Do not try this at home! Browsing one of my favourite YouTube channels last night I stumbled across this interesting video. It's a documentary about a guy who has regularly injected himself with highly toxic snake venom for over 20 years. While it seems he's lucky to be alive, he claims that the venom has anti-aging and immunological properties, and gives him a burst of energy that lasts up to four days. He certainly doesn't look or act like a 46 year old, and claims he hasn't even had the flu for the last six or so years.
On initial viewing, it seems an incredibly stupid thing to do - handling the snakes the way he does is unbelievably dangerous (although he seems to know what he's doing) and injecting yourself with venom is even dumber - but I think it's very likely there is something to his claims. If ever there is a strong argument for urgent conservation, inventory, and research into biodiversity then this may be an excellent example of it; there are potentially hundreds of cures for major diseases to be found within nature. This is something impossible to put a dollar value on, and something we should be desperate not to lose. After all, these potentially useful biomedical resources are the result of millions of years of evolution, and once gone, may be lost forever.
The YouTube channel the video is from is really good. It is called VICE, and they produce a huge number of short documentaries on a diverse range of topics, ranging from . Here's a link to their main page if you feel like checking them out - VICE.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Sigur Ros in New Orleans
One of my all time favourite bands, Sigur Rós, is coming all the way from Iceland to do a North American tour later this year and will be playing on October 3 in New Orleans. I bought my ticket to go see them today and am excited to finally see them live! They have tons of awesome material and lots of music videos, like the awesome one below for the song Dauðalogn off their 2012 album Valtari.
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Insect Taxonomy
This semester I took my final full time class to qualify for the Master's degree at LSU, and it was my favourite class I've taken so far. The class was Insect Taxonomy and taught by Dr. Chris Carlton and Victoria Bayliss. The class material consisted of learning the life history and key characteristics for identification of over 200 total families of beetles, flies, moths and butterflies, bees and wasps, and other insect groups. We also had a lab each week where we put this knowledge into practice by identifying specimens presented to us using dichotomous keys, our notes, pictures in books and on the internet (www.bugguide.net is an excellent resource), and the guide of our teachers.
One of the main requirements of the course was to assemble an insect collection. This needed to include 150 different insect families as well as additional specimens. Unfortunately I wasn't all that stoked with my final collection, which is far from a perfect example as you can see below. However, I enjoyed the course so much I intend to start my own personal collection, while the knowledge of identifying insects I gained from the course will also be immensely important for my research, where I am currently collecting many species of fly, wasp and beetle from inside galls of Phragmites australis, such as the cool-looking beetle and wasp in this post.
One of the main requirements of the course was to assemble an insect collection. This needed to include 150 different insect families as well as additional specimens. Unfortunately I wasn't all that stoked with my final collection, which is far from a perfect example as you can see below. However, I enjoyed the course so much I intend to start my own personal collection, while the knowledge of identifying insects I gained from the course will also be immensely important for my research, where I am currently collecting many species of fly, wasp and beetle from inside galls of Phragmites australis, such as the cool-looking beetle and wasp in this post.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
My First Publication
As I'm only just beginning an academic career, I only have a couple of publications to my name so far. One of these, the first paper I had published, is particularly important to me. I'm a strong advocate for conservation of rare and endangered species, but in order for conservation and restoration programs to be successful I believe they require one key ingredient: the active involvement of landowners and the general public.
For my Honours degree at Lincoln University I was lucky enough to work with Shireen and Francis Helps, the landowners of a large section of Flea Bay, on Banks Peninsula, New Zealand. As well as being a working sheep farm, the bay is also home to the largest mainland colony of little blue penguins (Eudyptula minor) in New Zealand, with over 1200 nests. However, the Flea Bay penguins are particularly special, as they have a distinctive white edge to their flipper, which is only seen in little blue penguins from Canterbury, New Zealand, and lead to them being given the sub-species name of white-flippered penguins (Eudyptula minor albosignata). There is some confusion as to whether they should be designated a separate subspecies or not, but in either case they remain a unique organism, worthy of conservation efforts.
