Feelings--By Yee

Actually this is my first time to join conservation work outside Hong Kong.

It is a really wonderful experience for me. Looking at the conservation work in other countries can help me to think more about the conservation work that we are doing in Hong Kong. I also feel grateful that we have equipment and resources we need in our field work, we are so lucky, Though sometimes we still have not enough resources, compare that with Pakistan, we had much more already.

One thing that is very important is that no matter how tough the field work, is, how little resources and equipment they have got, my friends in Pakistan still work very hard and try their best to do everything that they can do to conserve the nature. I think this is a very important point. With their hard work, people start to have more concern on the nature and lovely organisms.
Can I also work so hard like them under such situation?

Karachi, a quickly developed city, can the wildlife there still be protected under the development?
I believe conservation work and development are not opposing each other. With well planning both development and conservation work can be done very well at the same time. This is a win-win situation that everyone wants to see.

In the trip I also realize that doing conservation is more than just doing scientific research in field, co-operation with the public and other parties is extremely important, as we are not the only one to live in the place. Conservation work is also more than just stopping people to use all the resources, which is almost impossible. Co-operation, letting the others know the importance of conservation work can help to maintain the balance of the nature and people.

With my friends’ hard work I believe that I can still see the lovely cetaceans swimming happily when I go back to Pakistan next time.

Besides learning the techniques for scientific work, I learn something more important for the scientific work. The serious attitude towards scientific work, keeping things in order so that work can be done easier, keeping working professionally under all kinds of situations, show your leadership in the team so that that the whole team can work efficiently… It is impossible to learn these things from just reading the books…
Really thanks for OPCF and my department for giving this vulnerable chance to learn, to try, to experience.

All about Pakistan--By Yee

My impression to Pakistan is very good, I love this country.

People

I think it is not that dangerous as people think in Pakistan. Most citizens live in the city just like you and me living here. You do find army in some important area (e.g. US embassy), but there were no fighting/gun shooting/bombs…… on the street.

Actually this happened a lot in our trip, in Karachi you seldom see foreigners (including Westerners and other Asians) on the street as it is not a tourism city, and as the place we visited are places that tourists seldom go, it make people more interested on us.
But they were not staring at you, instead they seems so happy to see us. The reason behind maybe is because we are Chinese. The relation between Pakistan and China is very good, and Pakistani love Chinese people. One typical example is that one of the CCP (Cetacean Conservation Pakistan) team member Shoaib told us that when he was small he looked a bit like Chinese, and his classmates like to called him “Chinese’, and he told us that he loves this nickname! On the street many people asked if we can take a photo with them, or shake hands…. Just like POP STARS!

People were are very nice. They would not stare at you, smiling is the language. By the way Urdu and Sindi are the common local languages. However, as Pakistan was a British colony, and English are taught in school. Many people actually know English that can communicate with you quite well.


Food
Food, curry seems not that common as we think. (I did not have any curry in my whole trip!!!) People there usually have meat cooked with spice that are a bit spicy, served with fried rice, or Pakistani bread, or even plain yogurt(Yes, yogurt, it matches the dishes that are salty in taste, one time I had half a big cup of yogurt with the chicken dishes, taste good!) There are many different kinds of bread that we didn’t tried all of them. The most common one is Roti, that bread made me feel full when I just had half of it. Local restaurant also provide some Chinese dishes! We had tried them before, it seems like Pakistani dishes rather than a Chinese dishes…but they are nice! There are also some international restaurants like Mcxxx, KXC, and Pizza Hxt. As it is a Muslim country, neither pork nor alcohol could be consumed in the country. And beef is also not very popular as there are some Indus in the country. Chicken is the most common dishes, as lamb are expensive and fish are limited to the coastal area. By the way, their BBQ are very nice! The desert Kulfi is a must try if you love desert like ice-cream.

Having dinner

My favourite--Kulfi, an ice-cream like

Clothes
Men are free to wear anything they like. Traditional clothes, t-shirts, shirts, jeans, suits… all kinds of thing. But for women they can only wear traditional clothes with scarf around their head. (it depends on their own to see if they really want to cover their whole head or face.) so one funny thing you can see in the market is that it is dominant by men’s clothes. (by the way, my clothes which are a bit boyish, and my short hair without covering made many people think that I am a guy……)

Vehicles
Every vehicle is a piece of art work. People painted their bus/lorry/truck with picture and many different color, it is interesting to look at them one by one. One more thing that made it special is that people really mad every very good use of their vehicles. They tried to put as many people as they can into a bus, so it is very common to see people hanging out the bus or sitting on the top of the bus. (noodle and I love watching these when we were traveling on the WWF vehicles on the street.) Trucks are also full of goods. You can find that they have really good skills in packing their goods onto the truck, they won’t waste any space.

