Fish Node and Friends

Officially, my international youth internship placement is with the Fish Node at the Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR). I say officially because the Malawi government renamed the university a couple years ago but the majority of local residents, students, and professors still refer to the institute as Bunda College. One name or another, I’m here in Malawi to do work on aquaculture.

These are some of my co-workers and good friends at the Fish Node, 

Thoko on the left, Spriano in the middle and Andrew on the right.

In many aspects the Fish Node is a young group, both in its existence and the age class of the group members. The biggest advantage of a young and educated team is the hardworking attitude that group members always bring to the workplace. Their eagerness shows in their desire to learn and improve themselves, as individuals and as a team.

We were trying to conduct an experiment that would observe the feeding 

behaviours of Oreochromis shiranus when presented with three different 

types of food. floating chinese pellets, a sinking malawian feed and Maize bran.

Maize bran, which is just leftover corn husks, is commonly fed to Tilapia here. 

Fish Node is the group that you approach when you need to get something done. The processing time to scan a simple document or arrange a ride was reduced from a week, sometimes indefinitely, to a couple minutes. I've stopped asking the department for things and go directly to the Fish Node. I’m happy to be working with such a tight knit group, And they really are a tight knit group; sharing a ridiculously small office space between a dozen people may not be an ideal situation but somehow they make it work.

Standard weight and length procedure before the start of our experiment.

Thomas and I are spoiled because we share an office to ourselves. It might be for the best because we really start to stink when it gets hot in the afternoon. We need to get a fan… That’s one of those indefinite tasks the department said they would do for us.

We wanted to be able tell the fish apart from each other so we bought 

necklaces and used the beads for dorsal fish tags.

It doesn’t take a general manager to know that a team abundant in youthful vigour might seriously lack in practical experience. This is one of the challenges that the Fish Node faces. On one side I really value a group that provide opportunities for young scientists, work experiences are invaluable stepping-stones that help lead to a successful career. They help prevent that catch-22 that I hear all too often, “How can I get into my field when an entry level job requires five years of experience?”.

These solid colours were easy to distinguish in the tanks. Things got a little confusing

when we started making multicolour tags. We had a long debate on how to position our 

cameras to capture what we wanted to see. We found they may not have been in the

best position after all. Learn from your mistakes.

On the other side, these opportunities must focus on guiding recent graduates in the right direction. The development of things like critical thinking, proper scientific method, organization, and so on are extremely important for young scientists. Being led astray can be detrimental to the development of these skills and the quality of work that future scientists will produce.

Presenting the dream team @ Bunda Campus Aquaculture

Let me go to my Canadian roots and talk about hockey for a second. I follow the Winnipeg Jets as a casual religion. After making the playoffs last year the team had a disappointing season this year, all but finishing in the league’s cellar. Not a single Canadian team will make a playoff appearance this year, a truly miserable season for us Canadian sheep, “cough cough” I mean fans. It’s probably best if we just cancel springtime hockey.

A quick prick and then into the bucket for a relaxing salt bath. We don't 

want any instances of fungal infections. I think the stress of a new

environment and being handled was too much for these guys. 

Hockey analysts love discussing the topic of leadership in the locker room. They say “You got to have those veteran guys to show the young guns how to put the puck in the opponents net and keep it out of their own”. They love talking about it because it’s intangible, and really subjective, but there’s also truth in their arguments. Winnipeg lost a bunch of their veteran players in the offseason to make room for their up and coming prospects. In doing so they made themselves one of the youngest teams in the league. The team has a lack of experience at the NHL level and it shows in the inconsistency of the team’s results.

Now presenting our beautifully bedazzled
Oreochromis shiranus. (Tilapia)

 Now I’m sure you can see where this is going, so many organizations operate with the same dynamic as an NHL hockey team, or any sports team for that matter. Metaphorically I think the Fish Node would do well to bring in some of these veteran guys or girls with playoff experience who can lead by example.

 Currently the group is focusing on running experiments and producing scientific publications. These are difficult goals to achieve when “veteran” doctoral candidates and post doctorates are missing from the team. These are the people who are further in their career but eager to make a name for themselves by producing reputable work.

I think it’s time to introduce the idea of science and cake like substances here in the LUANAR aquaculture department. For those who aren’t aware of science and cake like substance meetings they originated in the Phytoplankton lab at Dalhousie University. Every week the members of the lab would be assigned a scientific article to read. On Friday afternoon we would come together to discuss the validity of the scientific paper, all while we enjoyed some cake like substances. You learn very very quickly that good science is always knowing and testing your assumptions. Thank you Hugh for that piece of invaluable advice. 

Job well done, think we deserve a coke

The long weekend was a great time for reflecting on my first two months in Malawi. Thomas was working in the field for the first couple days and then his girlfriend arrived in the second half of the weekend. I was able to make it to a local reggae concert, bar hop, minibus travel to Lilongwe, visit with some other Canadian interns in Lilongwe, walk to the Bunda fish farm and then finish off the weekend by watching Jurassic World on my laptop. 

My bar hopping led to one good conversation about community engagement, in particular with a Malawian fellow named Paul. Paul works for a charitable organization that fundraises in the USA and dedicates the funds towards increasing the standard of living for impoverished Malawians. He says Malawi has big issues with receiving donated items that have no practical uses in the country. Baseball equipment was the specific example he gave me. That’s great but they don’t play baseball out here. I can just imagine wooden baseball bats being used for fire wood.

He also told me things that didn’t seem as obvious. He said there’s an enormous demand for learning materials but receiving donated books from America isn’t always all that helpful. The children in Malawi don’t relate to the material found in American learning materials.

 

Conference day was upon us. This was the final wrap up for the 

Agricultural Technology Transfer program between China, 

Malawi, Uganda, and the UK. these fancy building are beside

the Malawi parliament. They must be used to host the politicians

that come visit Malawi.

During this conversation he told me that I should get more involved with communities and to build relationships with the people. I one hundred percent agreed; I need to get out and see how aquaculture is actually being practiced in Malawi. He told me one of the best ways to get involved is to just bring a football to a local community and get the farmers playing. I can do sports and I hope to develop aquaculture in Malawi so I’ll try giving it a shot.

 

Even I decided to wear something a little fancier. Different 

than my usual shorts, flip flops and sports shirt getup.

The panel at the conference was incredibly diverse 

with people from so many different parts of the world. 

Stage two involves asking to see the farmer’s land and suggesting we try allotting a plot to aquaculture practices. The issue with this is that I only have a short time in Malawi. This would need to be a long-term project that the Fish Node or another organization would oversee after my departure. Otherwise, without added guidance, new fish farmers risk being led astray from success, sounds familiar.

I pasted a link to a news story that came out of the conference

at the end of this blog post, for anyone interested.  

My Canadian friends in Lilongwe had another idea. They suggested I start reaching out to outlets that have an audience interested in aquaculture and fisheries. This might involve doing interviews, giving presentations, writing articles for newspapers and aquaculture magazines. Who knows what might come of that, but it could be fun, and it would allow me to start chasing my older sister in newspaper mentions. She’s probably already featured in well over a hundred articles by this point. You better hope you make it into the Olympics for those extra newspaper articles Leah or I’ll be cutting your lead very quickly.

https://luanarbunda.wordpress.com/2016/03/15/feed-remains-a-challenge-in-the-aquaculture-industry/