Mida Creek Mangroves

Mida Creek is not a creek like what I think of in Canada. Rather it is like a large coastal estuary or sand flats. All the sand you see gets covered at high tide. People still use boats like the one you see in the foreground to go harvest fish from this rich ecosystem.

ASSETS students at Mida Creek. These students come from villages all around Arabuko-Sokoke Forest, and are some of the current beneficiaries of the ASSETS bursary fund, which is paid in part by contributions tourists make to walk on the boardwalk here. It was great to see so many of the students at the Field Study Center with us as they were having a little camp or retreat during our time there. When I stayed at Mwamba five years ago I worked quite a bit with advertising the boardwalk and the ASSETS fund, so it was nice to see the actual kids that get to benefit from it!

Our guide showing us that all is not as it seems- the 'sand' we were walking on is made of millions of tiny shells!

An egret or heron among the pencil-roots of the mangroves. I call them snorkel-roots because although they resemble pencils, they act like snorkels, bringing air down to the roots allowing gas exchange and growth despite the water-logged soil.

Another kind of mangrove species, this one with 'elbow roots' which start off life looking more like branches which grow down rather than up. Eight of the nine species of mangroves live in this small creek.
Here I am on part of the boardwalk.Here is a long skinny green seed escaping from a small brown fruit. The seed drops like a torpedo into the sand below, and sends out roots while standing vertically, ready to grow. The smooth brownish thing is one of those elbow roots, going down to the sand.

Raw oysters. The guide is showing that they are in fact edible. I tried one. They aren't so bad because they are much smaller than the ones on the west coast of Canada!

Looking at some cool bivalve.

Nice reflection.

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Mike trying out his first sips of coconut water- which I learned in my plant biology classes is actually 'the liquid endosperm of an unripe coconut seed'. That doesn't sound too appealing, does it? It is actually quite tasty and very rich. When coconuts are picked before maturity they are still quite moist, not at all like the hard white chunks that are shredded for macaroons or made into coconut milk.