Umgeni Valley Nature Reserve

Riding around and studying in the Umgeni Valley Nature Reserve was so much fun and to me was the most epic Biology practical we've had so far! My favorite part of course was riding around in the "buckeys" (I think that's the correct way to spell it...), seeing the view of the gorgeous waterfall, and sliding down the rapids of the river!

I learned a lot this day as well about the quality of rivers, the impact the surrounding areas have on the river, and what kind of creatures and critters live in the water! We were told and saw for ourselves that the river ran through a man made dam, the urban town of Howick, ran past agricultural farms, timber plantations, and plenty of inns and bed and breakfasts. Some of these things do not seem to have that big of an impact on the quality of the river, but even things like inns and hotels have a major impact on this source of water.  

The Umgeni River is the main water source for big cities such as Durban and Pietermaritzburg, so the purity of this water is of huge importance.  At our first site the water did not appear to be that bad, but our SASS score of the water came out to be 5.25 which meant the water had been largely modified, probably by many different impacts that I listed above.  We found things such as flatworms, crabs, shrimps, mayflies, dragonflies, snails, bugs and beetles.  I had a lot of fun scouring the river for these little critters, some of which were very hard to catch!

At our third site, the river was obviously more contaminated, simply because of the sewage-like smell that was hard to miss.  The river at that point was very contaminated, because it had already run through Howick. Our SASS water test score was significantly higher than the first site, even though the water all comes from the same source and river.

The sad thing we learned is that the Bisley River is a tributary to the Umgeni Valley Nature Reserve and since Bisley is so polluted, it also adds to the pollution of Umgeni.

Ending the day with "super-tubing" was beyond fun, even if the water was oddly smelly and very polluted....