Whereas many other penguin colonies on Banks Peninsula (and around all Australasia) are in decline, the Flea Bay colony has been increasing in size at a great rate, largely thanks to the many years of dedicated and tireless work by Francis, Shireen, various conservation organisations, and researchers. Over the years they have done some awesome work through trapping predators, building artificial nesting boxes, caring for sick and injured penguins, and monitoring colony size. Every breeding season, Francis consistently visited 50 nest boxes every two to three days (even including Christmas), collecting data on which birds were occupying each nest (he banded each bird for easy identification), and how their nest was doing in terms of breeding success. He was kind enough to give me the 13 years of data he had collected in numerous little notebooks. My job was to put this data into a digital format, and analyse it, with the goal of finding which factors were influencing breeding success in the colony from year to year.
I collected data on trap catch numbers, fisheries catch rates, climatic conditions, nesting box habitat, altitude, distance to sea, and a few other things, using statistical models to examine how closely it was correlated to annual breeding success. As it turns out, the most important indicator of breeding success at Flea Bay is guard period length. This is the period following hatching when at least one of the chick's parents remains to guard the nest while the other seeks food at sea. It is thought that guard period length is largely dependent upon the quantity and quality of food available in the feeding grounds of the colony, and so may be a good indicator of fish stocks in the area.
The Helps also run Pohatu Tours, where you can take an awesome tour of the penguin colony, head on a sea kayaking trip, stay in the farmhouse, and walk portions of the famous Banks Peninsula track. If you ever get the chance, I would highly recommend visiting Flea Bay, or just Banks Peninsula in general.
Here is a link to my paper should you wish to read it: http://www.nzes.org.nz/nzje/new_issues/NZJEcol35_3_199.pdf
For my Honours degree at Lincoln University I was lucky enough to work with Shireen and Francis Helps, the landowners of a large section of Flea Bay, on Banks Peninsula, New Zealand. As well as being a working sheep farm, the bay is also home to the largest mainland colony of little blue penguins (Eudyptula minor) in New Zealand, with over 1200 nests. However, the Flea Bay penguins are particularly special, as they have a distinctive white edge to their flipper, which is only seen in little blue penguins from Canterbury, New Zealand, and lead to them being given the sub-species name of white-flippered penguins (Eudyptula minor albosignata). There is some confusion as to whether they should be designated a separate subspecies or not, but in either case they remain a unique organism, worthy of conservation efforts.
Whereas many other penguin colonies on Banks Peninsula (and around all Australasia) are in decline, the Flea Bay colony has been increasing in size at a great rate, largely thanks to the many years of dedicated and tireless work by Francis, Shireen, various conservation organisations, and researchers. Over the years they have done some awesome work through trapping predators, building artificial nesting boxes, caring for sick and injured penguins, and monitoring colony size. Every breeding season, Francis consistently visited 50 nest boxes every two to three days (even including Christmas), collecting data on which birds were occupying each nest (he banded each bird for easy identification), and how their nest was doing in terms of breeding success. He was kind enough to give me the 13 years of data he had collected in numerous little notebooks. My job was to put this data into a digital format, and analyse it, with the goal of finding which factors were influencing breeding success in the colony from year to year.
I collected data on trap catch numbers, fisheries catch rates, climatic conditions, nesting box habitat, altitude, distance to sea, and a few other things, using statistical models to examine how closely it was correlated to annual breeding success. As it turns out, the most important indicator of breeding success at Flea Bay is guard period length. This is the period following hatching when at least one of the chick's parents remains to guard the nest while the other seeks food at sea. It is thought that guard period length is largely dependent upon the quantity and quality of food available in the feeding grounds of the colony, and so may be a good indicator of fish stocks in the area.
The Helps also run Pohatu Tours, where you can take an awesome tour of the penguin colony, head on a sea kayaking trip, stay in the farmhouse, and walk portions of the famous Banks Peninsula track. If you ever get the chance, I would highly recommend visiting Flea Bay, or just Banks Peninsula in general.
