So what does one need to pack for a 5-week scientific trip, 4 of which are on a sail boat? Clearly I couldn’t bring everything I would have liked. Also much of the dive gear I would need is provided (regulator and BC) as are the materials for sampling and storing the coral samples were to collect. But still, in packing for Tara, I was highly concerned about space, so I devised a plan under the assumption that I would have no access to civilization for 4 weeks… oh wait that’s true. So here is a list of my gear and comments on many of them. Noticeably lacking is a rain jacket (face palm), but thus far I think I this was a good standard list and would have been even appropriate for a longer trip.

Electronics

Can’t really travel these days without a ridiculous assortment of things that can get fried in seawater and are really expensive. I tried to limit mine to just a few but it kept adding up so in the end it’s just 10 things. Had this been my husband’s blog it would be considerably more, so I am feeling smug.

1. Laptop with charger. Ahh my lemon Mac lap. Clearly I had to bring it but this POS has windows office crash relatively commonly and its key board loves to stop working for no reason…see spare mouse. Had to buy this POS last year when we were in Curacao and mine was stolen by some a****** who broke into our house and took all the electronics and my wallet from the main room.
2. Hard drive for backing up all my stuff from Tara and that includes all my stuff from my desktop back home sans my Next Gen Sequencing libraries. So I can work and complete all those papers and revisions that are outstanding….yeah time to work on papers!
3. iPad for reading in bed mostly, with many recently-acquired YA books about various kinds of magicians and mythical creatures! Downside…doesn’t help with finishing those manuscripts.
4. iPhone which apparently now is just an expensive paper weight in my gear cause I have no service. Will be important again when I return to the US I guess.
5. Two USA-to-Euro converters ’cause why pack one when two are better?
6. Noise cancelling headphones with extra batteries and cords for engine noise and French lessons. C’est bon!
7. Dive watch with the necessary instructional manual because last time I dove in Hawaii all it said was “wet” the whole time and didn’t record a single dive. To the company who made that computer…really?…really really?.. why is that even a setting?  
8. Headlamp for walking around at night. Shit’s dark in the middle of nowhere.
9. Spare mouse for crappy laptop (see number 1).
10. Digital camera. An oldie but a goodie. Ended up donating my flash card to the Tara underwater cameras so currently is useless. Hello iPhone.

Luggage and Gear

Like any good expedition, this trip was a great excuse to buy even more kit and gear to take up space and collect dust in my garage and lab for 11 months of the year. For example, item #one was an item I have wanted for many years, but had no reason to plop down the $140 (actually $98 thank you end-of-the-summer sale) in cash for. But hey…I’m on a boat so any gear needs to be water proof and relatively small right?, so cha-ching!  

1. One super hot and stylish 45 liter ‘Bottomless Pit’ duffle bag from Patagonia (cue hand wringing). Fully water proof! Shoulder backpack straps for easy carrying through airports! Sea blue and oh so shiny! Got a crap ton of stuff in it, including my full size fins, people. Its name ran true as it did seem bottomless.
2. Timbuktu personally designed laptop case. Had one of these given to me in 2005 by my father in law. It never died and was still is in amazing shape after spending some time at the bottom of the sea (whoops) and in a cooler filled with fish (double whoops). So this last year I got a new one that I designed myself. Note to future buyers, go with the Velcro covers…my clothes and my couch are destroyed.  
3. Mask, fins, booties, and gardening gloves for diving. While most the gear is provided, I’m just not comfortable diving without these very personal items. I like to know that I won’t have a leaky and foggy mask or weak-ass fins that are gonna give me leg cramps or worse fall off in any current.
4. 3mm Scuba Pro wetsuit. Had to get a new one after 7 years of wearing the other one and constantly complaining that I needed a new one cause mine was jacked from hundreds of hours underwater. Now I can’t complain about it, right Ryan and Deron?
5. Two pairs sunnies (sunglasses, mate), croakies (to keep said glasses on neck or afloat), and a case to store them in the event I throw something on them or have my bag unceremoniously thrown on the boat.
6. 1 pair eye glasses that if they break I’m screwed.
7. Mechanical pencils and sharpies (required science gear).
8. Blue nitrile gloves (see above parenthetical statement).
9. Hair brush and many hair ties to lose in the ocean (ladies and dudes with man buns you know what I am talking about).
10. As Zapphoid recommends, 1 towel to dry oneself and double as a blanket and other things (see Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy).

