Dolphin research in the Sundarbans

Sundarbans NP, Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh

27.01.2012

During our Guide Tours trip in the Sundarbans NP, we had some visitors. On our return from a crack of dawn walk in the Kotka Forest Station we noticed a vessel by Bonbibi, our tour boat.

Bonbibi, right, and a visiting vessel

It was the dolphin research boat and this generated great excitement because the authors of the extremely useful Sundarban field guide were abroad!

Elisabeth & Rubaiyat Mansur

Apart from happily posing for photos they were also quite willing to sign our copies, to show us around and chat about their research. They were spending 2 months of this boat together with other researchers monitoring the dolphins. This for the Bangladesh Cetacean Diversity Project (BCDP), banner shown below. 

David chatting with Elisabeth

Note how she is balancing, this trick was also played by her husband…If I had done the same I wouldn’t have been left with very wet socks.

Rubaiyat showing off the toilet

Mind you, the compartment to the left of the rudder is now used for storage but used to be the kitchen. Currently, they have a two ring gas cooker, somewhere else.

Another excitement, their 17 month old son was on board too!

The youngest passenger

 Back to their dolphin research; they photograph their sightings as this helps enormously with their identification.

The tools of their trade

Also, the pilots of all the Guide Tours boats monitor the dolphins on their trips. On the last day of our return voyage to Khulna they logged in 34 sightings. I’ve only seen a few splashes, never a glimpse of a fin!

Last page in the sightings book

The commonest species was PG (Platanista gangetica) the Ganges River Dolphin and the OB (Orcaella brevirostris) the Irrawaddy Dolphin an endangered species.

This research reminded me of Marine Life, a very successful project whereby passengers in commercial vessels have been monitoring whales, dolphins and seabirds in the North Sea and the Bay of Biscay. I wish 

BCDP all the best for their research!

Fruit or nuts?

Khulna, Bangladesh

24.01.2012

Fruits being sold on the street

Now, here was something that I have never seen before. What was it?

The intuitive seller promptly opened one for me.

Curious seeds inside

He split one seed, deftly, peeled it and gave it to us: delicious nutty favour.

So I bought one and at the hotel took more photos and we worked on the nuts.

Another close up of the nuts

One had to get through 3 layers of skin to get at the meat, but it was worth the fiddle.

The problem was identifying it. At the hotel restaurant they plumped on kaju badam. Certainly not a caju nut! I know it well, the nut hangs from a pear shaped soft fruit. People were clearly baffled. Eventually, someone at Peter’s office came up with “jongli badam, caju badam, [kat] কাঠ badam” (badam means nut in Bengali) and this time on the Internet I hit the jackpot with jongli badam: Sterculia foetida a Malvacae. I was very pleased with this because in my devious ways I had already got the genus right via an extraordinary tree that I had seen in Singapore Botanical Gardens - Cola gigantea. It had similar seed pods.

 Never saw a  jongli badam tree which was a pity.

PSS picnic

Rajshahi, Bangladesh

22.01.2012

Protibondhi Shwanirvhor Shangstha (PSS) is a fairly well established disability organisation based in Rajshahi. It held a picnic, coinciding with our visit, in a very nice public park, a popular venue for picnics. The food was prepared and cooked on the spot, in big cauldrons set on wood fires; 32kg of rice, some meat and vegetables, plus lots of spices. There were also cucumbers.

It all started mid morning and by 2.30 pm a wonderful biriyani started being served in two sittings.

The cooking team, plus some of the participants

 Peter is the bearded one in the blue kurta, and David is the first on the left.

Preparing the cucumbers with a typical sickle shaped knife fixed on a wooden base

 In Bangladesh all the cooking is done squatting; there are no such things as cooking benches.

The cooks tending the cauldrons

One and half hour later, the cooking is going strong, nearly ready

The first sitting started at 2.30 pm. The biriyani was deftly scooped out of the cauldrons with a plate/bowl on to the plates. The sliced cucumbers were handed around in a bucket. People ate squatting with their right hand as it is the custom. Some of them, of course, stayed in their wheelchairs and quite a few had to be helped by their carers. But, I guess, they all enjoyed it as the food was delicious.

View of the people feeding under the PSS banner

 In between sittings, the dishes were washed nearby under a water tap.

Dish washing, again squatting

We ate at the last sitting together with Mohammed Sadar Ali, affectionately known as Baba, the father of many people. Baba, who is a great supporter of PSS, paid for most of the picnic. We were given chairs though. By then I had had enough coaching and practise about eating by hand, so I didn’t disgrace myself, hopefully.

End of the feast

 The cauldrons had the owner’s name, just in case. We do exactly the same with our bicycles and travelling gadgets.

After the food, prizes were handed out by Baba.

In all, everybody enjoyed the occasion; the location and the weather could not have been better. People queued up to have their photo taken some of  which can be viewed here.
If you want to know more about PSS, please contact Shoel Rana on pss2001.org@gmail.com

Fuel for thought

Sirajganj/Rajshahi/Khulna, Bangladesh

19-28.01.2012

Soon after we arrived in Sirajganj I noticed some lumpy brown stuff drying by the side of the road along the river Jamuna. Sirajganj is a bustling town in central Bangladesh and the river is a big magnet for people.

Hand pressed dung cakes

From the look of it my guess is that it is cow dung. The other domestic animals were goats.

