A unique assignment for Rijkswaterstaat
Sometimes you end up in the strangest places. I've been part of the Dutch government's photographer pool for a while now. This means I'm regularly in The Hague for various assignments. But sometimes something very unique comes along. A great assignment for Rijkswaterstaat that you say yes to immediately when it comes your way.
When the request came in asking if I had time to go along to photograph mussel fishermen on the Wadden Sea, they didn't have to ask twice.
When an assignment comes in, the photo agency doesn't always know what the underlying assignment means or what a photographer will be doing. So they're always looking for the right match for an assignment.
This time it was about 'mussel poop suction'. When I heard this, I had to scratch my head too.
It turns out that in mussel droppings, you can measure the health and quality of the water. And that these mussels purify the water of substances that Rijkswaterstaat would like to remove from the water. They capture that to later measure in the laboratory how healthy the Wadden Sea is. And which substances the mussels filter from the water. You can think of heavy metals, PFAS/PFOS, and other chemical substances. They do this with special mussel baskets and bags where the mussel droppings are collected.
A pilot project for Rijkswaterstaat to see if they can monitor and improve water quality in the Wadden Sea in a natural way.
Just before the start of the storm season on the Wadden Sea, I had to report to a fishing boat in Den Oever. They were talking about 13-metre boats. I naturally thought big, a bit like a trawler. But it turned out to be a fairly small, open boat in the end.
Early in the morning, just as it was getting light, we sailed out of the sea channel near Den Oever. The Wadden Sea as smooth as a mirror. Sailing along the coast, you hear the silence over the water. And you see the land from a different perspective. In the villages along the dike where I regularly go for property videos and aerial photography.
Arriving at a channel in the Wadden Sea, an offshoot, there was a row of mussel baskets. These had to be lifted out of the water and then emptied into a large container to collect the sediment and droppings.
Basket by basket, it was done before I knew it and the 16 baskets had been emptied. And I had taken my photos.
A beautiful day on the Wadden Sea.
Rijkswaterstaat wanted images and a photo reportage to use for the documentation and communication about this project. Images have been placed in the Rijkswaterstaat image bank.
