One of the items we accomplished this summer was some intensive, 48-hour monitoring of several hippo pools. Not everything worked out completely as planned but we got some very cool data. We placed our in-stream data loggers above and below the hippo pools and set them to log every minute. We also used a GoPro camera to record the actual movements of hippos so that we could tie those movements to potential changes on the in-stream data loggers.
Here is a short excerpt from one of the hippo pools near the Amani Mara Lodge in the Olare Orok Conservancy. As you'll notice, we hid the camera in a small rock crevice. We ended up pulling the camera shortly after this video was taken because there were baboons watching us and we were worried they would take off with the camera as soon as we left. The hippos are all in the water directly in front of the camera. If you look closely, you can see some of their movements. I'll be posting some more exciting videos soon.
