Lenggong River Valley

Short entry here, because I have a lot of homework to do. Happy Easter though! I was able to go to a mass this morning, and it was comforting to be apart of many of the same catholic rituals here.

This weekend we went to Lenggong River Valley to study insects, and fish. Friday was the dedicated insect day. We first went to a creek that feeds into the large river and took samples from different microhabitats. We were looking at the different species found in the river and comparing them to a water index scale to try and judge how clean the water was. Surprisingly, based on our results, the water was fairly clean! After, we walked up to look at a small waterfall. It was quite nice minus the mosquitos. I must of gotten 30 bites, and I was wearing bug spray everywhere! Later that night we set up a light trap, with white sheets hung in front, and caught various bugs that fly into it. I'm not an insect person, so wasn't too thrilled about all the bugs, but some people really liked it.

Saturday was the fish day. The morning was spend on small boats, traveling to fish nets and checking them. We all got a change to untangle fish from the net, and kept the specimens for analysis later back at base camp. We then boated around the river a little bit, as this was the downstream and cleaner area. In the afternoon, we drove to the more upstream part of the river, about an hour and half away, and observed how polluted and disgusting it was. After dinner and a discussion, we made our way back to campus! It was a nice short trip. This friday, we leave for a 9 day trip on the East Coast of Malaysia. Wifi will be incredibly limited, if it exists at all so a next blog post won't come for a few weeks!