The sweet smell of success!
Since setting off in November 2012, the East African Marine Transect team have been through and survived a verydifficultexpedition. This was a hard fought expedition, requiring everyone to dig deep into reserves at times we were not even certain we had. To say this wasn’t a pleasure cruise would be an understatement, a big one.
Moving Sushi is currently on expedition till the end of March. We are travelling up the East Coast of Africa ,by boat, doing the longest underwater transect survey across South Africa, Mozambique,Tanzania and Kenya.
For details of our latest adventure go to www.marinetransect.org , or follow our feeds on facebook and twitter
“it’s not that we use technology, we live technology “ – Godfrey Reggio
What really makes technology so fun is it’s ability to take an idea and evolve it into action. Don’t get me wrong that is probably also it’s downfall, the scope it has to be both terrific and terrifying at the same time, to be able to create an incredible idea or a terrible idea into being.
On our expedition we have two key aspects of technology that I think are the former, Stereo Video and ROV. While our boat sits in a small sate of disrepair I think this is an opportune time to explain the kind of tech we are using on the expedition and why.
Read the rest of the post at Marine Transect
Setting Sail
Currently we are sitting in a backpacker in a rather damp Durban, the boat moored and covered in all manner of paraphernalia- just hoping we will be ready to set sail on Monday, our d-d day for heading out to try and avoid hurricane season up past Mozambique. Our team is scattered far and wide, from Cape Town, to Durban to the US.
Expeditions are never an easy, no matter how much it is slightly romanticised. One comment we often get when we talk about what we are doing is “oh boy, sound’s like a amazing adventure/you are going to have so much fun/I wish I could come along “- and this is all only partly true.
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Beneath the warm coastal waters of tropical and subtropical East Africa lies some of the richest coral reefs in the world. Spanning many hundreds of kilometers they are home to an incredible array of fish communities and support millions of people living and surviving off the coastline.
Our first expedition, one of five over the next five years has seen an team of plucky andadventurous young scientists,entrepreneursand film makers travelling for four months across up the coast of East Africa collecting underwater data through diving transects. We want the data collected to be used from education purposes, high schools, universities, through to NGO, and governments and MPA managers. The users are essentially unlimited. The value is in the exposure that is across platforms, from scientific to social media and all in between. Meaningful, useful and accessible datawe think can inspiresolutions, strategies and positive and constructive outcomesfor East African coral reef fishes, where anyone can have access.
It's not a documentary on what is wrong with the East African coral reef ecosystem. It's an expedition to provide essential baseline data and solutions for management and conservation.
We envision this becoming a globally deployable strategy where each coastline or major coral reef network around the globe can be studied in such a way. A standardized and repeatablesurvey tool means it can be done year after year if need be.
This trip is not just about exploration- it is about looking at the relationship between humanity, our marine environment, science, technology and cultures in order to shift in the way we build or begin to build our conservation networks on coral reefs.
Read the rest of the post here at www.marinetransect.org