Hey there, it's your friendly neighbourhood Indian here, writing from Trincomalee! I'm here to give you a wee update on what we have been up to since leaving the lovely city of Colombo on Thursday the 7th of June.
First of all, our bus journey from Colombo from Trinco was excruciatingly loooong...the night coach aircon was freezing; it was pitch black outside, so we missed out on enjoying the blissful scenery; sleeping was a struggle. Thankfully, Poseidon saved us from our tiresome ordeal by picking us up from Trinco bus station. The journey to our Nilaveli accommodation was a breath of fresh air and we immediately collapsed onto the nearest bed as soon as we arrived at our new home.
Three hours later, the researchers in our team had an early meeting with people from Blue Resources Consultancy. They met Nishan Perera, co-founder of Blue Resources, and Roz, a marine researcher at the Field Station. It was an incredibly productive meeting and they discussed further collaboration. We are also very excited to visit their field station soon!
Later, in the morning, the rest of the team woke up for some breakfast. Then, we chilled at the beach for a while to cool down.
Later in the afternoon, Mr. Kumara, the Chief Executive Officer from the Marine Environment Protection Authority (MEPA) met us at Poseidon Dive Station. We were eager to meet Mr. Kumara; we discussed promising future collaborations and hope to see him again when we travel back to Colombo at the end of our expedition.
The day after (Saturday), Poseidon Diving Centre took us to Pigeon Island, where we were able to snorkel around some of the reefs. It was a great opportunity for the team to familiarise themselves with the fish species they will be investigating for their research projects. For a few members of the team, it was their first ever snorkelling experience, which was magical. Some of us spotted black-tip reef sharks, turtles, blue-tay/Dory fish, Angel fish, cuttle-fish and much more. Yesterday, some team members undertook the Advanced Open Water course, which will help them in their research. The others headed into Trinco for some household shopping.
Overall, the team would agree that Nilaveli beach is beautiful and all the staff a Poseidon are such friendly and lovely people. We have been enjoying every moment of our journey so far and we can’t wait to spend the rest of our weeks here and finally conduct our marine and conservation research after fundraising for months.
