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, March 28, 2013

28/03/13 - Sharks and surveys!

Hello everybody.

This has been a really eventful week on base!

Our shark week started on Sunday, which is a new experience on base, each day we have had an exciting new lecture on sharks biology, threats and conservation. I have only seen two sharks in six weeks so far so now that we have this little new knowledge we hope to see a few more hanging around when we go diving. The week was finished off with a guest speaker from Seychelles Fishing Authority who told us all about the Shark research and tagging programme wich is currently going on in the Seychelles including a Lemon Shark tagging project within our own Baie Ternay!

Most of the new volunteers that arrived two weeks ago are getting signed off and are ready to survey. I really enjoy surveying...usually, however todays surge made things a little more difficult! we spent the survey dodging between Acropora amd sea urchins! But after that survey we had a really nice one to do which compensates the adrenaline rush from before. And when I think of our fabulous weather with crystal clear water and an ocean of glass it is worth everything.

For the older ones it's getting near the end. The Dive masters did their rescue diver this weekend so we all feel much safer now when we go diving ;) Tomorrow we are having our turtle dives again and with a bit luck we gonna see one :D

Denise Renninger