Eating dinner with the crew

Toiletries

1. Sunscreen for keeping the cancer at bay.
2. Hippie biodegradable toothpaste for keeping the bad breath and cavities at bay…tastes horrible.
3. Face lotion, which I probably won’t use till Moorea.
4. Lip balm.
5. A thousand kinds of decongestant and anti-diarrhea meds cause well…the tropics…see section on viral diseases below.
6. Body lotion, which in retrospect is likely unnecessary given the humidity.

Clothes

1. 5 pairs Patagonia travel chonies (underpants, gringos) which are washable and easily dried. Don’t travel without these ladies.
2. 3 swim suits, two of which are Patagonia-made and they should sponsor me ’cause I buy all their stuff and even though the stuff’s expensive it’s really worth it. I buy the same damn swim suit every field season and it rocks for serious underwater work. No messy or uncomfortable straps and can take my hard wear and tear.
3. 5 t-shirts (probably too many).
4. 3 tank tops (ditto).
5. 3 pairs of shorts: 1 nice, 1 water use, 1 for daily wear.
6. 2 pants: 1 nice for meeting with important people, 1 for cool nights and morning.
7. 1 pair of tights. I found that traveling in these is very comfortable, warm, and easy.
8. 1 skirt for fancy night and attempting to look respectful…probably failing.
9. 2 long-sleeved technical fabric shirts for cool nights and bug repellent.
10. 1 Patagonia R-1 technical fleece jacket. Have worn everyday since I got here.  
11. 1 old manky Stanford sweatshirt. Can’t go anywhere without this baby, even though its older than most of you reading this blog. My dad bought it for me in 1998 when I got into Stanford for graduate school. It’s like my safety blanket and has been to every continent sans Antarctica with me. Many photos of me in the field show me in this POS. It’s ripped to shreds at the cuffs and is not warm at all anymore, but it does serve as a shield from the tropical cold after a dive and keeps the mossies (mosquitos, people), sand flies, and other nasties that want a piece of me from getting a bite.  

Moai and Tara

Scientific tangent: Zika virus

Since I am a scientist that studies viruses, perhaps this blog should have something useful in it. So here’s an educational tangent, about Zika. Zika virus is one of the diseases that I aim to prevent by wearing long shirts and pants while working in the tropics. I’ve already got a few tropical diseases (amoebic dysentery being the most recent and wow did that suck) but for the most part have been lucky. Yet many researchers who travel to and of course the people who live in the areas we work are exposed to many serious tropical viral diseases, the most currently notorious of which is Zika virus. Zika is an arbovirus in the viral family Flaviviridae that includes Dengue and West Nile.

Zika virus was originally discovered in African monkeys in the 1940’s by people looking for Yellow Fever. Although all the most recent discussions of Zika have focused on Brazil, and although the origin of the disease is Africa in where there were small outbreaks since the 1950’s, the first major Zika outbreak was on the island of Yap in the South Pacific in the late 1990’s where it infected a large majority of the inhabitants. Since I don’t have access to the internet I can’t give you any numbers; clearly I’ve become too dependent on Wikipedia. But this major outbreak outside of Africa was probably due to transmission of the virus from its native African mosquito (Aedes egypti) to other more urban-style and broadly prevalent mosquitos like Aedes albopictus.

But the second outbreak was in Moorea, the French Polynesian island that Tara will land at in October and where my lab’s recent research on coral reef viruses and bacteria is focused. When the outbreak occurred in Moorea, it was first thought to be a nasty strain of dengue fever or West Nile, two other mosquito borne viral diseases with the similar symptoms of high fever, rash, and severe nerve and joint pain. Again, like on Yap, a large portion of the population got the disease in Moorea, and it was severe enough that people sought treatment at the local hospital, which was overwhelmed. It wasn’t until the 2015 Brazilian outbreak that people realized in retrospect that the outbreak in Moorea was not dengue.  