People ride on a bus

A truck that full of bananas

Language
Urdu is a national language in Pakistan. Another local language Sindhi which is a bit less common in Karachi.

A lot of people in the city know English, at least they know some simple English wihich you can communicate with them quite easily. English actually is the official language in Pakistan and so people learn English in school since they were small. Actually the use of English as an official language may relate to the history as Pakistan was a British colony and became independent in 1940.

Some simple Urdu
'Assalaam Alaykum' - Hello (literally meaning 'may peace be on you')

‘Kia Haal hain?’- How are you?

'Shukria' - Thank you

'Khuda Hafiz' - Goodbye (literally meaning 'may God take care of you')

29/1/07 ---by Noodle

看着時鐘一點一點向淩晨逼近，就要起程囘香港了。不知不覺兩個星期就過去了，快樂充實的時間就是過的快。回想來之前還來回擔心、忐忑不安。如今卻這樣的不舍……
這兩個星期，多虧大家的照顧，我們才有這樣充實而開心的卡拉奇之旅。感謝Dr. Ejaz為我們行程的精心安排和照顧；Dr. Mauvis Gore教給我們這麽多知識和經驗；Umer和Babar的照顧的陪伴；Khalid以及其他Panda House裏的員工給我們生活上的照顧和教給我們的Urdu。感謝我們在卡拉奇遇到的所有人，你們純真的笑容，你們真誠的友誼，我們都會一直珍藏着！

26/1/2007---Meeting local fisherman Committee, by Yee

Our driver picked us up at Panda house at around 11am to WWF Karachi office to meet Dr Ejaz and Mr Ali. They are so kind and enthusiastic. We talked about our training and trip. And we told them the truth- everything is so fine and lovely. People, accomodation, itinerary, field work, training courses… all were very very well organized. We gained so much in the trip.

They also told us that actually we are the first 2 students from other countries that join the programme organized in WWF Pakistan. Very lucky that we can be the vert first students to visit and work with the first project on conservation of cetaceans in Pakistan.

After lunch with Dr Ejaz, Mr Ali and Mauvis we went to the wetland centre run by WWF Pakistan in Sandspit, where we conducted our beach survey and cetacean rescue training, and meet the local fishermen committee who helped with the cetacean conservation project.

Wetland centre was built 5 years ago. The idea was formed from local fishermen. Inside wetland centre there are some displays and computer games for educating the visitors. Exhibitions, display, workshop, lectures and seminars about the wetland ecology are also held here.

The wetland centre is surrounded by a large piece of mangrove, where you can find lots of organisms like fish, birds and other mangrove species inside. It is really a big piece of mangroves.We also know that there used to be a bigger piece of mangrove along the Karachi coast, however due to urban development, many mangroves were cut down and these lands now become a big piece of desert like land. WWF Pakistan actually is doing something to try to stop this kind of mangrove destruction in different levels, like sending opinions to government, educating the general public as well as co-operating with local people like local fishermen for conservation.Like the committee we met are actually formed by the local fishermen in the fishing village just next to wetland centre.

After chatting with the committee I realize that actually these fishermen know the importance of conservation of cetaceans and other natural resources. They told us that if they do not do anything to protect the wildlife, they will not be able to make their livings in the future. They had already found that they can catch less and fishes with smaller sizes compare with the past, so they join the committee to help to protect the area so that they can have sustainable development in the village.

from the chat with the community mobilizer I found that at the beginning it is not easy to start such a programme in the village. It is necessary to balance between conservation work and the se of the natural resiources by these people. It is important to let the people know the importance of such a programme as well as let them still survive as they need the resources. Like people in the village need to collect mangrove woods for fuels, it is impossible to stop them from chopping the mangrove , however teach them to cut down the branches of the mangrove trees instead of cutting down the whole tree can let them survive but at the same time cause less impacts on the mangrove, instead of just stopping them cutting down the trees.

Scientists should be “… looking for some wise principle of co-existence between man and nature, even if it has to be a modified kind of man and a modified kind of nature. This is what I understand by conservation” (Elton, 1958: pg 145).

Actually WWF found the fishermen as their ‘teachers’ instead of clients. WWF Pakistan staff told us that these fishermen do provide them lots of information about the sea and the animals and other organisms in the area. As they live here they can observe these things 24 hours a day and immediately call the WWF staff if they have found anything special. Besides it is possible to collect information about the small cetaceans as the fishermen may see them when they went fishing. Though they do not know the way to identify the species, they do provide information about the area which the cetaceans usually live and a rough number of cetaceans. This definite help the research work.

