On the Tide Newsletter

Happy New Year and welcome to our inaugural Island Creek Oysters Foundation newsletter. We've got a big year ahead of us so this is the first of what will be quarterly updates on what the Foundation is working on. Hope you guys enjoy the ride as much as we do.

As you read this, a few of the guys from the farm are busy pulling together supplies and equipment for a February trip to Zanzibar, Tanzania where The Island Creek Oysters Foundation, in collaboration with the Foundation website or take 5 minutes to learn about it with this slideshow on the WHOI site.

Our first update includes Shore's account of a trip to Zanzibar which happened back in October. We think it'll give you taste of what we're looking forward to accomplishing over there.

We appreciate your support and look forward to sharing the experience.

Cheers,
Skip, Shore, and the gang at Island Creek Oysters

Our First Zanzibar Trip

Late last fall, Skip, Shore, John Brawley, Andy Yberg, and Hauke Kite-Powell (who is affiliated with WHOI) set off on a journey to Zanzibar, site of the Island Creek Oysters Foundation's (ICOF) first development project. Zanzibar is a small island off the east coast of the African nation of Tanzania. Beginning this year, the ICOF alongside the McKnight Foundation will fund the construction of a shellfish hatchery and begin the implementation of grow out sites in a number of local villages. The purpose of this project is to create a sustainable protein source in the villages as well as the opportunity for commerce through the sale of excess shellfish.

Zanzibar is far away. It's not quite the end of the world, but you can see it from there. Its name evokes the thought of an exotic, unspoiled island and while elements of that are true, the island is inhabited by about 1 million people who are largely crowded into one urban area. While it is full of exotic beauty, Zanzibar has all the elements of a deeply impoverished African nation (the annual per capita income is around $300 USD).

Thankfully, there is a tremendous amount of development work under way in East Africa so we're excited to join the effort to bring about meaningful change.

Our travel started on a Sunday morning around 5:30am. Our first leg was a quick flight to JFK before a more arduous 12-hour flight to Dubai. From there it was another six and a half hour flight to Dar Es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania. It was quite an experience being in the Dubai airport and seeing the screen at our departure screen read Dar Es Salaam. We arrived safely in Dar, and after some confusion and subsequent convincing, we talked a man into flying us over to Zanzibar. We were hoping to take a ferry, but arrived too late in the day. It was a 30-minute flight that rounded out our door-to-door travel time at around 30 hours. Exhausted, we checked into our hotel, then headed out for a Kilimanjaro Beer and some delicious local Indian food.

We awoke the next morning and began a marathon five day journey to learn as much as we could about Zanzibar, the communities there, and exactly how, we as a team, are going to get this project off the ground. We spent our first day with a group of scientists from the Institute of Marine Science visiting potential hatchery sites. After seeing one relatively barren site where we got lost in the mangroves amongst grazing water buffalo, we checked out our chosen spot. We'll be constructing our hatchery at the IMS building which is located in the heart of bustling Stone Town.

The next two days were spent visiting two of the villages we will be working with. It was an amazing experience being with the villagers (some of whom visited us in Duxbury this past summer) and listening to their hopes and concerns. Speaking through translators, as the native language is Swahili, we discussed the idea of shellfish farming in the villages to help them create a sustainable protein source. The overwhelming response was that they were excited to get started and believe it will be a worthwhile endeavor. From a farming standpoint, the challenge is to figure out exactly what species of shellfish will grow best and how to grow them. We waded through one of the bays one morning (an adventure that could fill a whole separate newsletter) to get a sense of the grow out conditions and aside from the significant number of sea urchins, we believe it will work.

It would be very easy to go on and on about the subtleties of our trip, but the main take away from our time in Zanzibar is that we are thrilled for the opportunity to make a difference in people's lives there. It is going to take time, money, creativity, and patience, but we feel strongly about this project and ICOF's support of it. So to those of you who have supported us, we say thanks. We couldn't do it without you.

Should you ever make it to Zanzibar, we recommend spending an evening at Livingston's around sunset watching the Dows sail by. That's where we spent most of our evenings, turning the tables into our makeshift office. By the end of our trip, we were sad to say goodbye. If that imagery isn't enough, the beer's pretty good too.

Check out Shore's Zanzibar Photos.