Roy Aronson - Tales of an African Vet

WHEN WERE YOUNG, ENTHUSIASTIC, AND PASSIONATE, SOMETIMES WE do crazy things. I have always been a determined person, and once I get the bit between my teeth, I dont like to give up. A few years before I entered veterinary school, I was serving in the South African navy. I was just twenty years old and a bit reckless then, attempting to do things that an older and wiser person may not have. I was fairly happy at the thought of how my future looked just then. My actions, however, set me on a path that I would otherwise not have trod.

I graduated from the University of Cape Town in 1975 with my first degree, a bachelor of science with majors in microbiology and biochemistry, and successfully applied to join the navy. I was based in Simons Town, a picturesque fishing village on the stormy False Bay coast in the Western Cape about 20 miles from Cape Town itself. I was assigned to a laboratory that did quality control work in the engineering field. I was given various tasks to do, but I was also allowed to choose one or two special interest projects to keep me occupied if I had any spare time. I chose to do some investigations into antifouling paints that are used to coat ships to prevent barnacles from attaching to the hulls. If not for them, literally tons of barnacles would add massive drag to the ships. This would, of course, slow them down and dramatically increase fuel consumption. Not a good idea for a naval warship.

My project involved coating small pieces of steel with the various antifouling paints available, hanging these pieces of steel at various depths from a raft moored in the bay at Simons Town, then measuring the number of barnacles that attached themselves. In this way I was able to assess the effectiveness of the paints and compare them so that the navy could choose the best one. I am sometimes pedantic, and the attention to detail needed in this sort of work has a certain charm to me, while it might appear tedious to others.

I was given the use of a small rowboat to access a raft moored on one side of the harbor, out of the way of passing vessels. My raft was moored next to a number of floating pontoons where seals would sun themselves. I diligently set up my experiment and hung numerous plates from ropes going down into the blue depths of the Simons Town harbor. My experiment was designed to run for a year, through all four seasons.

I spent many happy hours rowing out to my little raft in the harbor and measuring the number of barnacles that had attached themselves to my plates that were coated with a substance designed to prevent just that. It never ceased to fascinate me how those clean, painted plates attracted and accumulated life in abundance. First the plate became slightly roughened as microscopic sea creatures attached themselves to it. Then over a period of a few days, the rough patches started to take the form of miniature barnacles that you could see with the naked eye. These grew until eventually after nearly a year they had become sea creatures coated in a hard shell. During the summer months, Id row out with my shirt off, and when it was really hot, Id dive into the water in my shorts and spend some time in the sun drying off before I rowed back to the shore and my lab. Clearly, this was a busy time for me. I was hard at work and having a good time. In the winter, though, it was a lot less fun. False Bay has one of the largest populations of great white sharks in the world. I kept an eye out for cruising toothy monsters that could easily reach 6 meters (20 feet) in length.