![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.oceanblogs.org\/game\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2017\/06\/2.jpg\")
<\/a>Having a Sundanese style lunch together.<\/p><\/div>\n
But, so far so good, we also want to tell you something about our project.<\/p>\n
First of all, unfortunately, Bogor is not located at the sea, but 60 km inland. This is a problem for us, because we need marine animals as test organisms for our research work. But it is not only that the sea is far. More than this, Indonesia has a really high biodiversity, but as a consequence the abundance of each single species is low. Another problem is that many species are poisonous, and we do not want to have them in the lab for our own safety. To find some suitable organisms we travelled to the Thousand Islands, an Archipelago located north of Jakarta Bay. We had to spend many hours in a bus and on a boat to get there. When we arrived there, we were so happy about finally being at the ocean, that we put our snorkel equipment on to check out the area and search for possible study organisms. But since Leonie has a crush on island doctors, she stepped on a sting ray and had to meet the local medic. Luckily, we got help from some friends during our trip, so we were able to collect some snails for the experiment.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Collecting snails in the shallow subtidal.<\/p><\/div>\n
As the long transport from the Thousand Islands to Bogor is really stressful for the animals (and for the Gamies as well), we decided to buy more animals at a local supplier in Jakarta, who normally exports ornamental fish and other animals for aquaria. This supplier has quite a nice offer (all kind of colourful fish, corals, anemones, sea cucumbers\u2026.) and we chose two species of snails which were collected in the south of Indonesia and on Bali by local fisherman.<\/p>\n
<\/a>One of our test organisms.<\/p><\/div>\n
As we are very far from the sea, we also had to order the algae powder, which will be the main ingredient for the algal cookies we will feed to the animals during the experiment. The best offer we could find in the internet was from China. Four weeks, 134 phone calls and endless discussions with Fed Ex later, we finally were the really proud owners of 25 kg of wonderful smelling freeze-dried algae powder! Unfortunately, the algae powder got stuck in Jakarta for a while, probably because the customs officers didn\u2019t trust our research ambitions and wanted to double check that greenish powder ;-).<\/p>\n
Being far away from the sea also means that you need to buy sea water from somewhere to equip your lab and you need to store it in big tanks. After not being in use for almost 7 month, the tanks, which are installed in the marine habitat lab at IPB, definitely needed a real make over. More than this, storing 3000 l of sweater in tanks can be quite tricky. It can, for instance, cause some serious lab flooding from time to time. This can, for instance, happen if the water from Jakarta Bay is super dirty and overburdens your filter system so that the filter gets clogged by all the dirt.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Miko installing the filter system (already dressed up for his graduation ceremony).<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>Leonie cleaning one of the water storage tanks.<\/p><\/div>\n
After having installed a successfully running water-filter-pump system, it was time to build the set up for the experiment. Luckily, there were many buckets, hoses, airstones and other stuff, which were left behind by former GAME teams. However, while building the set up was an easy job, finding a microwave, which is needed to prepare the algae pellets, turned out to be quite difficult. That\u2019s why we had to go to the Asrama International Dormitory and employ some friends\u2019 kitchen as a lab to prepare the algae pellets for the animals. The good thing is, we didn\u2019t need a permission letter for that. There is something that needs to be mentioned: If you think bureaucracy in Germany is crazy – go to IPB University and you will know better. You want to borrow something or go to another lab? You will need to get a letter to get a letter to get another letter that finally brings you the permission to go somewhere or to use something.<\/p>\n
We finally could start our experiments two weeks ago and now we are curios to take a look at the first data that we will collect in 10 days. Fingers crossed that all our test animals didn\u2019t mind the long transportation, the power breakdowns etc. and will eat a lot of algae and provide us some nice and interesting data.<\/p>\n