DAY 27- Mascotte on board and Ghanaian lunch.

Grass hopper on board of canoe (credits: Nicole Pelusio).

This Saturday was really silent in the fish farm. Except me, Felix and the watchmen on shore, there was no one working on the lake because of games day held in the hatchery site of fish-farm.

monitoring water in cages (credis: Nicole Pelusio).

The wind was very high and almost interrupt our daily tasks, then we had a nice lunch eaten by hands. Felix cooked a delicious banku with smocked tilapia, whilst I rice, tomatoes and sardines.

During feeding, upon my hat I noticed a pair of antennas: I had a colorful visit from a grass hopper that joined me on board for the rest of the day. Suddenly the sky turned to purple and the thunders were coming: the imminent made us hurryi
ng up, but we were quite on time before it started raining. 

food prepared from Felix (credits: Nicole Pelusio).

DAY 26- A visit to young brood-stock and a strange encounter.

Young brood-stock feeding on the surface (credits: Nicole Pelusio).

Between one feeding session and another Felix brought me by canoe to young brood-stock cages.

As Felix threw the floating pellet on the cage, the water surface became a fountain: the tilapias were all seeking food on the surface, struggling each other.

 It was amazing seeing the difference in feeding behavior between juveniles and adults.

Broodstock feeding (credits:Nicole Pelusio).

In the afternoon, while I was sitting on the cages for monitoring the water parameters, I was frightened by a huge fish moving slowly towards me and cages…after screaming and calling the people around. 

They told me that it was a silver fish: an innocuous species which likes to come near the cages hoping to receive some pellet wasting during feeding sessions. 

Silver fish (credits:Nicole Pelusio).

Silver fish reflecting light (credits: Nicole Pelusio).

DAY 25- The sailing and the storm.

Engines at work under in the rain and new canoe (on left) (credits:Nicole Pelusio).

What a lovely day for trying the new canoe for me! As the boat arrived on shore, it started to rain and it didn’t stop. Anyway I managed to paddle first time on it instead of the falling rain.

During the rain my mobile got wet and broke: even though I put it in a zip-locked plastic bag, the water faced my poor mobile…I hope that with some sunlight it will be fixed.

The small platform and cages in the rain (credits:Nicole Pelusio).

Day 24-Spectro analyses on-shore.

Oscar preparing water samples for spectro analyses (credits: Nicole Pelusio).

Today arrived the spectrophotometer brought by Oscar, the water quality technician. Spending a couple of hours in nice and pleasant chatting, he tough me his method in organizing water sampling and how does his spectrophotometer work.

Water samples with reagents for spectro analyses (credits: Nicole Pelusio).

Then after water samples analyses I went to the cages for finishing the daily work.

Day 23- A hard rainy day.

Rain storm in fish-farm (credits: Nicole Pelusio).

Today I realized that here in Africa I absolutely needed a rain coat…the weather is always unpredictable and sometimes could be very brutal and harsh! In facts the cleaned sky this morning turned into grey very quickly, hindering grand part of the work, both for our trial and both for the fish farm.