Our Maritime training Centre Students, Dainise Quatre and Rebecca Hoareau, are fitting right in with our monitoring programmes and picking up the basics quickly, here's their short intro to some of the activities they were involved in this last week....
On Tuesday 6th of September 2011 at around 7.30 am, we went for our first turtle monitoring walk in the south of Mahe. It was a very sunny day. As you may know, we had to monitor 14 beaches to see if there were any turtles, nest and tracks.
We were very excited because it was our first experience of turtle monitoring. We were accompanied by Uzice and Laura. At 8.13 we arrived on our first beach which was Anse Parnell, and then Uzice explained to us about the turtle code of conduct and how to fill the turtle monitoring form. The last beach was at Mme Trojans.
Uzice explains about turtle monitoring and the code of conduct
Unfortunately, we patroled all the 14 beaches without seeing any turtles, which we were looking forward to, especially the two types, hawksbill and green turtle also the turtles nest here, so we were hoping to see their behavior and tracks.
Uzice, Dainise and Rebecca striding out across one of the 14 beaches....
We discovered that there were a lot of dog tracks and some litter that has been washed on the beach by the waves. Even though we did not encounter any turtles on that day, we enjoyed and learned about a lot of beaches that we had never known existed here on Mahe.
No tracks but lots of litter..... where are all the right flip-flops?
Were hoping that during our two months of work experience here at MCSS, we will be able to encounter a turtle nesting.
We wish that the public would be more concerned about preserving these species, especially stop destroying their habitats and throwing litter around!
At least the beaches are cleaner after an MCSS turtle patrol!
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