Here is a link to my paper should you wish to read it: http://www.nzes.org.nz/nzje/new_issues/NZJEcol35_3_199.pdf
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| White-flippered penguin (Eudyptula minor albosignata) in a nesting box |
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
A Southern Spring Break
This past week was Spring Break at LSU, an entire week where the campus becomes a desolate wasteland as the majority of students head to the beaches of Alabama and Florida to party. That was what I did last year (can't believe that was a year ago already!), but this year I had too much work to do on my research project to head away for so long. However, all work and no play is boring and a good life needs balance, so I made sure I still got to do some fun stuff during the holiday, and coincidentally all of these activities seemed to have a very southern US/Louisiana theme to them.
First up on the festivities for Spring Break was a crawfish boil, which I was the host of. It was Anthony's (my late mate) idea to attempt a boil for our friends and I agreed to have it at my house thanks to the spacious courtyard and lawn. If you've never been a part of a crawfish boil before then I can tell you it is quite an experience, even if you aren't the one cooking. Crawfish are kind of like tiny crayfish and the people here in Louisiana are crazy about them. The most common way they are eaten is boiled in a spicy broth with all sorts of vegetables like corn, potatoes, celery, onions, and garlic. The contents of the boil are poured out over newspaper spread on a table and then consumed busily. Eating a crawfish involves twisting off the crawfish tail to get the meat and then pulling off the head to suck the delicious juices inside. It's a lot of effort for such a small mouthful, and your hands can smell like crawfish for days, but it's totally worth it for the awesome flavour of a good boil!
The boil itself was quite an experience. We spent the entire day driving around Baton Rouge picking up various supplies and ingredients, then started cooking them around 6:30 pm. Because we had 80 lbs of crawfish we did the boil in four separate batches. Anthony, Fallon and I shared the job of master boiler and as first-timers we were lucky to have Forrest (a former PhD student from our lab, born and raised in Louisiana) around to give us some advice on the timing and amount of ingredients. I won't give away our secret recipe online, but needless to say it had lots of excellent southern spices. It was busy work, especially the first couple of boils. The first batch was quite spicy but a little bland in flavour, while the second one was even spicier but with excellent flavour. By the end of the night we had lowered the spiciness a little, all 80 pounds plus vegetables had been eaten, and the keg of Abita Amber was dry too.
The next day, Fallon, Pradip, Bimesh and I drove down to New Orleans to spend a night at our friend's camp on Bayou Segnette. I've blogged about a trip there before for the 4th of July last year. This time we went to the birthday party of Whitney's friend at his fishing camp, went kayaking, searched for alligators while cruising in the waterways (we saw about 15), and played water fetch with a dog and toy duck. The highlight though was getting to shoot a 12-gauge shotgun. This was the first time I have shot a decently powered gun from what I can recall and it was a lot of fun. I even managed to hit my target - a Heineken bottle. Can't wait to go there again later in the summer!
The next fun part of my Spring Break was a trip to the Sherburne Shooting Range out near the Atchfalaya Basin instead of working on Friday. Our advisor (Jim) was nice enough to take Anthony and I out to shoot his guns and ammo for the entire morning. We shot about eight different guns, aiming for targets and having shooting competitions. For my second time shooting I wasn't too bad, but it does help a little when some of the guns have laser sights. The coolest gun I shot was the AR-15, the standard gun used by the US army, which you can see me firing in a photo below. The bullet leaves the barrel at 1200 m per second, and you can fire as fast as you can pull the trigger, which I imagine can do some pretty serious damage. Guns are a huge part of US culture, with almost one gun per person on average (imagine how much that increases in Louisiana...). However, as a non-citizen it's illegal for me to own a gun, so I definitely won't be buying one at the local sports store. Luckily Jim has agreed to take us out again sometime soon, this time to try clay pigeons.
