An update from our India correspondent by Rory FloodFieldwork here is an entirely different beast than one might expect, especially since I’ve never left Europe and indeed have never experienced a tropical climate. The Sunderbans coring team consists of myself; my two supervisors Prof. Julian Orford and Prof. Keith Bennett with Dr. M. Satish Kumar from QUB, along with Mr. Vincent van Walt, and Mr. Somenath Battacharryya with Ms. Kakoli Sen Sarma from the Institute of Environmental Studies and Wetland Management (IESWM) Kolkata.
We have managed, over two field seasons (November 2010 and November 2011) to obtain six cores from five islands across the Sunderbans using the percussion system of the liner sample corer and the Stitz coring system. The coring has been rather successful with cores ranging in depth from approximately four metres to ten metres in spite of the constant spectre of tigers, snakes and crocodiles that inhabit these islands. Health and safety regulations tend to devolve onto the famous and possibly patented ‘orange tiger handling gloves’ by Prof. Orford and Dr. Kumar, yes the sight of these will surely deter the most voracious beasts of the jungle! If the threat of a Russell’s Viper or the infamous King Cobra isn’t enough to unnerve the steely determination of the burgeoning earth scientist then the sight of seeing one’s dinner, an unlucky chicken, receive the chop by one of the boat crew will certainly leave one a little shaken but not too stirred. As the night sky draws nearer and the stars seem brighter, another day of coring is completed one is reminded by the words of the Irish poet and playwright Oliver Goldsmith:
“But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling;
Those poisonous fields, with rank luxuriance crown'd,
Where the dark scorpion gathers death around;
Where at each step the stranger fears to wake
The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake;
Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey,
And savage men more murderous still than they
While oft in whirls the mad tornado flies,
Mingling the ravaged landscape with the skies.
Far different these from every former scene,
The cooling brook, the grassy-vested green,
The breezy covert of the warbling grove,
That only shelter'd thefts of harmless love”.
The joys dear friends of fieldwork in the tropics, I do believe I must return to my troglodytic gin and tonic, lest it be warmed by the Bengali winter breeze. Adieu for now!
Thanks Rory – we look forward to your next posting.
