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”

Monday, April 25, 2011

24/04/11 Curieuse Blog

Another fun packed week - we’re starting to realise this is becoming an occuring theme! Our island was invaded by Emily, a staff member from our sister site in Cap Ternay, to open our eyes and minds into the ways of a Coral Reef Research Diver (CRRD); it made us realise the difficulties of equipment use in the watery environment. We all passed with parrotfish colours of course!

Our Friday night kicked off with a limbo and macarena-infested Hawaiian theme. Sarongs and bathers were modelled beautifully with flowers as the final addition. Everyone had a great night and Carly - the little ‘Hotipora’ from Oz gave us a reason to change her nickname to ‘Flexipora’ after her unique style at limbo.

Our second weekend was more lively than the last, with a group trip over to La Digue Island. We were no sooner off the boat than we were riding around on bikes which we hired from Elvis for the weekend. The most exciting commodities were air conditioning, hot showers and no mosquito nets! It was a very beautiful island and everyone just laid back and chilled on the most photographed beaches in the world. We enjoyed a few cocktails as the sunset over the scattered Seychellois Islands. At night, we mingled with the locals at the club called xtra, where we practiced our underwater dive communications, the favorite being the crown of thorns. We took over the dancefloor when our theme song was played (this is Africa by Shakira). On Sunday, it was hard to part with our bikes as we headed for the boat but were glad to be coming back to our one-of-a-kind home.

The week had no potential of slowing down as we were met with EFR training (first aid). We met Anne our practice dummy, some people getting more acquainted than others!

Surveying is starting soon as we all are anticipating so everyone’s getting their inner nerd out, and hopefully will be surveying away til our hearts content.