve built up...

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 02:53:29 -0400

Since we’ve moved into the village we’ve built up quite the fan club, in fact it seems no matter where we go or what we do, someone is always watching…

The children in particular are absolutely facinated with the ‘americanos’ that have moved into their village…they smile from doorframes, peep through windows, peer from within boats and occasionally (though I am trying to phase this one out) miraculously appear behind you, stood beaming in the middle of our kitchen! Unfortunately, though they are undeniably cute with their big eyes full of wonder, I’m not quite ready to adopt 100 filipino children and find myself gently shooing them out of the house ;-)

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to a birthday lunch to...

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 22:11:14 -0400

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to a birthday lunch to celebrate the birthday of Sandra, one of the girls in the village. Nestled close to the shore the party was a feast of food and kids laughing….was very cool to be a part of something special. Rowena, Sandra’s mum had prepared so much food….pork dishes, Bico (a sweet rice cake and a delicacy here), fish, casava….so many things! The girls even had me try sea urchin?! One of the photographs shows Sandra (check out her amazing wooden goggles!), the birthday girl preparing my first urchin…and the taste? Kinda milky, squishy, salty and meaty all at the same time. Weird, but an experience none the less….

LAMAVE and the Son-ok ladies decking out the KASAKA hut!...

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 12:27:36 -0400

LAMAVE and the Son-ok ladies decking out the KASAKA hut! Here’s Trinity helping position the new photo boards…we even have a little photo ID wall… did somebody say #sharkdorks

Pineapples!!!

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 05:48:52 -0400

Pineapples!!!

We (Large Marine Vertebrates Project) have a new website!!...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 23:56:32 -0400

We (Large Marine Vertebrates Project) have a new website!! Check it out at www.lamave.org

Have a goosey gander….oh and just in case anyone is ever looking to sponsor some lovely conservation research projects….look no further…for I think we could be who you’ve been looking for ;-)

On a serious note though - funding and sponsorship makes all our work possible….that and the dedication of our team (see about us), we are always looking for new grant opportunities and welcome any donations, whether it is kit, material (for sewing initiatives..) or monetary. You can even help support projects by buying our custom made t-shirts, cups and stickers…for more information check out the ‘How to help’ page…

Thanks a million,

S x

you know you’ve made it when you get featured in a talk...

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 04:37:36 -0400

you know you’ve made it when you get featured in a talk about conservation photography -thanks Steve De Neef!! ;-)

This is a snap from steve’s presentation at ADEX in Singapore…if you want to find out more about Steve, his photography and conservation in the Philippines then check out his website - www.stevedeneef.com

Without giving too much away, he’s a bit of a wizard with a camera…
Go and have a goosey.

New home. This is the little barangay (village) we now live in....

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 06:12:49 -0400

New home. This is the little barangay (village) we now live in. Things are getting ‘pretty’ real in the province x

Another sticker design…our LAMAVE team will be helping...

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 22:28:00 -0400

Another sticker design…our LAMAVE team will be helping spread the love with these this weekend at ADEX, in Singapore. If anyone’s going go and say hi!

Riding with the windows down, “Playing your cards right” and spending all my money on drugs.

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 23:23:00 -0400

All of a sudden, in April, life got a little mental. The team dropped from 3 to 2 as the lovely Miss Jessica Lebaja waved goodbye and set sail for Mindanao for a brief home visit before joining LAMAVE’s team in Oslob, Cebu…then in a blink of an eye, Verena got held up in Surigao city and had to stay overnight, leaving me as the only member to fly the Leyte LAMAVE flag… Me and my broken ear.

Fortunately being a girl of the world and something of a prodigy ;-) around here -“are you sure you won’t be scared staying alone in the house” - I managed to hold the fort…just in time for Verena to arrive home and Daniel to join us. Daniel is our new team member – he’s been helping run LAMAVE’s research project in Oslob, Cebu, where the local population are feeding whale sharks for tourism (some of you might remember me working there last year)….however having had enough of hand fed sharks, he’s jumped ship and found himself in the province, ready to swim with real wild sharks. He’s come to play with the big ~~boys~~ umm I mean girls.

Because this side of the visayas, girls totally rock the roost.

We cruise the seas searching for sharks, ride motorbikes through the night, and even drive… you know shades down, smiles on…broken windscreen…no biggy….what’s that? the oil needs checking? the water changing?….no worries let me just lift up the seat and inspect the engine….all good here… whoever though girls didn’t get their hands dirty, clearly hadn’t been to Leyte.

As soon as Dan arrived we had to move house – the lease of our old place was coming to an end, and after searching for somewhere else to move, we finally settled on a house in Son-ok…the little village we visit everyday to join the whale shark boats…

And so after packing the entire house, eating the Dulce de Leche (of course), stacking the car like tetras’ and psyching myself up to drive the “green hornet” cough cough blue bandit (“Sal be careful, it’s really tricky, I’m worried you won’t be able to handle it”) we were ready to roll…water checked, oil checked… turn the key….and….

