When David Lang found out he was going to Kenya to work on a mangrove project, he couldn’t think of anything more perfect.Mr. Lang, Bank of Bermuda Foundation director and secretary, was recently picked to be part of the HSBC employee fellowship programme in partnership with Earthwatch. Over the last couple of years, several HSBC Bermuda employees have been sent to volunteer on projects all over the world.

“I was delighted to be working on mangroves in Kenya,” said Mr. Lang. “I was absolutely delighted because we have mangroves here in Bermuda. When I found out where I was going I got Dr. Martin Thomas’ book out and found there was a lovely four-page chapter on Bermuda’s mangroves. That allowed me to get myself slightly informed. Earthwatch also sends you a package which has some serious science in it in a booklet.”

To go on the programme prospective candidates must complete an extensive application process, and are actually picked by Earthwatch rather than the bank. Many of those picked can demonstrate a prior interest in nature.

“On my application I indicated to them I had no interest in studying birds or insects,” said Mr. Lang. “They have a very broad spectrum of things you can do. You can do archaeology, you can do dolphins which some of my colleagues have done. Some of my other colleagues have done wolves or jaguars.”

To go to Kenya, Mr. Lang had to take a series of shots to protect himself against diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever and hepatitis. He also had to take malaria pills before, during and after his visit.

Mr. Lang said the trip was very successful for him, and he found Kenya to be a very beautiful country.

“It has a stable government, roads and public transport and airports that work,” he said. “There were police roadblocks on the roads everywhere. I’m not sure why, but they might have been looking for stolen vehicles most of the time.

“The police would block off one lane, and then another, so you have to swivel through, and then the police peered at your licence plate.”

Unfortunately, at the end of his trip, his luggage was burgled and he lost a toothbrush, toothpaste and his last malaria pill.

The mangrove project was located in an area called Gazi Bay, in the Kawali District of Kenya. The village of Gazi had little more than 1,000 people in it. The mangrove project was headed up by scientist Dr. James Kairo of the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute. Dr. Mark Huxham of Napier University and Martin Wiggers Skov, of the University of Southampton, also worked on the project.

The project had a two-pronged approach, one was educating locals about the importance of the mangroves, and two was finding the most effective strategies to replant mangroves.

“Dr. Kairo is ‘Mr. Mangroves’ in Kenya,” said Mr. Lang. “He spends his life teaching people about the environmental and ecological value of mangroves. In Kenya people actually use the mangroves for firewood and construction materials.

“The way they build their houses down there is they put a wall up with sticks and they put mud all over it. Mangroves make for lovely straight sticks. The people were cutting them down at an unsustainable rate.”

One of Dr. Kairo’s experiments involves intercropping, or growing several different kinds of mangroves together including Ceriops tagal, Brugiera gymnorrhiza, and Avicennia marina.

“They were studying whether by intercropping you have better results,” Dr. Lang said. “We had all kinds of test beds twice the size of this room. Some beds held one kind of mangrove, others were two kinds and others were three kinds.”

Mr. Lang and several other volunteers helped with a number of tasks that saved a lot of drudge work for the scientists. For example, they had to literally get down on their hands and knees and count the number of sea snails, crabs and other marine life in a random square meter in the growing mangrove forest.

They also had to count the number of leaves on the mangrove seedlings themselves, and collect leaf samples to take back to the laboratory for further testing.

“We measured, measured, measured,” said Mr. Lang. “This was a serious scientific project. We were volunteers trying to help the scientist and his two principal investigators to gather a lot of data. The second week we were there we started planting new mangrove seedlings. That was fun. We were a group of nine people. There were two other HSBC people, one from Argentina and one from Egypt.

“There were other people who had nothing to do with HSBC at all, two teachers and an information technology guy from San Francisco. The volunteers were from all over the place. We had to work as a team. We learned team work skills. We had to keep up morale. Productivity increased with the degree of enthusiasm we collectively gave to the project.”

People who take part in the employee environmental fellowship receive $500 to put towards environmental projects in their own communities. Since going to Kenya, Mr. Lang has taken a strong interest in Bermuda’s mangroves.

“It is a condition of the programme that you do something when you come back home, but it is not a condition that you do something directly aligned with what you have studied,” he said. “I could go and do butterflies if I wanted. I think since we have mangroves here that it is good to try and focus on mangroves because they are just as threatened here as they are elsewhere in the world.”

Mr. Lang said mangroves are extremely important to stop coastal erosion.

After hurricanes, parts of the coast with mangroves are far less damaged than those without. In the old days, Bermudians would often leave their boats sheltered in mangroves during storms.

“Around the world there are 75 varieties and we only have two here in Bermuda,” said Mr. Lang. “Bermuda is the most northerly place where mangroves grow. All things being equal, we shouldn’t have any because we are too cold.

“It is our Gulf Stream that keeps the island warm and is able to sustain our mangrove forests. I reluctantly call them forests because we don’t have any forests here. We have small clumps of them. Sadly, in Mangrove Bay, out there in Somerset there isn’t a single mangrove of any description.”

As part of his Bermuda project, Mr. Lang hopes to bring together different people who are working to preserve Bermuda mangroves.

“I have done two things already,” he said. “I went on television locally to talk about the ecological, and environmental value of mangroves, especially down at Hungry Bay.”

The second thing was to do his part for a small clump of mangroves growing on Burt Island, near Darrell’s Island.

“I go camping at Burt Island every year in the summer,” he said. “Last summer I found a small clump of mangroves out there, horribly overgrown with Mexican pepper, as is everything else on this island. I had my chainsaw with me so I cut down all the Mexican Pepper around it, so it had blue sky above it. I also found little baby mangroves that were actually germinating a great big patch of Casaurina needles. There was some tidal water action but the medium in which they were germinating was almost pure Casaurina needles.

“I picked some of those up and transplanted them in another part of the island. Sadly, it was just before Hurricane Florence. I haven’t been out since then but I strongly suspect they are long since gone.”

He also took home some propogules, found in the Walsingham Pond area and replanted them in pots. Propogules are the long thin seedlings that fall from the tree and stick in the ground.

“When I go out to Burt Island next summer I am going to take these seedlings with me,” he said.