Aquamats Get Wet and Welcome Abigail Parham

First we stopped by the sedimentation pond at Aquamar Shrimp Farm that Adolpho has just finished rehabilitating.

You can see the deeper canal on the near bank where water enters the pond. This is where we will be deploying Aquamats. On the far bank is a footing that directs the channeled water into the shallow center area before it exits at the control structure on the back right part of the photo. There are also few shallow partitions in the deeper channel for planting mangrove strips.

The pond looks terrific and should be a terrific place to trap sediments and test the Aquamats. Thank you Adolpho!

Then Adrian and Wilbur and I loaded up 75 Aquamats (you can get an idea from this photo about the size of 75 mats) and took them down to the pond...

...where we will be using 3 types of Aquamats. The specifications for each type are listed in an earlier post. Capped PVC pipes were inserted through the sleeve at one end. The blue Aquamats with narrow strips float, the green Aquamats with thicker strips float, and white ones with heavy thick strips sink. We have plenty of all three types. The PVC for the floating type will need to be weighted with sand to sink the sleeve and allow the strips to float up from the bottom.

I will bring a few Aquamats back to Illinois in November for the group to use for the experiments. We should discuss what type to bring.

After rounding up the Aquamats, we headed over Independence Jr. College where we met with Abigail Parham, environmental biology instructor. Abigail will be coordinating the interns who will test the Inventeams prototype during winter 2010.

Welcome, Abigail!