Recently I joined a company program to Mandai Mudflats. It was a non-work related voluntary program saving Horseshoe Crab. I wasn’t really attracted by the crabs ( :D ) neither did I try to be an animal rescuer. In fact, I was scare thinking of those sharp pincers, walking legs and wasn’t sure if I would be brave enough to even touch a live one. So, what drived me to join the program..? It was the data collection that mentioned in the invitation email. Having finished the DSI in mid of May, I was looking for program or task that I would have the chance to practise data science skills in any mean. While this one didn’t seem to have much data analytical works, it was interesting to understand what kind of data was involved and how the data collection would be done for such environmental preserve program. It was my first outdoor data collection experience with Nature Society Singapore (NSS) in a mud field!

A briefing was done by a young man who had been doing the voluntary works with NSS for more than 8 years. He passionately explained his works and had good knowledge about the horseshoe crabs, the various types, the genders, estimated age..etc. We were briefed on what to measure when we managed to find a horseshoe crab, also how to move our path in one straight line in order to cover the planed sample area. He also detailed out the hazards and risks when we were out there in the mud field. The scariest one was the threat of crocodile, even though he had never seen one there before in the past. Having got ourselves into 2 teams, identified the recorder, and protected our feet with rain shoe covers, we went down to the mud area slowly and carefully.

It was still a shock the moment I stepped down my feet deep into the mud. It was really hard to move my steps. Very soon, the shoe cover was torn, my pant and shoes were covered by mud. There was scream not far away with someone lost balance and failed into the mud field! Looking at the horizon far away from where we had just started, I was wondering how long it would take for us to reach there…. Focusing on each difficult super sticky step, we finally got into our team and formed a line at the designated area. As it was also open to family members, we had children in the team. Being parents is already a tough job, being parents in a mud field is even more challenging :D.. However, it would be definitely an unforgettable experience for both.

The excited moments were when someone managed to find horseshoe crabs. It was like the efforts were paid off soaking ourselves there. Half way through the mud field, some team members started to pull themselves off and gave up reverting back to the shore, leaving others continued with the exploration. It was the most difficult and dirtiest data collection process that I had ever involved. In the past, we often heard people complaining about how dirty the data was while doing data cleaning. Having gone through this experience, I would definitely think and tell others as long as we can do data cleaning on our laptop at the desk, it is already so much cleaner and blessed that someone out there have done the most difficult jobs for the analysts :)

Though towards the end, there weren’t too many data collected successfully. Personally I only managed to get 4 with 3 of them were small ones even though spending around 3 hours in total for the whole process. The experience was valuable. It gave a new perspective on how tough and time consuming a data collection process could be and raised up the appreciation level when receiving data to process from the real field in the future. It also brought up another critical consideration factor such as how observant the sample collectors were for a covered sample area. The population and sizes collected might not be representative if we had missed many samples that were in the first place not obvious on the surface, but need to see carefully the slight change on the surface to roughly gauge the existence of horse shoe crab underneath.

Nevertheless, it was a great experience. Nothing really technical, but more on the appreciation to the efforts of various group of people. The passionate NSS young man, the enthusiatic company staffs, the laughters and the screams made the day a memorable one for me to remember.