Afterwards we went to Sandspit beach that next to wetland centre. Every year there are a lot of turtles come up and lay eggs on the beach. The name ‘Sandspit’ comes from these turtles, before they lay eggs they will make a big hole on the beach and this make the sand on the beach dogged up and look like spits, so people call the beach ‘sandspit’. Besides turtles, in the sea of sandspit beach you can see some cetaceans like finless porpoises and also humpback dolphins. Babar told us that the week before we came he saw several humpback dolphins swimming in the sea in sandspit. Unluckily we could not see them today. But from this we can know that it is really an interesting place to go and for education, a variety of wetland habitats and animals, how lovely this place is.

The fishermen then gave us 2 little green turtles for us to release. Actually they are just hatched in the centre which turtle eggs were collected in this safe place and then the little turtles will be released after they hatched. Putting them in such place the reasons behind is that there are lots of unnatural threats that harm the lives of these little creatures. Like house crows and feral dogs, rubbishes and other kinds of pollution. Keeping these eggs in such places can prevent these little creatures being killed before they go to the sea.

However according to some research it shows that only 1 of 100 little turtles will survive and will come back to the beach and lay eggs. Some other factors like water pollution and rubbish even make their lives more threaten and this may further decrease their survival percentage. Hope that this 2 lovely turtle babies can survive in the ocean and hope to see them again after some day.

Photo with Mr Ali at Wetland Centre

Wetland Centre surrounded with mangrove

Photo with the local fisherman committee

Baby Green turtle we released

Sunset in Sandspit beach

23-25/1/2007---Boat Trip Survey, By Yee

Finally the boat trip come.
Got up at 4:30am and left Panda House at 5am.
First went back to CEMB of University of Karachi to pick up the equipment, and when we finally arrive the place where we get on our boat, it was already 10am!

Orignally we have 9 people on the boat, including Mauvis and Ross from UK, Umer and Babar from WWF Pakistan, Shoaib and Pervaiz from CEMB of University of Karachi, we 2 students and 3 crews on the boat. Unluckily Ross have something important to do and could not join the team, while Umer was sick and also could not joined the survey. So finally we have 6 people including 2 very new members(that's us!) to join the survey, and 3 crews who help us with the boat. Is it still possible for us to conduct the survey with so few people in the team?

The place we got on board was not a pier, but a beach!
We had to get on the boat with the help of a small boat, and then traveled to the deeper water and get onto the boat for the trip.

After putting all the things onto the boat, everyone (except we 2) were busy preparing for the trip. And what we 2 do was using the equipment to measure the distance between the target and ourselves. We tried to get familiar with the distance roughly so that we can tell the position of the marine mammals or other object saw during the trip easily.

When everything was ready, it was already around 11am and we started our survey. The survey method was exactly the same as what we did in the transect survey practice. There were 1 navigator, 2 observers and 1 recorder. As we were still very fresh to the survey in the first day we will work and rotate with another experienced member to be the observer and get familiar with the job.

Just sat down for about an hour suddenly our project leader Mauvis and stopped the boat. She told us that she said a turtle float up to the sea surface and took a breath just about 10m in front our boat! (To me it was a bit like a floating rubbish when you just saw it, but when you look more carefully you will notice that it is a big turtle!) This was what we first got in the sea in the trip.

Sometime later Babar shouted and stopped the boat. He said that he saw a finless porpoise!
However the other members could not see it again, but still it is a good record for our survey.

Besides animals that swim in the sea, we also record the birds that feed on fish or other living creatures in the sea, so gulls were not recorded but other birds like terns are needed to be recorded. They taught us some ways to identify gulls and terns, like gulls swims on sea surface like what a duck do, but terns do not do this. Terns and gulls are quite common in the area we did the survey. Except terns and gulls, we also see some less common birds, like the cormorant and booby. I was my first time to see booby, which is a seabird species which is usually found far away from the coast. Really happy to get this ‘first tick’! (which mean I saw this species for the first time!)

Fishing boats and rubbish saw in the sea were also recorded in order to access their impact to the marine mammals. Actually these were quite a number of fishing boats in the area we worked, but even much more rubbish was recorded. I don’t think this case is not only found in Pakistan, looking back to Hong Kong, we got a much higher density of fishing boats and rubbishes in our harbour and sea. Isn’t it possible for us to do something to save our lovely pink dolphins and finless porpoises?

