A day with Devin

As I mentioned a few weeks back Devin Swanson from the US has returned to work at Marudo on a 1 year cultural exchange visa, he's the first person to be granted such a visa for Nishikigoi.

At present it's the Obon holiday here in Japan and Marudo had a day off.  This gave Devin the opportunity to carry out the first cull of the Kohaku he has as his responsibility.

The fry have only been released into the mudpond for 3 weeks and were a little smaller than would be ideal.

In around 3 hours we reduced the approx 15000 fry (although not all had survived of course) that had been released down to 1800 fry.  Below you can see Devin counting the 'keepers'.

A video of the culling showing the Kohaku in more detail will be available soon.

A number of other fry ponds surrounded the one Devin's fry are in.  In all of them fry could be exhibiting a behaviour I've not witnessed before.  They would suddenly appear at the surface of the pond in tight groups as though food had been thrown in, only to sink out of sight again.  These schools of fry would appear and disappear all over the pond.  Devin advised they were simply waiting to be fed.

On this Marudo holiday the task of feeding the fry ponds fell to Bram and Devin.  In the afternoon I did the rounds of some of the Marudo ponds with Devin.

On the mountain ponds most of the fry are fed by hand.

I mentioned many times last year Maruju's fry ponds in Sekihara.  Just a few yards from them Marudo also have some fry ponds, I think there are 8 in this net enclosed complex. 

All of these ponds have automatic feeders serving up to 7 feeds each day.  The fry in the pond below had been culled yesterday, as such Devin was adjusting the feeding regime to reflect the new stock levels.

Having started at 8am it was getting on for 6pm by the time we returned back home.  A very interesting day. With the help of Devin we'll be bringing you more from Marudo over the coming months.

Keep an eye out for the video of the culling.