Seagrass & Turtle Grazing

I was delighted to be requested to provide an article for Seagrass Watch magazine. The articles is published in the November issue. You can download the issue from their site (my article is on page 6) or download directly from the Seagrass Watch site (big pdf of 22MB). Enjoy the reading!

Just got back on the mainland. Last month we succesfully set-up a large experiment on Derawan to look at interactive effects of hydrodynamics & turtle grazing on seagrasses. This involved building 30 cages and 15 large underwater wave-bunkers for which we almost used al the sand from the nearby sand spit. To determine the location of the plots we used an unmanned aerial photo plane. A small disaster happened and   Read More ...

And were back! To give you an idea of what we did before travelling to our remote fieldwork site, here’s a (simplified) checklist: Arrange research & travel permit, KITAS, letters for governors, certificate of good conduct police (10 trips, at least 3 days) Give presentation at World Delta Summit & follow EcoDynamic Design workshop Buy all research equipment (60 kg) from small shops all around Jakarta, transport this on the   Read More ...

  After a week of CERF-ing (Conference of the Coastal & Estuarine Research Federation) in Daytona Beach, Florida, USA, I was totally saturated with new knowledge. So a great time to go out to the field & spend a day searching for Florida seagrasses near Sebastian Inlet. Lori, our guide never saw the seagrass in such turbid & low biomass conditions and even when snorkeling in knee deep water we couldn’t   Read More ...

I guess I have to rewrite my paper now.. : Thanx to by my not-scientist boyfriend that send me the link on Discovermagazine.com

I am very happy to present to you: the 2nd Paper of my thesis, that has been published online in Journal of Ecology this month: check it out!:

After some long days in the field we took in the camp kitchen. Fons and Tjisse worked all night to measure the photosynthetic efficiency of the seagrasses, which resulted in this cool picture:   Check the slide show for a report of our last week of research in Shark Bay. Tjisse, Fons and Leon left after 2 weeks and because we had already finished the research (and our research budget:   Read More ...

Beautiful seagrass patterns of Sharkbay: Let the fieldwork begin! The team: Laura, me, Leon, Fons & Tjisse above the seagrass patterns     The seagrass leaves of Amphibolis are still full of red pigment after the winter period and make a really beautiful underwater panorama..We were very lucky with the weather and could work in extremely calm waters. In September the water temperature is between 18 and 20 C and   Read More ...

Before starting the real work we spend a week preparing the field expedition. This included a medical test, x-rays, discussing our plans with John and Di from UWA (University of Western Australia), arranging a camper, the necessary permits etc. Jennifer Verduin was so kind to host Laura and me in Perth. And we also had a nice evening with Paul and his family.   We surprised the hardware store assistant   Read More ...

Time for some fieldwork! This time not in Indonesia but 7 hours flying further east in Sharkbay, Australia! Together with Laura Govers, Tjisse van der Heide, Leon Lamers and Fons Smolders and researchers for the University of Western-Australia we will investigate the driving mechanisms behind the unique seagrass patterns of Shark Bay (picture below). Recently, van der Heide et al. demonstrated that banded spatial patterns in seagrasses (France) resulted from   Read More ...

Last year I met Teresa Alcoverro and Rohan Arthur at the Turtle Symposium in India were we discovered that our research had a hudge overlap; we were both doing comparable work on ecosystems with very high densities of green turtles and declining seagrasses, and we only found this out just then. My lastest MS about habitat destruction by green turtles is in an advanced stage, so time to present my results at the lab   Read More ...

The Radboud University has recently updated it’s “virtual classroom” with interesting microscopy pictures of tropical seagrasses and other submerged water plants, check it out, (Thanx Liesbeth Pierson) There is also a movie in the virtual classroom (in dutch only) to explain students what kind of research we do at the department of Environmental Science .

Although this animal is already been found in 1996, this giant Archelon ischyros Turtle fossil of 70 million years old keeps impressing me.                       Its “flipper-span” reaches 4.9 meters and its shell 4 meters across. Imagine snorkeling next to this this turtle. Did these ancient already graze on seagrasses? Probably not, it had a leathery carapace, and therefore this turtle seems   Read More ...

Update 1-6-2011: STUDENT RECRUITMENT CLOSED: both internship positions taken I have 2 MSc. student internship opportunities available with fieldwork in Indonesia from end of November 2011 till February 2012. Students should already have finished 1 other internship. Contact me this month if you are interested. Check for here for more info, or at the site of my University (in Dutch).

After months of blog-silence I finally have some news to share: The first paper of my Phd thesis is published in Aquatic Toxicology this month.

During our divetrip to the Similan and Surin island in the Andaman sea I found some seagrass (a Halophyla sp. >8 cross veins) growing very deep, between burrows of the shy spotted garden eels. While I know that some species are found much deeper, e.g. 50m deep (Beer et al. 1982) I was quite happy finding it as a variation to the depressing coral reef. This reef consisted of 90%   Read More ...

I just had a great time in Phuket and Trang in Thailand were the seagrass scientists of the world gathered for 11 days for the World Seagrass Conference and the International Seagrass Biology Workshop. Here a group picture of al the people joining the ISBW inside the Emerald Cave after surviving the 80 meters of darkness to enter the cave in snake-formation: Part of our Workshop was a fieldtrip were we   Read More ...

After our first meeting in Texel in 2009 our second meeting was in Samarinda, Indonesia. The university of Samarinda (UNMUL) hosted the meeting and in 2 days we were updated of the outcomes the 15 WOTRO/ KNAW Phd projects that are now running in the Mahakam and Berau river Delta, including my project. The projects within the East Kalimantan program are very diverse ranging from geological, GIS, physical geography, to   Read More ...

From May onwards it was finally time for data analysis and writing! My data folders look like these: And know its time to revise (ms 2), email the editor (ms 1), and wait for comments (ms 3). Thanx Phd comic for recognizable stories.

Before attending the symposium there were 2 obstacles to take: Waiting before it was safe again to fly from north-europe after the gigantic ash clouds following the  eruption of Eyajallajokull. And secondly, getting my businessvisa (3 days at the visa office) from the Indian Ambassy in The Hague. But the day before departure I finally received the visa and planes were flying again, so Goa, India, here I come! After 2   Read More ...