After one day on-field training, we 2 could work independently as observers and recorders to really conduct the survey. And for natvigator.. we did not did it because it is afraid we may lose the way… or maybe we would natvigator the boat to travel to Hong Kong from Pakistan?

We spend 3 days and 2 nights on the boat and travelled along the Pakistan coast for the survey. We started working when the sun rose, and have rest after sunset. We stayed on the boat at night, which was in the middle of the sea where you cannot see the coast. There were no TV, no Internets. The only lights in the horizon were from the fishing boats that stay around us. When you looked up into the sky, you will see thousands of star glowing in the dark, a really amazing scene that you would never see in Hong Kong.

Staying on this small boat for the whole night is also a very special experience for me, you would never imagine how it is without trying once, as long as you move the boat with also follow your motion, with noise which like people’s snoring.

In the whole trip we saw a few finless porpoises, 2 turtles, booby, terns and gulls, shark and a sea snake. We did not see many marine mammals in this trip. However it does not mean that it is not useful for the project, the area we did our survey was actually an area that the team did not surveyed before. Even we did not get many marine mammal records, we still obtained the results of the planktons and other animals which can reflect the productivity of the area, which is also useful for the project.

I enjoyed the boat trip very much(even I did had a bit sea-sick sometimes), it is really nice to have a look on the real situation of the marine mammals and other animals in the Pakistani Sea, and I hope that the data we obtained can really help the whole project, as well as conserving the marine mammals in the area.

Other than the boat trip we joined, the team had already conducted quite a number of boat trip survey and obtained many records of marine mammals in the area. The most exciting one was that the team saw hurdreds of spinner dolphins swimming around their boat in the area with water depth 2000m. For details plese check out from the following site

http://www.wwfpak.org/13-12-06hundredsofdolphins.php

The boat we worked on

We were working on the boat

Pervaiz obtaining plankton sample

'I saw a finless porpoise, that side!'

21/1/2007-- Sightseeing in Karachi, By Yee

We did not just worked in Karachi, we also walked around in the city and have an experience of the culture.

Karachi Zoo:

There is a zoo in Karachi city, with quite a number of different animals, like tigers, bears, birds, reptiles... and there was also a room for the sample of some animals


However, we found that most of the people come to the zoo were not because of the animals, they just come to the zoo for picnic or a family day...

Pelican in the zoo

Noodle with Python in the zoo!

Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah's



This is actually the tomb and memorial museum for Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who is the 'father of Pakistan'. We learnt more abou the history about Pakistan.








Pakistan Air Force Museum


This is a museum of the Pakistna Air Force (a true army). There are quite a number of army planes displayed in the museum, and quite a number of them were made in China or by Chinese company.





We thought that people would be very serious in this kind of museum. But again we found that people usually go there for picnic! And actually this museum can be divided into 2 main parts, one side displaying the fighting planes, on the other side--just like an amusement park, with ferris wheel and other games, and also a video game centre.

Chiness-Pakistani Palne in the museum

20/1/2007---Beach Survey and Stranding Case Practice, By Yee

Beach Survey and Stranding Case Practice

The second practical session and also it is the last day for the course.

We went to Sandspit beach to have the practical.

First we had the stranding case practice. As there were no real dolphins/whales stranded, one of the team members laid on the sand and pretended to be the stranding dolphin.
We learnt the ways to approach the stranded dolphins, to have a basic body check and measurement, first-aid treatment for the dolphin and the way to release the dolphin back to the ocean. (But we did not ‘release’ the team member into the sea!)

The second part we learn the way to conduct the beach survey. Line transect method was used. Several people formed a line on the beach vertically with equal distance between each other, and they walked along the beach together to se if there were any marine mammal body parts (Eg, teeth or bones), or rubbish on the beach. The recorder will record all the things they can find as well as the GPS location of these objects. In the real beach survey the team found skulls of dolphins, and stranded Bryde's whale in one of their beach surveys. However, we did not find anything except rubbish in this beach survey.

After all these practice we had our lunch and when we want to leave, some classmates suddenly saw a dead finless porpoise calf that brought up by waves to the beach. After the assessment it is a male finless porpoise which umbilical was seen visible. We then watched the demonstration on how to obtain skin and blubber layer sample of the stranded dead marine mammals. After obtaining samples, the finless porpoise was buried and hope that they can be able to obtain the skeleton of it after sometime.

We learnt a lot in this practical and this is also a good ending for this course.
Get ready for the field trip next week!

This is the 'dolphin' we have to save

Helping the 'dolphin'

Working on beach survey

Working on the stranded finless poropise

Camel that walk along the beach that we were working