Seagrass Assessment in NEOM and other news..

Before we go on holiday on Friday - well deserved, I think - a short update from Saudi.
The past few weeks have been very eventful, exciting, and exhausting.
Felix recently reported on his fieldwork in the Al Wajd Lagoon, the area on the Saudi Red Sea coast where a large tourism area is supposed to be developed in the coming years.
A little later, we started again - this time together and heading to the north, to the NEOM area. A huge industrial area is supposed to be built here (apparently about the size of Belgium).

It's obviously a pretty long drive to get up north - but at least you get to see a bit of the country:

           Camels on the roadside - not uncommon here in Saudi

Just like in the RED SEA area, the goal here was to determine the abundance and species composition of seagrass in this region. For that, we spent a lot of time in the water, snorkeling and diving. Here are a few impressions:

 

Now that we're back home, the task is to put the collected data into a report. Originally, this fieldwork was supposed to be paid (nothing extravagant, but at least a little pocket money). After months of back and forth, the university (which is of course a bit more complicated, but it would take forever to explain that here) refuses to pay us for our work. So now we have to wait and hope that our professor finds a solution and we get what we deserve in the end.
These are the moments when you can despair of this place. The work ethic of many people here is often terrible (and I'm not necessarily talking about the Saudis). The Americanized system with 1000 managers and sub-managers often means that no one is responsible for anything, but they all still feel super important.
As a 'small' student, you're always somehow the weakest link in the chain - which is especially annoying when you realize that you could easily outperform some of the 'senior specialists' here.

Besides the seagrass fieldwork, Felix also spent a lot of time in the mangroves around KAUST. That is still part of his internship with HSE (Health Safety and Environment), which is coming to an end soon because he will be going to Germany at the beginning of August and then working as a research diver with the GEOMAR's mesocosm project in Gran Canaria until the end of the year.

My project is also progressing. The first paper has been submitted (but is still under review), some experiments are running or will start soon, and I am diligently working on my proposal that I have to defend in the summer (after the first year).

In our little family, there have also been some dramas in the past few weeks. About 3 weeks ago, our little bird Juergen got very sick (probably a cold). That in itself wouldn't have been so serious, but - due to a lack of other options at the time, we took him to the vet here in KAUST. He was given antibiotics and it was said to be just a cold. The next few days, we were supposed to give him the antibiotics in his drinking water. (Which, in retrospect, doesn't make much sense considering how little a parakeet drinks in a day. So the amount of medication he actually absorbed was practically homeopathic...)
But without wanting to drag out the story now: although he initially got better, this incorrect medication apparently led to an inflammation in his nervous system, causing him to twitch uncontrollably. He couldn't fly anymore at that point, but now he couldn't even eat on his own because he couldn't hold his head straight enough. He could no longer sit on his perch, only on the cage floor (which we had padded with old t-shirts as best we could).
Fortunately, we finally found a veterinarian in Jeddah who knew more about birds and he finally got his antibiotics in the correct dosage. Although we were told that it was likely that the twitching had manifested to such an extent that it would not regenerate anymore, we (and especially little Juergen) kept fighting. And behold, in the first few days with the correct medication, the twitching stopped, he became much more controlled, and made great progress every day.

The first attempts to balance on the perch again, feeding baby food (in addition to regular food to help him gain weight), and snuggling up under the warmth of the infrared lamp.

By now, he can even sit upright again (although he still doesn't dare to trust himself completely.. but you can understand that, he had no idea what was going on).
Unfortunately, he still can't fly (yet?), but he started practicing a few days ago by flapping his wings and at least making small hop-flight attempts.
So we are confident that it will get better, not quite like before, but at least better.

One last piece of information that may be worth mentioning is that we now have a car! It happened quite spontaneously:

That's it for now. On Friday, we're flying to Sri Lanka for 9 days - so hopefully the next blog post will be about all the cool temples and tea plantations we'll see there.
Until then, warm regards

Felix, Juergen, and Susann