Mangrove count hits 1000 for the week
More mangrove planting today...
The morning was spent in the office doing civilized things on the computer. After lunch I threw the kayak into the Mexican skiff with the 50 horse motor for a short ride down the coast.
The afternoon will not be civilized.
Found the cut in the mangroves and rode the little path of water through the familiar twists and turns until I came out into the lagoon where I wanted to plant.
I pushed the skiff into the shallows until it ran aground in the black muck of the delta below the shrimp farm outlet. No more motors. Backed up so the falling tide wouldn't strand me. Threw out the anchor and then the kayak. Climbed into the kayak and began paddling, leaving the boat anchored just below the delta. Hopefully the anchor will hold. I don't want to have to chase the boat across the lagoon when I return.
Half a mile upstream in the delta the kayak is beached and I'm out on foot walking across burned out savannah. Dry season is just ending and much of coastal Belize has burned. It is the annual cycle here. The smell is comforting somehow.
Ahead are the berms for the shrimp farm. There's the drainage canal. It's silted in and over-grown. That might seem like a bad thing, but it's not entirely. The water in a silty canal spreads out, slows down and drops its' load of sediment. The plants growing in the canals suck up nitrogen. It's not conventional, but it's not a disaster.
There's a nasty layer of sediment under a thin film of clay. That's muck that never made it into the lagoon.
Let's trap a bit more.
First site...250 mangroves planted along the silty canal edge.
Second site....150 mangroves planted across an especially shallow spot.
That's a thousand mangrove propagules planted for the week and I'm feeling pretty good. Now I know what to recommend to the farms. 
There. 1000 again.
The morning was spent in the office doing civilized things on the computer. After lunch I threw the kayak into the Mexican skiff with the 50 horse motor for a short ride down the coast.
The afternoon will not be civilized.
Found the cut in the mangroves and rode the little path of water through the familiar twists and turns until I came out into the lagoon where I wanted to plant.
I pushed the skiff into the shallows until it ran aground in the black muck of the delta below the shrimp farm outlet. No more motors. Backed up so the falling tide wouldn't strand me. Threw out the anchor and then the kayak. Climbed into the kayak and began paddling, leaving the boat anchored just below the delta. Hopefully the anchor will hold. I don't want to have to chase the boat across the lagoon when I return.
Half a mile upstream in the delta the kayak is beached and I'm out on foot walking across burned out savannah. Dry season is just ending and much of coastal Belize has burned. It is the annual cycle here. The smell is comforting somehow.
Ahead are the berms for the shrimp farm. There's the drainage canal. It's silted in and over-grown. That might seem like a bad thing, but it's not entirely. The water in a silty canal spreads out, slows down and drops its' load of sediment. The plants growing in the canals suck up nitrogen. It's not conventional, but it's not a disaster.
There's a nasty layer of sediment under a thin film of clay. That's muck that never made it into the lagoon.
Let's trap a bit more.
First site...250 mangroves planted along the silty canal edge.
Second site....150 mangroves planted across an especially shallow spot.
That's a thousand mangrove propagules planted for the week and I'm feeling pretty good. Now I know what to recommend to the farms.
Walk back out over the savannah to the kayak....oops.
Stepped on a seedling mangrove on the shore. Gotta plant one more before I go.
There. 1000 again.
The wind is behind me as I paddle out. The kayak bounces around in the front of the skiff on the last leg home.
Not a bad day at all.
posted by T. Brook Smith at 4:57 PM
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