blind men and elephant fish : I want to be a marine biologist!

Certainly not everyone. But a whole bunch of people I’m sure, including myself, have wanted to be a marine biologist at some point in their life. Whales, dolphins, “nemo” fish, are all just so cool and the idea of waking up on a boat every morning to study them, commune with them, has a level of indefinable appeal on a par with apple pie for Americans or a cup of tea for the Brits. Here at Kande Beach we at the Maru have channeled that love for wet animals into a passion for understanding the beautiful biodiversity of Lake Malawi. Unfortunately we have a feeling that we might be missing a lot of like-minded wet animal lovers because of a cruel bit of linguistic pedantry. You see technically “marine” biology only concerns itself with beasties living in our oceans. This definition tragically excludes the amazing technicolored cichlid fish of Lake Malawi who are unjustly relegated to the rather less famous domain of “aquatic” biology. Unfortunately definitions matter. Lake Malawi which looks like this,

And has fish like this…

Doesn’t get the attention it deserves because many fish lovers don’t know that they are excluding it from possible discovery every time they google “marine biology.” The search results speak for themselves, google “marine biology” and you get over 21 million hits. Google “aquatic biology” and you don’t even get 2 million!

So everyone reading this blog post please, please, give us a hand so that the amazing fish living in Lake Malawi get the attention they deserve! You can’t care about what you don’t know and too many people don’t know about the amazing opportunities that aquatic biology offers to people interested in what they assume to be all “marine” biology! Even better come out to Kande and see for yourselves what Lake Malawi has to offer! Whether as a tourist, traveler, volunteer,or intern, everyone is welcome!