Coring the deltas – Lessons learned from 3 memorable field excursions in 2022

Dr. Richard Walton

Blinking into the bright, Bangladeshi sunshine in February 2022 after a red-eye journey from the UK, it seemed hard to believe that my first fieldwork as part of the Living Deltas Hub was about to get underway. With fieldwork finally starting exactly two years from my start date, 2020-2021, after a pandemic and a major budget cut to the Hub making the prospect of going out on fieldwork seem increasingly unlikely. But here Andy Large, Andy Henderson, and I were. Eager to get underway, we set out to the lakes of southwest Bangladesh two days later (this earlier blog post describes much of that field excursion).

Fieldwork begins in Bangladesh

So began an exciting and productive year of fieldwork. It often felt like a whirlwind, hardly letting up before we were off to another one of the deltas to collect yet more sediment cores. Even the first trip to Bangladesh felt like a whirlwind. In the last three months of 2021, we had planned with some of our colleagues a potential field excursion to India and Vietnam for early 2022, but the dates just didn’t align and ongoing restrictions to travel scuppered our plans before they even got off the ground. Then, in the first week of January 2022, I discovered that Bangladesh was a viable option for planning our first excursion. A fast-paced 6 weeks saw us plan, coordinate with our colleagues at BUET, and obtain visas and air travel before we were finally on the delta plain interacting with the local communities. Please do revisit Andy Large’s article in the last digest to get a sense of our experiences and how the research I’m doing fits within the larger Hub.

Andrew Henderson and Richard Walton lift a sediment core from a Bangladeshi Baor (Credit: Andy Large)

While we experienced quite a few setbacks and a steep ‘learning curve’ on site suitability (lakes that look good on a map may not in actuality be great coring sites) during the first week of the trip, this first excursion was very successful with 22 sediment cores obtained from 9 different lakes. On our return to Newcastle in mid-March, we had an opportunity to take stock of what we achieved, choose the cores that would most likely help us understand the questions we were asking, and think about next steps for more fieldwork. By the start of April, we had already begun to collaboratively plan our next trip, this time to the Red River Delta.

Red River Delta fieldwork

It was nice to have the extra time to plan and use the expertise that our colleagues Nga and Duc had of lakes in the Red River Delta. They helped us narrow down our choices before we even left. The extra planning time and the ultimate success of our Bangladesh trip may have lowered our guard a bit for our July trip as we seemed to be perhaps a bit overconfident that our chances for things going wrong would be smaller. Before we had even checked into the airport for our flight to Hanoi, Andy H. had messaged us to say he had tested positive for Covid. He had no symptoms thankfully (and remained so for the whole of the time he had Covid), but it meant we were down an important man (those cores don’t lift themselves from the lake bottom). Still, Andy L. and I were confident enough that we could continue as we were experienced with coring and knew what needed to be done at each site.

Another successful coring expedition in the Red River Delta with Nga Do, Andrew Henderson, and Richard Walton. (Credit: Richard Walton)

Heading out to a coring spot on Ho Dong Thai, Ninh Binh in the Red River Delta. (Credit: Richard Walton)

When we landed, however, all our confidence could not make up for the fact that our coring equipment had not arrived. Being down Andy H. was problematic, but we could still do our job. Having no equipment meant coring was impossible. We waited for days, calling the airline to enquire about the whereabouts and expected delivery of our luggage (it seemed lost in limbo somewhere between London and Hanoi). We had meetings with Andy H. to discuss plans for him to come out if he should test negative and if he should try and bring additional equipment with him. In the meantime, we tried to get to know the inhabitants and the layout of the delta better with visits to cultural institutions, delta colleagues and potential coring sites.

A week after our arrival, Andy H. was able to join us and brought additional coring equipment and we headed out to Ninh Binh and finally began our coring excursion. After three successful days, we headed back to Hanoi where we were greeted by our long-lost equipment. With double the coring equipment, we ended the fieldwork by getting some cores at some reservoirs in Hanoi province. This excursion brought us 12 cores from 6 lakes.

Fieldwork in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna Delta

The final excursion planned for 2022 was to the India side of the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna Delta. Careful planning largely paid off when we headed to Kolkata at the beginning of November, though we did not come out unscathed. We brought double the equipment this time, just in case. Laughably, it was still delayed on arrival but was reunited with us fairly promptly as we headed out to the field 36 hours later. From this point, we had a successful coring excursion. In five days, we were able to core 6 lakes, obtaining 18 additional cores.

Being reunited with our coring equipment at Kolkata Airport. (Credit: Richard Walton)

Fail to plan, plan to fail!

The fieldwork team gathered together after coring our final lake in India. (Credit: Andy Large)

Such a long and winding story does come with a point. Two years of Covid restrictions and uncertainty caused by cuts to the UK ODA budget and three field excursions have re-enforced the adage that the best thing to prepare for is for something to go wrong or at least not according to plan. It is important to plan, and when things go according to plan, it makes everyone’s job a lot easier.  When things do not go exactly right, and even they do, that’s when the team you have working with you really matters.

We have been so fortunate in the Hub to have built a great collaborative team that works well together and is rooted in the local expertise of each delta. The planning we did with each of our delta-based colleagues was key to our success and to our being able to wait through and overcome the challenges we were presented with. Local communities also became part of our team, happily joining in to tell us about each lake and getting us out onto the lake. It made all the difference in the world to know that despite the setbacks we had faced each trip, we had a large team willing to help us through and celebrate with us when we had success. What an important lesson to learn and hopefully it continues to prove highly valuable in 2023 as we plan our next trip to the Mekong Delta!