Pao­lo Ker­na­han

As a teenag­er I flirt­ed briefly the idea of be­com­ing a sci­en­tist. I of­ten screened in my head fu­tur­is­tic sce­nar­ios of a young Pao­lo Ker­na­han wear­ing a white lab coat and in­dulging a typ­i­cal­ly male ado­les­cent fan­ta­sy: Rid­ing a Suzu­ki 1000 road bike. My sci­en­tif­ic am­bi­tions grew even fur­ther with the gift of a small bi­ol­o­gy kit one Christ­mas. It con­tained a small mi­cro­scope, slides and sev­er­al scalpels. It was re­al­ly cool!

At the same time, it was an ab­solute hor­ror for all of the bull­frogs in my neigh­bour­hood. They did not ex­act­ly sub­mit them­selves will­ing­ly to my dev­as­tat­ing cu­rios­i­ty, but they were just too plen­ti­ful for their own good. Be­sides, it would have been dif­fi­cult with the imag­i­na­tion of a 16-year-old to cough up ex­pla­na­tions for the dis­ap­pear­ance of dogs on my street.

I am ashamed to ad­mit, though, such larg­er sub­jects were ac­tive­ly con­sid­ered, al­beit briefly. There was some spillover from the lab prac­ti­cals at Fa­ti­ma Col­lege. There was the dis­sec­tion of frogs to glean an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of their in­ner work­ings. Class­es, though, sim­ply did not af­ford me enough time to fur­ther my im­por­tant re­search.

I be­gan col­lect­ing the largest toads I could find so that I could very care­ful­ly ex­tract their or­gans. Of par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est was the heart; it was deep pur­ple with a yel­low ring at the top that looked like fat­ty tis­sue. What was amaz­ing is how sim­i­lar it is in ap­pear­ance to the hu­man heart. As large moths flit­ted about the lamp­light in my room, I mar­velled at this tiny won­der of cre­ation.

In­deed I felt like...a sur­geon! The on­ly prob­lem: I was the kind of sur­geon who could re­move a heart with, well, sur­gi­cal pre­ci­sion but I couldn't put it back. Giv­en that there isn't much need for a sur­geon who can on­ly dis­as­sem­ble peo­ple, my ap­par­ent lim­i­ta­tions spared me dis­ap­point­ment fur­ther down the road by lead­ing me off that path.

What hasn't changed, how­ev­er, is my fas­ci­na­tion with an­i­mals. Nat­u­ral­ly, my in­ter­est in some­thing called a "Bioblitz" was piqued. This event was or­gan­ised by Mike Ruther­ford of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and drew sup­port from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Field Nat­u­ral­ists' Club.

The con­cept hinges on de­ter­min­ing ex­act­ly what lives in a par­tic­u­lar site and ed­u­cat­ing the pub­lic about the or­gan­isms, both plant and an­i­mal, liv­ing there. Eighty sci­en­tists bore down on Mac­queripe and set up camp. There were tents for those crazy enough to overnight, and a field lab­o­ra­to­ry.

Stor­age con­tain­ers were pro­vid­ed for trapped an­i­mals, as well as mi­cro­scopes and oth­er sci­en­tif­ic para­pher­na­lia. Al­so on site, in­for­ma­tion desks staffed by the Asa Wright Na­ture Cen­tre as well as the EMA youth am­bas­sadors. Re­searchers were par­celled in­to groups based on a par­tic­u­lar field of in­quiry and they fanned out over the area.

There was even a team of divers who combed Mac­queripe Bay for ex­am­ples of ma­rine life which were tem­porar­i­ly re­lo­cat­ed to a dis­play habi­tat back at the Bioblitz tent. This I found ab­solute­ly riv­et­ing! There in this salt wa­ter tank was the dead­ly scor­pi­on fish which re­al­ly doesn't move around that much; it just has this com­i­cal way of walk­ing on its fins.

He stared out of the tank at on­look­ers with this pissed-off coun­te­nance owed pri­mar­i­ly to the un­for­tu­nate shape of its mouth. The divers al­so brought back some spiny starfish which pro­pel them­selves along on their whip-like ten­ta­cles. This was just the be­gin­ning of the ex­plo­ration.

As bird en­thu­si­asts gath­ered on an open field in the warm­ing of sun­rise, a ma­jes­tic white hawk flew di­rect­ly over­head, elic­it­ing oohs and aahs and sev­er­al too-late at­tempts by some shut­ter­bugs to im­mor­talise the mo­ment. If birds are your thing, a sight like that can be equat­ed with a spir­i­tu­al ex­pe­ri­ence, at least for me.

John Mur­phy, a spe­cial­ist in am­phib­ians and rep­tiles out of the Unit­ed States, made the trip for the Bioblitz. John, who was fea­tured in an episode of Bush Di­ary, has an in­fec­tious fas­ci­na­tion with snakes lizards and frogs and there is very lit­tle that he can't say about any species found in this coun­try, or else­where for that mat­ter. He had tremen­dous suc­cess this week­end, cap­tur­ing 17 rep­tiles and 12 frogs.

Many of them were on show for mem­bers of the pub­lic who came out in sur­pris­ing num­bers. My heart was a-flut­ter to learn that 200 peo­ple turned up to walk the trails and learn about wildlife. The Bioblitz achieved so much more than can be re­flect­ed in this col­umn. Over 600 species of plants and an­i­mals were record­ed in the Tuck­er val­ley and Mac­queripe ar­eas.

More sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the sup­port for this im­por­tant ini­tia­tive was over­whelm­ing. The re­sponse had the feel of achiev­ing crit­i­cal mass in con­ser­va­tion aware­ness. There were so many chil­dren present who were keen­ly in­ter­est­ed in every as­pect of what hap­pened over that 24 hour pe­ri­od that I am in­fused with new hope for the fu­ture of our en­vi­ron­ment.

I can feel that frog's heart held in my hand so many life­times ago still beat­ing with the promise of a brighter to­mor­row for our frag­ile wildlife.