NOTHING.

Serious!? For heavens sake. The car is loaded and nothing?! not even a grunt. Hmmm (run hand through hair) …right ok. Let’s check the water…the oil…the ummm battery?? OK, let’s screw this back on…. I don’t know….time to investigate…so with a spanner in my pocket, oil on my hands…I stroll out the gate and onto the main street…gathered along the roadside are what must be 15 men with motorbikes…OK so surely one of them must know something? A half English/visya conversation later and 12 of the men are practically choking with laughing, while the other 3 simply can’t comprehend how an earth I am going to fix the car. They think it’s absolutely hilarious…and when I ask if anyone can drive…they laugh even harder…before saying NO, as if it was truly absurd. Hmmm. No car, no help and soon no house. It seems like the hottest day on earth and I’m searching the province for a mechanic/sane man.

Luckily just before the bridge there is a mechanic. Phew….even luckier…he is actually good :-) turns out the battery water had disappeared (way beyond the low mark) – top that up and charge the battery and all’s good. Problem #2 there’s a brown out – that means no power locally. Oh come on?!

Men at work…fixing loose connections… thank you sir.

Fortunately this mechanic is a little genius and agrees to lend me his car battery…a few tightened screws later and we are rolling!!! YES SIRY BOB WE ARE ROLLING. Rolling all the way to Son-ok…you go it…the brakes had broken!!? Ha ha not really. The breaks are fine…the clutch may be super stiff as in…easy easy…eaaaaaaassssy does it…zoooom as it finds the bite and eats it – like someone eating a biscuit all in one! Nightmare, but manageable. Just got to be gentle.

Two trips later and we’ve moved everything to the new house. The problem – we are exhausted, there is only one bed, the place is filthy, a family of 1,000 mosquitoes seem to have moved in and my ear which has now been playing up for 5 weeks feels like it may explode. Pounding like a mad person at the door…I’m a little worried my ear drum is going to burst the millions of pesos I seem to have spent on drugs/medicine seems in vain…and the dodgy white powder we found tucked away in the bible (no word of a lie) is looking more and more enticing ….things are getting desperate…

Told you, no word of a lie ;-)

Oh goodness, when will the day end.

I know it’s a poor card to play, but fortunately the upside of being a girl in a loving community, is that when all seems lost, your team is super exhausted, there are no beds to sleep in and you feel like you just might break if your ear doesn’t stop thumping, there is always someone here for you. Indeed after talking to Pastor (the head of the group we work with) and the owners of the house, almost bursting into tears from exhaustion and the thought of no bed and having to wake up at 6am to get the ferry to go to the hospital (after failing at the local doctors)…the community worked their magic and made sure we were ok– 2 beds later, some hot rice pudding and you know I think everything is going to be ok. Yes, yes it is going to be okay.

A snap from my latest visit to Pintuyan Hospital…

And as for the next day? So ye, ok, we still needed to clean the house (now day 3), and maybe I did answer the door to Ery (wanting the camera for photo-ID) in my pyjamas with my hair like an afro- having slept on my mattress on the floor with no fan and mosquitoes for “friends”. But all is cool. The ear is still weird, but the person thumping in my ear has tired, so things are looking up. Maybe I might just get away with not going to the hospital in Mindanao…(please, please, pretty please) and as for the car? Well it’s never looked better…in fact it’s making quite the impression here…what with Daniel in the passenger seat being driven around by Ate Sally (“really!?) with Verena chilling in the back…hmmm you could say that there are quite a few jaws that need picking up around town….

Verena and Dan working their cleaning magic on the new house…

Some relaxing whale shark footage from photographer/videographer...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 23:17:13 -0400

Some relaxing whale shark footage from photographer/videographer Steve De Neef, mainly filmed from his visit last week to our LAMAVE base here in Southern Leyte, Philippines. All footage shot with a Canon 5D markIII, 16-35mm f2.8 lens using only natural light and one breath of air :)

Great Job Steve!

And yes these are just some of the creatures I find myself working with everyday ;-)

I mentioned something about LAMAVE t-shirt designs in one of my...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 22:47:00 -0400

I mentioned something about LAMAVE t-shirt designs in one of my last posts …well here is one of the designs…we’re printing both stickers and t-shirts, which we are hoping to sell both to help fundraise for our projects out here in the Philippines :-).

Ale, Steve and Sam will have some with them during ADEX (Asian Dive expose…) happening later this week in Singapore but if you’re interested in getting your hands on one…check out the merchandise page on our website….and stay tuned for more designs to come ;-)

Just think, you could help sharks, support conservation and spread the love….all in one purchase :-)

www.lamave.org

Moving house and hitting the road…LAMAVE Leyte team is...

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 22:05:18 -0400

Moving house and hitting the road…LAMAVE Leyte team is turning a new page…and yes I did just pop my “green” hornet…blue bandit ;-) cherry, smashed windscreen and all! :-) who knew I’d be revving up rural dirt tracks!