Effects and Treatment of Zika

Two major complications of this nasty disease are birth defects and neurological issues that are long-lasting. One of the researchers I met in Moorea had been afflicted with the virus in 2009 (I think) and she still suffers from partial paralysis in her left leg. My cousin in Dominican Republic got a similar symptom from West Nile. This is symptom is called Guillain-Barré (French pronunciation) disease and includes a variety of neurological signs and symptoms. For those who are curious, a sign of a disease is something that is visual like a rash, but a symptom is something that is recorded like fatigue or malaise. Anyways, remember, at the time of the Moorea outbreak, Zika was not rediscovered yet and so data were not taken on the number of children and adults or their signs and symptoms that were associated with this outbreak. But just last year, however, the World Health Organization started using the local doctors on French Polynesia to determine if the outbreak then also caused an outbreak of microcephaly in Moorea and Yap as it has been shown in Brazil. Since the population of these small Polynesian islands is very low, the doctors generally know almost all the local residents, so this kind of work can be done. To my knowledge it is unclear what the results of these outbreaks were in those two islands, but based on the 4 different and very large signs I saw at the Easter Island airport, it’s very clear people are concerned here. And they should be, as this new disease can be very serious to adults and pregnant mothers. Scientist have also found that it can be transmitted in bodily fluids such as blood and also sexually transmitted. Research on Zika has been very fast paced, and just recently a receptor that is unique to the virus was discovered, so hopefully we’ll have a vaccine soon. At the same time, methods to prevent spread of the virus have been using symbiotic bacteria that infect the mosquitos has not only been developed but actually used in urban areas in USA. However, taking personal protections to prevent breeding of and bites from mossies are the most essential way to keep Zika at bay.

Tally:

22 hours of travel: one car, three planes, one taxi, one hike, one boat trip.

4 whacks to the head on my hatch.

1 face plant on the deck.

1 beer.

At least 10 cups of coffee.

1 amazing fish stew.

Getting there

So here I am, on the Tara Expedition. When I started this blog it was 7pm last night and the crew was returning from some much needed shore leave and exercise. They have been at sea for two weeks straight so it’s not surprising they want to stretch their legs. The flights here were mostly easy – many, but easy. My first flight was PDX-Dallas, and we were delayed, leaving me only minutes to pee and buy food before boarding onto the new flight to Santiago. That flight was long but a redeye, so I got at least 4 hours of sleep and got to watch two Marvel movies. Um the X-men movie kind of sucked. How is that even possible?

Bad movies about mutants aside, Chile was a brief but pleasant stop over. I’ve been to Chile before on holiday with Andrew when we toured the southern Torres del Paine National Park and volcano district. Even the two-hour layover reminded how nice and laid back the Chilean people were. The airport was lovely and easy to navigate even with my super crappy Spanish. I longed to spend more time in Chile but that will have to wait till another day.

The flight to Easter Island was surprisingly long – almost six hours; a good reminder how remote this place it. The flight was also remarkably rough. I’ve crossed the Pacific numerous times, and each time there is some turbulence, but that had to be the most intense and sustained turbulence I’ve experienced in a long time. It actually got a bit frightening at one point but the calm of the flight attendants made it seem pretty standard.

Once we arrived into Easter Island / Isla de Pascua / Rapa Nui, I met up with another Taranaut Calixte from Brittany, France, who will be working on the plankton side of the work. He is a young plankton researcher who will be doing a bulk of the water filtering with Guillaume B (there are two Taranauts named Guillaume). One of Tara’s main missions is to catalogue the various plankton communities across the sea. Guillaume told me they have already sampled over 60 sites on his watch. We waited for Calixte’s bag in vain, as his connection was so close from Miami to Santiago that his luggage did not make it. Neither did Chris Voolstra, another Tara PI and our collaborator from the Red Sea, who was delayed overnight in Frankfurt due to a whole airport shutting down due to a security breach. But we were given the bags of two other Tara folk who missed their luggage earlier in the week, so it was win win.

