Going Deep

     Yesterday we set out early to try and complete sample collection for the Palian group. Unlike the day before's ponds, these ponds were highly clustered on a peninsula to the southeast of Palian. The first pond we encountered from the sample selection was nonexistent. This is an example of a GIS error in which I created a polygon indicating the presence of a pond where there was actually only a field. Fortunately, this was the only pond that completely did not exist. The weather was awful yesterday; in the morning it was raining so hard I thought we might not be able to work. When it rains, the little side roads down which we have to drive to find most of the ponds become wet and muddy, and we do not want a repeat of the tow truck situation. Luckily, the area had better roads that where we were yesterday, and although there was some water pools, they were not deep and the ground below was well-packed.
     The people living around these ponds are always friendly. When one family saw from their covered deck that we were traipsing around in the rain, they called us over offering shelter and food. I climbed down to their pond, and when I stepped on the rickety wooden pier, my foot went through the wood inflicting minor scrapes to my upper thigh. They seemed concerned, but we decided to wash the cuts with our own water and soap, but the point here is that they do not distrust us like I would naturally distrust them if they were entering my land. This is a part of a general trend; there are not really any enclosures or fences, even around the ponds. I wonder what sort of biosecurity is present, if any. From all appearances, one could just walk up to one of these ponds and take a crap in it or dump a bunch of radioactive chemicals, and no one would ever know. I read a statistic somewhere from a customs agent at the LA shipping port where he said that only about 1% of all shrimp imports are actually tested by customs agents... SCARY!
     I saw mangroves for the first time today. From an untrained eye they do not appear to be in disrepair at all, but the ponds we were testing had obviously been created by straight up slash and burn clearing of the mangroves. While we were trying to find one of the ponds to sample, we ended up right next to the sea. The road we drove down had three ponds to our right, visible from the road, and to our left was a small embankment of mangroves that protected the road from the waves of the sea that washed right up to the wheels of the car at some points. The rain had slackened at that point, so there was mist hanging around the 'koh,' which are the typical Thai islands, and I was pretty awestruck by what was on both of sides of the car.

Mangroves on the sea, koh shrouded
in mist in the background.

     Finally, we arrived at a point where the road did not look safe anymore, so we set out on foot to find the pond that my random sample selection had indicated. The smaller side road we had located was densely covered with mangroves, and life was all around. Little crabs, birds, fish with legs (what), and all sorts of bugs and smaller plants. When we arrived at the pond, I looked out and saw an array of three that had obviously been decommissioned a long time ago because sea water flowed through one of the channels into and out of the ponds freely. Maybe I am too emotional, but I was being pulled in many directions at once. On the one hand walking through the jungle, I was so excited and brimming with misplaced pride for the structures that nature had intertwined with the earth, but then suddenly I was confronted by these ponds that just looked to me like gashes in the surface of an otherwise smooth surface.
     Despite this flagrant disregard for nature, there is hope yet. Some of the decommissioned ponds had evidence of mangrove cultivation. There are some people that recognize that nature is not the other, it is not separate from humans, and they are trying to take back what was robbed by the shrimp ponds. While driving down these side roads, I saw many people with nets and traps that they clearly employed for their own consumption purposes in the mangrove swamps and nearby sea. Although they are still harvesting from nature's bounty, these people are not destroying to consume.
     I am worried about some aspects of the study. My study parameters dictated that I only created polygons around the ponds that appeared to have aeration from the satellite imagery, but I certainly created many polygons that do not correspond to aerated ponds on the ground. The other possibility is that at the time the imagery was taken, the aeration was present and that ponds were since decommissioned. We stopped to check if the road was too soft to cross at one point and came across a man and a woman wading chest-deep in one of these ponds collecting algae, and we asked them what they had in their pond. They said fish. We had tested and collected samples from many pond that looked similar to this one. Although these figures should enter into any estimation of a nutrient budget, I am learning that the shrimp ponds are structurally much more sophisticated than these simpler fish ponds. The other problem I have encountered is with the water quality testing kits. When the nitrogen concentrations fall in the middle range, these kits are great, but at extremes I cannot tell if the kit is telling me that the nitrogen is at the highest limit of the test, or maybe even higher. These are things that I will attempt to account for when analyzing the datasets upon my return to the US.

A shrimp pond with aeration structure.
More ponds in the background
demonstrate the complexity of
these arrays

     After a long day of sample collection, we decided to test one straggler pond from the Kantang group because it appeared to be a far outlier from the rest of the ponds in the group. When we were on our way to this pond, we came across a flooded road that I waded through to make sure it was not too deep for the car to pass. This pond was at a much higher elevation than the others we had seen that generally populated lowland areas near the coast. The pond cluster that contained this pond was very sophisticated, and it was clear that a pump was bringing water up a pretty steep incline to fill the ponds, which would only add to the energy costs of producing the shrimp in those locations. I guess I do not fully understand the pricing structure for the crops of shrimps harvested from these ponds because to my eyes, the costs of creating and maintaining these ponds seems immense and illogical for the returns of the shrimp crop. I must be wrong.
     I am still trying to figure out the distributive inequalities I see surrounding these ponds. On one road, there was an array of highly sophisticated ponds that was either owned or managed by the family living in one relatively nice house. Basically right next door, however, there was another family living in a wooden hut. Why did one family benefit from this pond array and the other did not? CP foods and other large food corporations are the ones paying high prices for these shrimp, and I would assume that they have some hand in teach people how to build and maintain these ponds, but why do they choose some families over others? I do not think it has to do with land ownership because for the most part people in these areas do not have any concept of a 'deed.' Who owns the land?

     Today we are checking out of the hotel that has been our home base in Trang to go to a beach resort in Sikao, which is one of the towns that acted as a centerpoint for the 5km pond sample selection. It is a much better home base for the Kantang and Sikao group sample collections, and will also probably be much more comfortable. For today we hope to sample most of the ponds in the Kantang group, finishing Kantang tomorrow, and then completing the project by Wednesday with two days of sample collections around Sikao. This has already been an adventure more eye-opening and awe-inspiring than my words could even transmit, and I cannot wait to see what the coming days have in store.