Marine and Terrestrial Conservation Programmes in the Seychelles

Facts and figures

GVI Seychelles has surveyed 18 reefs every three months for the last eight years as well as conducting plankton tows, turtle monitoring, whale shark observations, certation sightings and logging all Megafarna observed during dives
12 Marine Park rangers have been trained in fish and Coral ID.
Contributed eight years of unbroken coral monitoring and recruitment data as well as eight years of fish biodiversity data to the Seychelles National Parks Authority. Adding this to the existing previous four years of data we now have an unbroken twelve year data set on the reefs of North west Mahe an almost unprecedented length of time for a reef monitoring program
Approximately 1000 volunteers have passed through GVI Seychelles over the last eight years. All have been trained in coral reef monitoring techniques either learning to identify 47 genre of coral species or 140 fish species
The data collected by GVI Seychelles is used by Government organisations and is the main contribution from the region to the biannual publication of “The Sate of Coral Reefs of The Indian Ocean”

Thursday, April 28, 2011

26/04/2011 Cap Ternay Dive's Stork Patch

Week three has already flown by, with heaps of events filling every day with a new exciting adventure. We are within the final stretch of coral exams, and moving right on to invertebrates and survey technique’s.

This past Thursday we celebrated Earth day, some of us were involved in a beach cleanup session, while others headed to Manta (the dive boat) to do their part collecting trash under water. We also met up with the Seychelles International School of grade 4 students, to teach them topics on continental shift, prehistoric marine animals and species that have adapted themselves over the years that still exist. It was a lot of fun, games such as ‘Earthquake’, a version of British bulldog, and a relay race with costumes made from base, consisting of: a shark, turtle, squid, and alligator. The kids were very welcome and friendly, looking forward to my next lesson plan tomorrow, on the marine food chain.

Hawaiian theme BBQ! This may possibly the easiest costume to create from this beautiful island; many covered themselves in different plant and flower species, along with the casual board shorts and bikini’s. A group of the boys added in a little extra twist with the help of Liz and ‘Seaside Snips’. Dan, Shelby, Nick, Brian and Will got matching Mo hawks for the occasion.

Most of the base, along with staff, got up early Saturday morning and headed into Beau Vallon, to the Underwater Centre for two anticipated dives. The first one was more of a big mystery, only a small percentage of staff has had the chance to dive at the ‘Stock Patch’. It exceeded all of our expectations within the first few seconds of descending into the depths with three gray reef sharks at our sides. It got better from there seeing amazing rock boulders, with levels of perfect tabulate Acropora coving the surfaces. The next dive was at ‘Shark bank’. Jumping into thousands of yellow fin snappers, was very exciting, a nice focus change from coral. Don’t get me wrong, I still love coral!