To top off the southern themed week, I made a trip to the new L'Auberge Casino here in Baton Rouge. I'd heard it's pretty good so I went along with a group of friends to check it out. It was bright and loud with the sounds of pokie machines inside, but the beer was free so we stayed a while playing $3 roulette. All three of us came out with at least $20 profit each, and had a laugh as well. It finished the week on a nice note, walking out of the casino as a winner.
Now an exciting next month lies ahead. I will be running a series of experiments and doing a lot of fieldwork for my research (including a trip to the northeast; Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Maine), and my friend James is coming from New Zealand to visit for a week or so. But most of all I can't wait for this semester to be over and for summer to begin!
First up on the festivities for Spring Break was a crawfish boil, which I was the host of. It was Anthony's (my late mate) idea to attempt a boil for our friends and I agreed to have it at my house thanks to the spacious courtyard and lawn. If you've never been a part of a crawfish boil before then I can tell you it is quite an experience, even if you aren't the one cooking. Crawfish are kind of like tiny crayfish and the people here in Louisiana are crazy about them. The most common way they are eaten is boiled in a spicy broth with all sorts of vegetables like corn, potatoes, celery, onions, and garlic. The contents of the boil are poured out over newspaper spread on a table and then consumed busily. Eating a crawfish involves twisting off the crawfish tail to get the meat and then pulling off the head to suck the delicious juices inside. It's a lot of effort for such a small mouthful, and your hands can smell like crawfish for days, but it's totally worth it for the awesome flavour of a good boil!
The boil itself was quite an experience. We spent the entire day driving around Baton Rouge picking up various supplies and ingredients, then started cooking them around 6:30 pm. Because we had 80 lbs of crawfish we did the boil in four separate batches. Anthony, Fallon and I shared the job of master boiler and as first-timers we were lucky to have Forrest (a former PhD student from our lab, born and raised in Louisiana) around to give us some advice on the timing and amount of ingredients. I won't give away our secret recipe online, but needless to say it had lots of excellent southern spices. It was busy work, especially the first couple of boils. The first batch was quite spicy but a little bland in flavour, while the second one was even spicier but with excellent flavour. By the end of the night we had lowered the spiciness a little, all 80 pounds plus vegetables had been eaten, and the keg of Abita Amber was dry too.
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| Three labmates |
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| The broth |
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| Crawfish boiling |
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| The three master boilers |
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| Let the feast begin! |
The next day, Fallon, Pradip, Bimesh and I drove down to New Orleans to spend a night at our friend's camp on Bayou Segnette. I've blogged about a trip there before for the 4th of July last year. This time we went to the birthday party of Whitney's friend at his fishing camp, went kayaking, searched for alligators while cruising in the waterways (we saw about 15), and played water fetch with a dog and toy duck. The highlight though was getting to shoot a 12-gauge shotgun. This was the first time I have shot a decently powered gun from what I can recall and it was a lot of fun. I even managed to hit my target - a Heineken bottle. Can't wait to go there again later in the summer!
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| Whitney |
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| At a crab fishing camp |
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| 6 am fog on the bayou |
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| Inside Whitney's camp |
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| Pradip hanging at Whitney's camp |
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| Small alligator |
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| Nailed it |
The next fun part of my Spring Break was a trip to the Sherburne Shooting Range out near the Atchfalaya Basin instead of working on Friday. Our advisor (Jim) was nice enough to take Anthony and I out to shoot his guns and ammo for the entire morning. We shot about eight different guns, aiming for targets and having shooting competitions. For my second time shooting I wasn't too bad, but it does help a little when some of the guns have laser sights. The coolest gun I shot was the AR-15, the standard gun used by the US army, which you can see me firing in a photo below. The bullet leaves the barrel at 1200 m per second, and you can fire as fast as you can pull the trigger, which I imagine can do some pretty serious damage. Guns are a huge part of US culture, with almost one gun per person on average (imagine how much that increases in Louisiana...). However, as a non-citizen it's illegal for me to own a gun, so I definitely won't be buying one at the local sports store. Luckily Jim has agreed to take us out again sometime soon, this time to try clay pigeons.
