Wednesday February 29, 2012
If you’ve followed our Field Notes, then you are probably aware that over the past three years we have been conducting fisheries research in the Mekong River Basin of Southeast Asia. The Basin supports the most productive freshwater fishery in the world. We were drawn to the Basin by the high species diversity, limited knowledge of fish ecology, rapid environmental change, high human reliance on wild fish for subsistence, and the great need for technical support. With a growing number of projects, we have made many trips to the region and our visits are becoming longer and more frequent. Our Conservation Director has been working from Lao PDR tirelessly for the past 3 months to coordinate the Mekong Fish Monitoring Network workshop, held earlier this month in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. We have taken the next logical step and decided to open an office in Vientiane, the capital city of Lao PDR. Just a few hundred meters from the Mekong River, we are centrally located within the Basin in this lovely reclaimed French villa from circa 1900. Keep an eye on our Field Notes as we continue our research and assist with the development of the Mekong Fish Monitoring Network.