| Going up-river
This is the start of an expedition up the river to the little-explored Mayibout region. All of our camping, cooking, and collecting gear, and all of our scientific recording equipment was jammed into this canoe. The journey took about nine hours, over difficult rapids- and that's with an outboard motor! It was really arduous, but well worth it. We collected some great fish and wonderful stories, and definitely want to return to the region.
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Catching fish
Seining
Seining means using a large fishing net with floats on the top and weights on the bottom, so it lands vertically in the water. My colleague, Emmanuel Vreven from the Royal African Museum in Belgium, is taking a seine sample of a very large river with me. He walks out in into the water, then circles toward me, and together we run towards the shore. We splash and make as much noise as possible to scare the fish into the net, then scoop them up.
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Using hoop nets
Here Emmanuel and I are using hoop nets. We make them by sewing netting onto bicycle wheel frames. We push the nets up under river banks and collect all sorts of small fish that would be overlooked by people fishing in the main river.
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