That’s a wrap on the 2025 Lake Victoria Research Expedition! Hopefully not the last!

After a day in the lab processing the cruise samples, we drove to Ogal Beach to collect samples for a good friend and colleague from the 2022 trip who is now conducting their graduate studies in the U.S. It was amazing to see the fishing communities in action!

Overall, I collected samples for metagenomics, metatranscriptomics and metabolomics which will *hopefully* shed light on the mechanisms which constrain bloom events…looking forward to digging into the data!

Sites six, seven and eight traveled into the northern central gulf, with the samples collected near Maboko and Ndere Islands. Here we encountered rather clear water…though net tows suggested a variety of filamentous cyanos at site eight!

Throughout these first five sample sites, we were amazed at the sheer abundance of water hyacinths. In 2022, we saw a negligible amount of this problematic aquatic plant - it seems to be returning with a vengeance despite remediation efforts which is concerning…

The fourth and fifth sites were less turbid and situated offshore - with the brown waters replaced by clear blueish green water. Our arms were a bit tired of pushing Sterivex given the volumes we could pass through.

This was routine throughout the first two sites sampled - with the third sample site (situated at the mouth of the Nyando River) full of silt and sediment washed down from the tea plantations

We performed a two-day cruise transect in the eastern basin of the Nyanza Gulf, given prior reports had suggested elevated levels of cyanotoxins. Rather than filters colored green from cyanos, we found our filters full of what we suspect to be dinoflagellates.