Then in Rajshahi, a much bigger town, I saw dung being dried in the outskirts on the walls of a house which had a bit of land. In a nearby agricultural village, dung threaded on sticks was a common site.

Dung drying in a village

Still in this town, by the river Padma, there was threaded dung by a house.

Dung skewers drying by a doorway

These skewers looked much fatter than the village ones; this house had no front garden. 

Dung sticks being taken to market? Photo taken in Rajshahi.

Later, when we were travelling from Khulna to Jessore, along the road the trees were festooned with hand pressed dung patties. I managed to taker a passable picture from inside the car.

Dung with clear hand prints

So it seemed a widespread practise from the outskirts of towns to the countryside.

These sticks sell for 10 taka/kilo - the price of 2 cups of tea on a street stall.

However I never saw it being used as fuel on the street stalls. The stall workers used fire wood or some curious dark sticks which, at first, I thought were branches of some plant. See below.

Hollow fuel sticks

Their price is 80 taka/kilo. Much more expensive.

After a bit of research, I found out that these sticks are made out of rice husks and other types of waste like saw dust or even engine oil. These materials are compressed and heat treated in a sawdust briquette extruder. There is even a video about this process: Bangladesh Cooking Fuel From Rice Hulls: An Integrated Food-Energy, presented by Compatible Technology International.
CTI also has a page about this project: Biofuel from Ag-Waste heals the Earth & Bangladesh . Congratulations! I'm impressed with their work too.
Even though the sawdust briquette extruder seems to be quite expensive I hope that this bio-fuel will become afordable and replace the non-ecological use of dung as fuel.  


Apologies for posting a blog about dung, but to me not putting the dung back into the soil is s sign of great poverty and it made me rather concerned to see it. The soil needs feeding in order to maintain its fertility.

Goat fashion parade

Rajshahi, Bangladesh

21.01.2012

Rajshahi in the winter gets rather cold after sunset and people dress up in woolly hats and scarves. They feel the cold badly and so did we when riding in their open autos [electric rickshaws]. What was amazing to see was that their goats were dressed up!

Goats are the commonest domestic animal; it seems that some of them are treated as pets. Yesterday we were shown a lovely pet goat at a the house of one of Peter’s friends. We were told that she was in a bad temper [didn’t show] because she had been kept outside. This goat is allowed to share a bed and is bathed regularly. Not so much in the winter because she feels the cold and might get a fever.

Anyway, below is a selection of the most fetching apparel.

Does my bum look big in this?

Off to play cricket

Which of us looks better?

Colourful stripes for the youngster

Designer label for a  different breed

Leggings

Extra layers and a scarf for a nursing mum

 And she deserved it as she has twins!

Cows were dressed up in sacks, and in many ways they were no match for the goats. For one thing they lack the goats' expressive faces.

Bangladeshi goats are really lovely animals and I hope that you will feel as captivated as I was.

Honeycomb covered with bees

Gulshan, Dhaka, Bangladesh
16.01.2012

Gulshan is an extremely crowded area of Dhaka full of shops and swarming with people doing all kinds of things. What I wasn't expecting was the sight of a honeycomb covered with bees on the pavement!

Beautifully laid out honeycomb covered with bees

Communication was very difficult but they made it clear that if I wanted to take a picture I would have to pay the mighty sum of 100 taka [around 80 p]. About what a street vendor might make in an afternoon. Of course, I went ahead and they let me take as many pictures as I wanted. Bangladeshi men love being photographed and these honey vendors were no exception!

The guy on the left is showing off

If you look closely he has quite a few bees on his hands. The non-lungi wearers were part of the crowd that I managed to gather in no time at all. Rather embarrassing but it wasn't going to stop me.
The container on the right had honey, some strange lumps and drowned bees, see below.

Contents of the other container

While I was there they did sell some of this liquid stuff in glasses to be drunk on the spot. And one of the vendors was quite willing to demonstrate.

Dripping honey

They did offer me some, perhaps I should have tried it!

Water monitor lizards

Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve, Singapore

12.01.2012

As soon as we arrived we were shown a monitor lizard Varanus salvator sunbathing on a raft in a pond - great excitement. Soon after that we realised that they were literally all over the place, but they never failed to impress us as they are a rather large animal. They can reach 2 meters!

Large monitor lizard blocking the path

Or they were swimming in the lake while we had our lunch.

Water monitor swimming with the legs close to the body

It really didn't seem to move the legs at all, all the work was done by the tail perhaps.

Their tongues are forked and perhaps they use them to smell like the snakes do.

Tiny water monitor with its tongue fully extended

The males fight and we did see one fight; it took place in the water. Great splashes.
Also, we saw a male with a scar.

Large male with a gash in the middle of its back

Was it the result of a fight? The curious thing though is that unlike crocodiles their teeth didn't show up. Indeed they are rather a harmless reptile. However, they are carnivores; their prey is fish, birds, lizards, carrion, etc.

Water monitor with the month open. Note the nostrils are close to the end of the nose.

I have searched in the Internet for their teeth. No Luck.  If you know anything about it, do let me know.

Later, in the Sundarbans NP, we saw a water monitor by the edge of a mangrove. The same species but its skin was rather folded indicating old age.

Water monitor at low tide among the mangrove roots

It was a rather small animal by comparison to the ones in Singapore. But it caused great excitement in our boat, of course.