Susan Welcome all! Our chat today is on "Coastal Wildlife"

Arpit hello susan

Arpit Susan Are you There?

Jayanth :) Arpit I doubt if dr. Susan is around.

Jayanth We might have to wait.

Arpit hi jayanth

Arpit ok no problem

Jayanth :) Thats an automated message, I reckon.

Arpit ok Jayanth so whats up man? how are things?

Arpit quite well

Jayanth Any recent trips?

Susan Hi all I am here

Jayanth Good evening!

Susan Goodevening jayanth & arpit

Susan Arpit, go ahead and tell us all about wildlife in coastal areas

Arpit hi Sorry for being a bit late

Arpit i was away from pc

Jayanth never mind arpit..go ahead

Arpit coastal wildife can be divided in two categories

 Arpit one is aquatic other is mainland

Jayanth ok

Susan This month's ezine had a report by Chaitanya about his trip to a coastal area-with some pics. I realized how ignorant I am of all those little animals

Arpit aquatic category will have coastal wetlands, marshes, mudflats,

Arpit yes i had seen his article/report of his visit to pirotan island

Arpit so what i should focus on , i mean which subject or topic

Susan Let us take aquatic

Arpit great

Arpit Aquatic life on coastal area as i said earlier can further divide in to 2 distinct category

Susan jayanth-the chat is pretty slow Hope you have not got bored and left!

Jayanth :) not really, I am a patient wild animal

Arpit one is near mainland on the shore

Arpit and other is in the sea side

Arpit now coastal wetlands are very much important refuge for migratory birds like waders

Arpit they refill their energy from the coastal wetlands before starting ahead...

 Jayanth Arpit, can you elaborate on what a mainland is? because I thought the mainland also has a shore

Arpit jayanth mainland is near sea side but towards mainland

Arpit but take an example of a marshy wetland which is on the coast but joined with the sea by a small creek

Arpit i'm currentlly monitoring coastal wetlands across jamnagar dist in guj since last 5 years

Arpit and found man made habitat like salpans for salt production caters huge population of migratory waterfowl

Arpit so planning to carry out thorough study on this man made wetland along the shore line

Susan Monitoring for wildlife?

Arpit montiroing for avian population pattern and their assemblage on the saltpans

Susan That sounds interesting-tell us more about your work

Arpit with respect to 5-6 other parameters like food chain, weather, water quality etc and their spatial assemblage

Arpit it's basically point count and spatial pattern and analysis

Arpit but i 'm also monitoring water quality parameters , their habits, food chain, micro and macro marine fauna

Arpit 'coz after analzing my last years data jamangar is the first district in gujarat who host maximum number of migratory waterfowls.

Arpit And majority of them found along the coastal wetland and saltpans

Arpit But detailed study is required for such man made eco system

Arpit Saltpans have very interesting life cycle, they have fresh saline water 3-4 months in a year

Arpit and after water gets too much saline and start producing salt by means of evaporation of water

Jayanth hmm

Arpit so it's host the waterfowl for 3-6 months depends on the local conditions

Arpit many other macro and micro fauna also occurs in the saltpans

Arpit like prawns, flat fish, shrimps, lobster, palnktons like zoopalnktons, phytoplanktons

Arpit they are the major source of food for waterfowl

Akshay Is the wetland of sunderbans in any way simlar to Jamnagar? or completely different?

Arpit this area is also quite undistrubed as the production of salt is in most of summer days

Jayanth good question! I remember the Tigers of Sunderban are used to salt water consumption.

Arpit no akshay, sunderbans is having mangrove marsh or swamp

Arpit while majority of jamnagar's coastal wetlands are saltpans, and other lakes

Arpit there is also a mangrove area but is structurally different than that of sunderbans

Arpit Sunderbans has more creeks and river joining in to sea

Jayanth okay fine, Arpit - are there any threats to life around these places? Any common diseases that cause harm to a lot of birds?

 Susan Is Sunderbans less salty?

Arpit Avian diseases are a quite dangerous matter as it's highly pathogenic in nature

Akshay yes, Susan, in fact I beleive Sunderban is actually 'sugary' on account of the Bengalis and their mishti

Arpit A Population can easily be destroyed if they got any diseases like Avian flue etc.

Arpit As normally waterfowl lives in a small group or they travel/ migrate in large flocks

Jayanth I see

Arpit yes susan salinity in the sunderbans is less than that of other areas

 Arpit so chance of infections to be spread are always higher

Susan That explains why birds donot flock to Sunderbans

Arpit And in wilderness areas this kind of incidents are not much reported as this area are not frequently visited

Arpit No susan i don't think so

Arpit This difference is due to species diversity and their migratory route

Jayanth okay..Arpit what are some species that visit such places?

Arpit which area

Jayanth the areas your are monitoring ofcourse!

Susan Tell us the regular bird visitors to Jamnagar

Arpit ok

Arpit this year we got first ever sightings of great knot in the jamnagar region

 Arpit there is a breeding colony of caspian tern and slender bill gull in this area which was discovered by us 3 years back

Jayanth I need to interrupt, I am getting in to a call and will be back in 20 mins. If you are finished I'll catch up with the things. Please go ahead and sorry for leaving in the middle.

Arpit ok jayanth bye

Jayanth Thanks a ton Arpit, Dr. Susan and Akshay.

Akshay thank you Jayanth

Susan Thanks Jayanth

Arpit red-necked phalarope, red pahalarope

Arpit and chifely waders

Arpit in flocks of thousands

Arpit black necked grebe

Susan All the names are unfamiliar They are all migratory I suppose

Akshay are these birds stork likes in terms of do they usually have long legs?

Arpit yes normally all waders have long legs with repect to their body size

Susan Arpit, can you name a site where we can see pics of some these birds now?

Susan Seeing them now will help us remember better

Arpit Wader SIZE varies greatly from the tiny little Stint which weighs only 30 grams to the hefty 1.3 kg Curlew

Arpit www.georgemccarthy.com/galleries/waders.html

Arpit http://digitalnature.org/vogels/waders.html

Arpit One more imporatant visitor is Crab plover which is found in thousands of numbers in some islands in gulf of kutch

Arpit www.hlasek.com/ccptacibahnaci1an.html

Susan Stone curlews are found in river marshlands too

Arpit yes susan

Susan The site you mentioned is very informative

Arpit thanks susan

Akshay thanks everyone, it was educational. I shall be signing off now...see u all later

Arpit ok

akshay bye Arpit and thanks

Susan Yes, I think we have had enough info for one day. Thanks a lot Akshay and Arpit

Arpit thanks susan

Susan Arpit it was great having you. Thanks