A Polynesian island like no other

Landing in Easter Island, I was immediately struck how different it is than the rest of Polynesia. It is not tall like the Hawaiian Islands or Tahiti or Moorea. It is rather flat with oddly short and squat cinder cones of the volcanos jutting out at the corners. Also, hearing Spanish being spoken in Polynesia is rather disarming, albeit comforting for this non-French speaker. Polynesia’s sordid history is clearly displayed when you realize that in all the islands there are many different languages spoken: English in the Hawaiian Islands, Samoa and New Zealand, French in the Southern French Islands, and Spanish here. The history of this island is strange, mysterious, and also rife with the colonial conquest issues of the past. Chile acquired Easter Island in the late 1880’s but not before many of the locals were either killed or expatriated. It was even run by Mooreans at some point, and also offered up to the British who oddly passed. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to see any of the Moai statues for which Easter Island is famous, but we we will be here a few more days and hopefully get off the boat to see some of the sites.

Onboard Tara

To get to the boat we hired a cab, and when we told him where we were he had never heard of it but figured it out from our description. Also, I had seen Tara from the air so we knew where she was moored. We had to walk our luggage down a steep ravine but it was pleasant outside and another boat was moored alongside Tara. The crew of that ship was at the dock and agreed to buzz our boat and let them know we were waiting ashore. We got picked up at the same time as many of the crew were leaving to spend the afternoon in town. I quickly and sheepishly said hello and gave the required 2-cheek kisses. But then we were rushed off to the boat.

Once on board I wasn’t sure what to do with myself (I still don’t, which is why I am writing this). I image I will feel like for some time until I get my bearings and some directed science tasks. I did meet the captain, Sam, and keeper of the house Marion, immediately. Marion showed me my room, and I hastily unpacked my seasick meds and took 2 before I could succumb. My room is quite sizable and my decision to pack lightly was unnecessary really as there is quite a bit of free storage space.

The boat is really large but the seas here are quite rough, and so we are rocking pretty good. I hung out with another scientist, Emilie Boisson, on the back deck for a few hours, and we talked about the project and some logistics while occasionally laying down on the sea pads to feel better (she was slightly sea sick, too). The air is quite cool and that is nice. I was evening wearing my sweater and pants to stay warm most of the night.

After a while I realized how tired I was (only got about 5 hours of sleep and in a plane, so not good sleep), and so I took a short 1-hour nap. I felt remarkably well after that and even began this blog in the cabin without getting seasick (knock on wood). Dinner was started by Marion and Sam and when I asked if I could help they told me to start drinking beers. Now that’s a task I can do. Dinner was served quite late, around 8 (how European), and really excellent, ling cod (I think based on her description of the fish and its taste and texture) and vegetable curry stew with brown rice and salad. I ate just a little for fear of getting sick (no one wants to barf curry, much alone fish curry), but I wanted like three humongous plates of that stew. I hope all the meals are as amazing.

After dinner I was briefed on some of my duties. As all members of the crew, I am responsible for lunch and dinner duties as well as night watch. Tasks for meals include service (setting the table and serving people), dishes (self-explanatory), and cleaning up. ‘Watch’ is an hour long duty everyone does each night. This essential job requires that you scan the instruments for issues like coming off our safe mooring site (not good), the dinghies or lines on the deck getting screwed up (bad), water in the instruments (very bad), and fire (really really bad). If any of these things happen then I relinquish any responsibility to someone else. For example, if our boat comes off its anchor or drifts too far into a danger zone I wake up Nico, who by my understanding is the second in command. If the wind speeds get above 25 knots (it was around 17-21 during my watch) then I wake up Nico. If there are any water or fire alarms, then I… you guessed it… wake up Nico. The only thing I can do on my own is close the hatches if it begins to rain. All in all, not a bad job, and the hour went quickly, but thank god I took that nap ‘cause I was pretty knackered. I got an early watch, so luckily I could sleep all night after 11pm. I think that was pretty kind of them. In retrospect, I wish I had brought my sweatshirt to watch and also peed beforehand. The only incident during my watch was me eating it on the deck when I tripped over a line while I was checking out a strange noise which ended up being two crew fixing something at the bow. I guess it was a good early lesson to learn… always look at where you are stepping on the deck cause there is a ton of things on it to make you fall down.

