Treating chytrid on Montserrat 25/11/09

Here on the island of Montserrat the project to help the mountain chickens in their fight against the deadly chytrid fungus continues. During the last weeks the weather has been quite harsh as we are now in the middle of the wet season and heavy rains arrive almost every day. These rains completely change the scenery at both ghauts, the streams run with an amazing strength washing everything in their way towards the sea. In spite of all these rains, only very few times this has stopped us from going into the field and we are still treating the frogs and continuing with the established protocols of the project.

Besides the rains these last weeks, the formerly apparent dormant Montserrat’s volcano, located in the Soufriere Hills at the south part of the island, has woken up and every day releases massive ash clouds thousands of meters up into the sky. Some nights you could even hear “him” roaring as boulders fall down its slopes and you could see its dome glowing with a bright orange-red colour when some fires and magma crown it´s summit. Fortunately, a group of international researchers, members of the Montserrat Volcano Observatory (MVO) staff, continuously monitor the volcano’s activity in order to warn the population in advance of any big, highly dangerous, pyroclastic flow that could arise. On the down side this does not prevent the ash flows from being released, and almost on a daily basis we find ourselves, the houses, roads and cars, covered by a thin grey ash layer as the ash, like little snow-flakes, falls and covers the whole island.

UPDATE 16/12/09: The MVO have upgraded the security warning on the Volcano to Level 4, with a large pyroclastic flow running for 3.5km down the volcano.

Both rains and ashes affect also the study sites and the number of frogs we are finding lately is much lower than before. During the wet season every year, frogs migrate from the middle of the ravine up into the hills, in order to avoid being washed out or even killed by the strength of the flowing water. This has exacerbated the already really low numbers of frogs we were finding at Pelican Ghaut, and during these last visits we have found no animals there at all. Moreover, at Fairy Walk, where a mean of 40 or 50 frogs per night were found before, numbers have gone down to a mean of around 20 frogs per night.

Samples and data are being continuously collected. The skin swabs we take are sent to and analysed at the Institute of Zoology at London by molecular biology techniques. Results are obtained and the project keeps being adapted according to our findings here in the field and these crucial analyses. For sure, an intense monitoring would be required in the future in order to see if the treatment really makes a difference when it comes to mountain chicken’s survival to the fungal disease. This is something we are happily starting to realise after these months of fieldwork in accordance to the good response most of the treated frogs are showing to the treatments. This effect is definitely our aim and what we are focusing all our efforts on in order to save this fascinating species.