Making Babies

I finally got to do what I came here for. We drove down from Baghdad and made a quick stop at FOB Kalsu, the army base where we are now staying and where our team lived for a month in 2008. Then we drove over to the Middle East Fisheries farm, which is one of the two farms that has been keeping the new broodstock introduced from Hungary last May. As we pulled up I saw a man I recognized getting into his car to leave. It was Sheik Jafar, who Team Borlaug had visited on my very first day in the field two years ago. It had been a memorable visit at many levels, but Sheik Jafar's hospitality stood out, especially among the ruins of his village. I rushed out to extend my greetings before he could depart and his smile told me that he recalled our visit. His village is well on the way to recovery although the surrounding area remains restive.

After Sheik Jafar left, we sat around in the main office with the farm owner, Mr. Thamir, my colleague, Dr. Saleh, and several others drinking tea. We were waiting for a call from the hatchery to tell us the fish were ready to spawn. They had been injected the night before and spawning was imminent but delayed a little bit because the water temperature had dropped from the cloudy and rainy weather the preceding two days. We finally got the call and went to the hatchery for the action. I had made a point to get on the same page with Dr. Saleh about the crosses we wanted to make and simply let the hatchery crew, especially the experienced fish breeder, do what they know to do. The broodstock were separated by sex and origin in different tanks. One by one the females were lifted out of the water onto a foam pad, with a thumb placed quickly over the genital opening. The belly of the fish was wiped dry with a towel and a bowl was placed beneath the fish to catch the eggs. With well-practiced technique, the fish breeder then worked his hand along the abdoment, pushing eggs into the waiting bowl. This process was repeated for each female. The Hungarian females were a bit on the small side so we did not get many eggs from them. Then the breeder collected milt from the males into small glasses the size of a shot glass. When everything was collected we separated the eggs into the four groups we wanted to make and added the sperm from the males. We made these crosses (female x male): Iraq x Iraq, Iraq x Hungary, Hungary x Iraq, and Hungary x Hungary. Once the sperm was added the hatchery workers began stirring the contents together using feathers from the rather large cormorants that plague the production ponds. I found this supremely ironic. After a few minutes a fertilizer solution was added and the mixing continued. This went on for about a half hour. Several rinses of fertilizer solution followed. Then, to keep the eggs from sticking to each other, a tannin solution was added briefly. The tannin solution was made from the dried skin of pomegranates, which is sold in local markets as traditional medicine. After several rinses with fertilizer solution the eggs were ready to be placed in incubators called Zug or Zuger jars where they will gently roll around for the next few days.

The hatchery was a hive of activity. In addition to the hatchery workers, Dr. Saleh has three students working on the project. They will help each other but one will work at one hatchery and the other will work at the other hatchery. The third student is a young woman who is interested in working on genetic analysis of the fish using DNA markers. She doesn't have a lot of experience but appears to be motivated and capable. I mocked the students a little bit because I didn't see them taking any notes. The smiled and laughed but did nothing. Some time later they saw me taking notes on what was happening and finally got the picture. A big notebook came out and the data collection began.

We are repeating the whole operation at the Euphrates Fish Farm so the evaluation of the four crosses will occur at two farms. We will also repeat the study late in the spawning season (after I depart) to evaluate the effect of the two temperature regimes.

Results to follow in due course.

First Days, Latest Visit

I was awoken this morning by the sound of the muzzein making the call to prayer around 4:30. Once the call faded I heard the buzz of an unmanned drone followed shortly after by the thrum of a pair of Blackhawk's flying by. I could hear all this because the generator was not going, which meant that the compound had power from the utility. These are some of the sounds of life at the Inma compound in the Mansoor district of Baghdad.

Things seem to be different here, definitely "better" based on a limited and perhaps superficial view. First, the weather is lovely, with pleasant temperatures and even some overcast skies. Having come here in mid-summer over the last couple of years, this has been a welcome difference. Second, I've never seen Iraq so green. Partly this is a function of the time I've arrived, corresponding to ripening wheat and barley crops and abundant winter vegetables. Apparently there has been quite a bit of rain over the winter, so Mesopotamia looks lush. Third, people seem to be in a good mood. There were jokes and laughter among the passengers headed to Baghdad from Amman. We saw numerous wedding parties in crowded mini-vans, with everyone inside clapping and singing in unison, as we drove back to Baghdad yesterday. It also seems to me that there are fewer check-points, especially on the main north-south highway, known as Route Tampa to the military. In their place I saw numerous roadside restaurants, surely a sign of good progress. I've seen very little sign of the US military, with the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police firmly in control of all the major check-points. This place is still highly militarized and tightly controlled.

We've taken two excursions since coming here this week. On Tuesday we went to the National Fish Hatchery in Suwayra. This was a place I tried to visit in 2008 but was thwarted in part by a rather tenuous security situation in the area. Typical of many government facilities, there were way more workers than actually needed but there were some dedicated and skilled workers who anchored the hatchery and made the place functional. Carp spawning season is well underway so we saw the hatchery with incubators filled with eggs and ripe broodfish nosing their tank-mates with nervous energy. We also saw the results of attempts by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization to "help." There were beautifully tiled Chinese-style spawning tanks, sitting dry. There was a recirculating aquaculture systems with expensive biofiltration equipment, including stainless steel microscreen particle filters and a pressure-swing oxygen generator, that was severely overdesigned based on potential fish loads. Apparently the system includes monitoring equipment that allows remote control through the web from Germany. There were also pontoons, floats, and walkways for a cage culture system that may never be installed.

When we first proposed the introduction of the new carp broodstock from Hungary, our intention was to include the National Fish Hatchery in the distribution, but this proposal was rejected by some political considerations at the level of the Ministry of Agriculture or Ministry of Fisheries. We are going to push to get them some of the hybrid broodstock that we will be making this spawning season.

One of the most amazing things I saw during this visit occurred on the way there. While driving on the main highway extending east from Baghdad, we saw two lycra-clad cyclists hammering away on their road bikes. I couldn't believe what I was seeing! Another sign that things are changing to be sure.

Yesterday we visited the two hatcheries where we will be doing most of our work during the time I'm here. It was a scoping visit to view facilities and talk with the farm owners and hatchery workers and my friend and colleague Dr. Khalil Saleh, who will be my indispensible partner in our work. It was a great visit, capped off by a wonderful lunch with lamb, roast chicken, and roasted carp (masgouf), complete with all the trimmings (rice, pickles, bean soup, salad, and more). I'm anxious to get to work and, after yesterday's trip, we now have a basic plan to move forward. We should make our first hybrids on Sunday or Monday. More once we make our first babies.