Pack, pack, pack.

English-Swahili dictionary...check.
Travel visa...check.
Underwater video camera...check.
Field notebook...check.
Fancy shmancy instruments to measure dissolved oxygen and chlorophyll...check.
Sunscreen...check.
Malaria medication...check.
8 hours of sleep every night this past week...not so check.

I'm just about ready to hit the trail again. This time I'm headed back to Tanzania for my second field season as a graduate student in Limnology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The mission: to investigate how fish mediate nutrient cycling and whole ecosystem processes in the near-shore zone of the COOLEST  lake on the planet (in my personal humble opinion).

LAKE TANGANYIKA
quick facts:
-Second deepest lake in the world (almost a mile deep!)
-Second longest lake in the world
-Second most biodiverse lake in the world (300 species of fish, 95% found nowhere else in the world)
-Second oldest lake in the world
-Second most voluminous lake in the world

...Ok, so you may be thinking to yourself, "Ben said that Lake Tanganyika is the coolest lake in the world, but it seems from the list of quick facts that he provided, it might actually be the SECOND coolest lake in the world." Ok, ok, ok. Lake Baikal in Siberia just happens to be #1 in all of the rankings that I listed above. But, Lake Baikal, as I mentioned, is in Siberia and typically only reaches 14 degrees Celsius at its warmest in the summer. For those of you who dont speak centigrade, that's REALLY cold. Lake Tanganyika, on the other hand is about 27 degrees Celsius all year round--the perfect temperature for a nice refreshing afternoon dip. Or, the perfect temperature for 8 hours of snorkeling around counting fish and catching them in a gill net, as the case may be.

I'll be using this blog to provide real time updates to friends and family about our ongoing research on Lake Tanganyika. I'll tell you more about the lake, introduce you to some of the other members of our research team, and post pictures/videos from our experiences in East Africa.

Follow the blog and stay tuned...

tanganyikaresearch.blogspot.com