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| Shooting handguns |
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| The range |
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| AR-15 action |
To top off the southern themed week, I made a trip to the new L'Auberge Casino here in Baton Rouge. I'd heard it's pretty good so I went along with a group of friends to check it out. It was bright and loud with the sounds of pokie machines inside, but the beer was free so we stayed a while playing $3 roulette. All three of us came out with at least $20 profit each, and had a laugh as well. It finished the week on a nice note, walking out of the casino as a winner.
Now an exciting next month lies ahead. I will be running a series of experiments and doing a lot of fieldwork for my research (including a trip to the northeast; Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Maine), and my friend James is coming from New Zealand to visit for a week or so. But most of all I can't wait for this semester to be over and for summer to begin!
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| The new L'auberge casino/hotel |
Friday, February 22, 2013
Christchurch: Two Years On
It's now been two years since the devastating February 22nd earthquake which hit Christchurch, destroying many homes and businesses, and taking the lives of 185 people. Thankfully the magnitude and frequency of aftershocks are both decreasing (see the Canterbury Quake Live site), along with the chance of there being any more major aftershocks. Some parts of the city have been fixed, but others are still in disarray. On my visit back home over Christmas I drove along some bumpy roads littered with potholes, particularly in the eastern suburbs by the Avon River and the estuary. There are still many damaged and unoccupied homes, and tagging has sprung up everywhere. My parents' house remains unfixed, with boarded up windows and taped up cracks in the walls. It's sad to see, and I feel for my Mum and Dad not being able to do anything to speed up the process of getting repairs done. Thankfully some progress is slowly being made and the major repairs may start within a year or so.
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| Unofficial road sign |
The photos below show the scarcely believable current state of the central city. So many buildings have been demolished, and there are still many left to be pulled down, with over 70% of the central city scheduled for destruction. Looking at the pictures, it is hard to even recognise which street is which, the layout has changed so much.
Despite the sadness of seeing the city I grew up with being torn down, it's exciting to think of the amazing opportunity which now exists for the city planners. Central Christchurch can be rebuilt from scratch, and there is great potential to make it one of the most modern and environmentally friendly cities in the world! Obviously it will take many years to rebuild the city into what it once was, but in 10 years or so, Christchurch will surely be a great place to live again (that's as long as it remains earthquake free...). There's a plan already in place for the rebuild, and a short video outlining the basics can be seen by clicking on this link, where more detailed information can also be found. I'm sure I will move back and live there sometime in the coming years, and I can't wait to see what it will look like then.
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| Looking at what's left of the cathedral and the central city |
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| Another angle of the central city |
Monday, February 18, 2013
Mardi Gras 2013
Mardi Gras season is one hell of a party down here in Louisiana. It kicks off in early January and for the next month there seems to be endless parades and parties all throughout the state. All classes at LSU get cancelled for the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday during the main Mardi Gras week and the population of New Orleans doubles as people come from all over the United States to party! Doing a bit of reading on Wikipedia, I found that the holiday was first celebrated in Louisiana in 1699 and was known to be established in New Orleans by 1743. Since then, it has been a virtually annual event of parades, masquerade balls, and general partying, even surviving through Hurricane Katrina.
This year I went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras weekend again, staying one night at a friend's house and one at a hostel with my friend Bjornar who was visiting from Norway after studying at LSU last year. Lots of other friends were also in New Orleans where we all met up, watched parades, danced in the street (check out the video below), went to parties, collected beads, and of course went down Bourbon Street; it was an awesome time! The only negative was a shooting about two blocks away from us on Bourbon Street on the Saturday night. The rest of the street descended into chaos as the police moved everyone away from the block of the shooting, making Bourbon Street even more crowded than it already was.
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| Bourbon Street |
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| A New Zealand float in the Bacchus Parade! |
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