Macamo then takes the soil samples back to the laboratory to process them: here, the samples are dried, weighed, burned and weighed again. Burning them releases CO2 from the organic matter, so Macamo can estimate the carbon content by measuring the difference in mass between the dried and the burnt samples.
Macamo, who did her master’s degree in aquatic biology and limnology at Eduardo Mondlane University, always wanted to work with marine fauna. In 2008, one of her lecturers offered her a research position at the university and they agreed that her focus could be marine botany. Soon after starting, she had the opportunity to visit Gazi Bay in Kenya, as part of a mangrove restoration programme organized by the Earthwatch Institute — an international environmental charity. “I fell in love with the mangroves, and that was it,” says Macamo.
She pursued a research PhD in marine botany at Nelson Mandela University in Gqeberha, South Africa, between 2014 and 2018, with her studies based in Mozambique. Although she used to spend around half of her time in the field, Macamo is in the office much more these days. Today, admin, paperwork, report writing, programme development, management, teaching and mentoring make it difficult to fit in field trips. She misses these visits. “I feel renewed every time I go to the mangroves,” she says.
