Fish Identification course leads to new friendships

 

In October Ofer Gon ran two held two four-day Fish Identification courses for compliance officers from the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF).These officials enforce compliance with fishing regulations promulgated under the Marine Living Resources Act (MLRA) of South Africa (act no. 18, 1998). The MLRA regulates the fishing of individual species of South Africa’s marine and estuarine fishes in the recreational, commercial and subsistence fishery sectors.

The course participants work in pairs. Participants are introduced to scientific principals such as species classification and biological similarity. They are also alerted to available resources relevant to their work, such as books and electronic databases, how to handle a fish specimen and how to use scientific identification keys. Each course comprised laboratory practical and short theory presentations, followed by hands-on work with specimens. At the end of the course the participants wrote a test to evaluate their newly acquired fish identification skills.

Some SAIAB interns also attenden the course. Amanda Gura said the course was especially helpful for her as a genetics intern. “The course has made it easier for me to be able to identify fish before even doing DNA testing,” she said.

DAFF Chief Director of Monitoring Control and Surveillance, Mr Mthoba, who also attended one of the courses, said the course was very important as Compliance Enforcement Officers must be able to identify species in the field as well as in storage, and to defend their identification. He was also thankful to SAIAB for the warm reception. “Even though we had only been here for four days; it felt like we’ve been here for much longer. Not every organisation is blessed enough to have vibrant interns and soccer teams,” he said.

Nomfundo Nkabi, who is also a SAIAB Intern, says apart from the skills she’s acquired during the course, she enjoyed meeting new people the most. “We invited some of the guys we met during the course to come watch one of the SAIAB ladies' soccer matches. The one gentleman who came appointed himself the ‘special projects coordinator’ of the team and bought the team Energade energy drinks”, she said. “The course came to an end too soon”, she adds.

At the end of each course, certificates are handed out to all course participants. To view the photos click here.

 

Andrew’s I.T Lesson of the Month: Self-Service backup for Exchange

The SAIAB Exchange server is equipped with a self-service backup feature accessible from Outlook. It’s a fail-safe which allows you to retrieve mail accidentally deleted from ‘Deleted Items’.

 This ‘Recover Deleted Items’ folder allows you to recover messages up to two months ago.

Recovering a deleted message:

 1. With Outlook open, click on the ‘Folder’ on the ribbon

 

1)      Click the ‘Recover deleted items’ icon

2)      Review the list of recoverable messages. You can sort by ‘Subject’, ‘Deleted on’ etc. by clicking on the relevant heading.

1)      Select the message (or messages) you wish to recover

2)      Click the ‘Recover selected items’ icon. The recovery window will close, and the selected message(s) will be restored to the folder they were deleted from (either ‘deleted items’ or the folder they were originally stored

 

The Economics of Happiness

Wendy Sweetman recently organised a public screening of the film The Economics of Happiness.

The Economics of Happiness is an award-winning film which gives an analysis of globalisation and its impact on our lives. The first half of the film depicts how globalisation leads to unhappiness, depression and insecurity. It shows how globalisation breeds cultural self-rejection, competition and divisiveness; how it structurally promotes the growth of slums and urban sprawl; how it is decimating democracy. “Globalisation has blurred the lines between what you need and what you want; wants have become needs,” said one of the interviewees. The film makers interviewed a variety of activists from all seven continents sharing their thoughts on how globalisation impacts our lives.

 The film shows how globalisation continues to lead to the waste of natural resources because our current economic system encourages consumerism, placing a greater dependence on natural resources. This part of the film also showed how globalisation accelerates climate change, threatens the livelihoods of those dependent on local markets, and increases conflict due to greater competitiveness. It shows how globalisation has destroyed cultures and languages around the world because people are more and more drawn to the “global language and culture”.

The second half of the film provides a solution to this “destructive” path we’re on. The film argues that we need to begin to localise our economies, politics and cultures. It spells out the policy changes needed to enable local businesses to survive and prosper. It gives examples of community initiatives that are moving the localisation agenda forward, including urban gardens in Detroit, Michigan and the Transition Town movement in Totnes, UK. It also proposes greater regulations on multinational and transnational corporations at a domestic level.

The Economics of Happiness forces you to start reflecting on the day-to-day decisions we make about the type of lives we want to live. It makes you question whether we even need all the things we are sold by big corporations. It challenges us to start thinking of ourselves as part of a greater humanity. The film shows how we can become agents of change in this world instead of contributors to the destruction of the planet. It’s definitely one of those documentaries which are an absolutely must to watch.

Long time SAIAB Honorary Research Associate, Dr Allan Connell, visits the Institute

We recently had the honour of being visited by Dr Allan Connell who has been an Honorary Research Associate for more than two decades.

Dr Connell’s relationship with relationship with SAIAB began back in the late 1980s when he was working at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) monitoring the impact of submarine outfalls on the marine environment of KwaZulu-Natal. “I was heading a team of chemists, bacteriologists and biologists and we would often find fish. We didn’t know what species they were and would send them to SAIAB for identification. Our work often involved aspects of Ichthyology, which helped to build a relationship with Phil and Elaine Heemstra together with Alan Whitfield,” he says.

Even though he did his PhD in Entomology, he had always been interested in fishing from a very young age. “After my retirement I started a culture of collecting and studying fish eggs. I collect, catalogue and identify these fish eggs. While doing this work, I came across eggs which I couldn’t identify and that’s around the time I went into DNA testing," he says. At the time there wasn’t much being done in this field in South Africa.

“I searched the internet and came across an article in New Scientist about a researcher at the University of Guelph in Canada, who was barcoding cryptic butterflies, to unravel the mystery of very distinguishable larvae on specific host plants giving rise to cryptic adults that few experts could tell apart by traditional taxonomy." He made contact with the scientist and asked whether it was possible to barcode some of his unknown species. He replied that they were in the process of sourcing funding for the launch of an international effort to barcode the fishes of the world. “They asked if I was willing to collect fish from South Africa and in exchange they would barcode my hatched larvae,"he says. Dr Connell then contacted SAIAB requesting permission to propose SAIAB as the Southern African representative on the barcoding team and his collaboration with SAIAB has taken various forms ever since.

Dr Connell doesn’t visit the Institute on a regular basis but keeps regular contact with Phil and Elaine. “I decided to come down because I had a lot of buckets and drums of species which I needed to get down here. I also came across two fish which seem to be new species. I’ve also brought some material for Phil and Elaine for the new Fishes of the Western Indian Oceans book," he says.

To see Dr Connell’s work please visit http://www.fisheggsandlarvae.com/