On my first post I declared that I would write about marine mammals, but things have changed since then and now I hope you also welcome posts about the microbiology of elephants. To make the transition easier I will show you a picture of a baby elephant.

Baby Asian elephant at the Elephant Breeding Center in Chitwan

Why I am studying elephants?

I was lucky enough to be given an NSF GRIP award. The goal of GRIP is to partner students with federal agencies. A great opportunity for me since one of my goals has been to work at the Smithsonian. I looked for researchers at the Smithsonian that were taking GRIP students and working with viruses. The lab that peaked my interest was at the Smithsonian National Zoo and works on elephant endotheliotrophic herpes virus (EEHV), a herpesvirus that was detected as fatal only in 1995. Since then about eight different types of EEHV have been detected, but EEHV1 is the most pathogenic. This virus is specifically deleterious to young elephants and can progress to death within 1-7 days after symptoms arise. It has mostly been found in Asian elephants, but there have been some accounts of EEHV African elephant infections.

The project

My project sounded pretty amazing. I would go to the Smithsonian to get some molecular biology training and then fly to Nepal, live for 4 weeks in Chitwan National Park, and check elephants for EEHV; thus saving the baby elephants!!! To sample elephants I will take trunk wash samples since its one of the most effective ways to test elephants for this virus. Basically, a veterinarian pours some saline (salt and water) down an elephants trunk and the mahout instructs the elephant to blow it back out into a container.

Reality

After a two week training at the Smithsonian, I packed up my molecular and fieldwork bags and landed in Kathmandu, Nepal. My plan was to collect samples the week I landed. Two and half weeks later and I just collected my first set of trunk wash samples. I declared them the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in Nepal. Not that Nepal is not a beautiful country (e.g. picture below), just that the hurdles to get these trunk washes illuminated my tubes of samples with a magical essence.

Rhino making its way to the Rapti river in Chitwan

The struggle

In addition to working with the Smithsonian, I also wanted to develop my fieldwork skills. So why not attempt fieldwork on a topic I just learned, on field techniques I am not trained to do, in a country where I don’t speak the language, and where electricity is sparse. Needless to say many problems occurred, from permits, to miscommunication about the support available to me in the field, and socioeconomic problems.

While I have been able to manage many of the problems because of the help of local Chitwan people and the support from NTNC, the socioeconomic aspect of this experience has been the most difficult and thought provoking. I think I used the word “socioeconomic” in almost all the proposals I wrote on this project, but I had a limited understanding on how my project could affect the economy or society in Chitwan’s elephant industry. I thought my research would provide a free healthcare service to the elephants of Nepal and people would be mostly enthusiastic about my study, right? Wrong.

I was advised to work with elephants that are privately owned, which are mostly used for tourism. While I have not spoken with all the owners, I have talked to some of the major members in the committee and the consensus from the ~45 elephant owners has been that my study would be a burden to them both economically and socially. Why do they think this, you ask? Their hesitance comes from a previous study conducted to survey elephants with Tuberculosis (TB). A bacterial disease that infects many mammals including humans and elephants and is transmitted through the air.

I was told that elephants that were diagnosed with TB could no longer partake in tourist activities (to avoid transmitting TB to people) and were not allowed into the forest (to avoid transmitting TB to the wildlife) until the elephants were treated for TB. Now it is seen as an economically poor decision to have scientist look for a pathogen in their elephants, because they risk losing money from tourism and are forced to treat their elephants. These consequences were especially troubling, because besides the diagnosis their animals looked otherwise healthy. Also, a positively diagnosed animal may be seen in the community as inferior and may decrease the animal’s value.

My solution 

The elephant owners protested that if a diagnosis of an illness is made then the scientist must also provide a solution and treatment. However, I can not provide these resources. Instead I tried to provide education about EEHV to elephant owners. For instance, TB is not like EEHV and should not affect the owners economically. EEHV has not been shown to be transmissible to humans or other animals, so tourism should not be affected. If an adult elephant was diagnosed with EEHV they do not need to be treated, but it is important to know that they can transfer the virus to a calf.

Although, mostly (and I mean mostly) all the elephant owners are skeptical about my research there was enough of them that supported my study; hence the picture of my beautiful sample collection.

Elephant trunk wash samples.