Departure

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Thailand_Trang_locator_map.svg

With my GPS unit and sunscreen in tow, I am preparing to depart my beloved city for a month/month and a half to travel around Thailand with my father. Although the original purpose of the trip was to visit him, I have paired my Southeast Asialand excursion with a research project that is being funded by CAS's Dean's Undergraduate Research Fund. I will post about the details of the project for any interested science nerds later, but basically I am analyzing shrimp aquaculture practices in a southern Thai province called Trang. Neither my father nor I have ever been there, but when you google Trang Province Thailand, the search returns tons of photos of those stereotypical Thai rock islands covered in vegetations...

My first thought about this project is of paternalism. The nature of my study does not include making direct recommendations to shrimp farmers about how to manage their ponds, but I can't help but think about what the implications of my results could be. Clearly, aquaculture in the scorched earth method that these shrimp farmers appear to be employing damages mangrove forests. There is no way around this fact. But who am I, as a privileged westerner, to tell these Thai shrimp farmers that they should stop cultivating shrimp crops? Perhaps for some of them, the shrimp ponds are the only source of income. To someone fighting to keep food consistently on the table, the plight of the mangroves is likely to fall away behind concerns of survival. What kinds of solutions can we imagine that not only resolve the poverty of the farmer while also maintaining the integrity of the mangroves?

I think the template for this blog is stupid, but I don't have the time or the know-how to quickly change it... Thanks for reading!