2nd Aquatic Ecology Workshop in Camp Perrin

Thank you to Jean Dunes Gustave, Ministry of the Environment for the South, for inviting the University of Kansas (KU) to hold a second aquatic ecology workshop at his office building in Camp Perrin.  This 2ème Les Principes Écologie Aquatique focused on the results of our May 2013 study of Etang Lachaux, a lake along National Route 7 south between Les Cayes and Camp Perrin.  See these past blogs for the lake study and the 1^st workshop in May 2013.  The 29 participants represented 13 organizations and including people who owned land around the lake.  Presenters were Dr. Donald Huggins from the Kansas Biological Survey (KBS) at KU and Debbie Baker from KBS and Audubon Center of Les Cayes.

We discussed the results of the water chemistry of the lake, and gave recommendations for increasing water volume so that the lake can be used for a fishery.  Participants said that 1975 was the last time the lake completely dried up.  We suggested that lake managers do not stock this shallow lake with carp which are bottom feeders and stir up the lake sediment.

Dry Etang Lachaux

We reported in May that colleagues and I visited Etang Lachaux near Camp Perrin to take measurements and check the lake’s suitability for stocking fish.  I visited the lake a couple days ago on 04 Sept 2013 and the lake is completely dry except for two shallow pools and some springs.  Tropical Storm Gabrielle looked promising for rain, but seems to have dissipated.  Seems the people who took a chance and planted right up to the then drying lake edge in May will get in crops.  New land is being plowed even closer to the lake bed.  Cattle, sheep, and goats are grazing right in the lake bed, and at least one died from getting stuck in the remaining mud.  When the lake refills, will decomposition of all the vegetation deplete the oxygen levels of the water?

 

Dung beetles.

Looking toward north end of lake.

Planting newly plowed land.

Cows with mud up to knees.

Our little guide standing by a spring.

Where I took a soil sample.

Football (soccer) field in lake bed!

Etang Lachaux Lake Study

North end of lake.  A good birding spot!

“This was perhaps the best single locality I found below 1,000 ft. for ground collecting.” said PJ Darlington Jr in 1934 of the lake Etang Lachaux, back when the population of Haiti was 2,550,000 (250 per square mile).  PJ Darlington was there to collect ground beetles (see Psyche Dec. 1935, Vol. XLII, No. 4, West Indian Carabidae II: Itineraryof 1934).  When my team from the University of Kansas and I were there this month to collect water quality data, Haiti’s population stood around 10 million, or 930 people per square mile.  And the land around this lake was cropped, even on the rocky hillsides.  One hillside was rocky with a new highway perched along the edge.  

Sampling locations and path walked around lake.

Etang Lachaux is near Camp Perrin on the southern peninsula, near Les Cayes.  My team did a baseline study there on 4 May 2013 to collect basic water quality data and to map the lake.  There are several springs with almost quicksand like substrate along
the north shore of the lake, which our 14 year-old tag-along Bobby helped us to navigate.  The Minister of the Environment said the lakevolume decreases every year during the dry season (which is supposed to end in May), but 2013 and 2012 have been unusually low, which doesn’t bode well for the carp and tilapia he stocked.  A full report is forth coming.  Email me (Debbie Baker, debbieauc at gmail.com) if you would like more information.  Please post comments if you know anything about this lake!

Sampling a spring at the northeast corner of the lake.

South end of the lake.  Farmers plant crops to the edge hoping they will get a crop before the rainy season.

New highway overlooking the eastern edge of the lake.