Friday, August 4, 2017

Currently I am half way through my second week working with MCSS. I heard about the project in UK throughs the Seychelles Ministry of Environment, Climate and Energy. I am a student at the University of East Anglia studying International Development with a focus on natural resources. I understand that most people who take internships here at MCSS come from a biological background, however I am interested more broadly in the cross over between development and conservation. Through participating in conservation, I can better understand conservation management and the interface between conservation and community development.
Therefore, I chose to take an internship with the Temporal Protected Areas (TPA) project. The TPA project is trying to develop areas that can be enforced as a protected area during the turtle nesting season. This is providing the opportunity to see how real ‘cutting-edge’ conservation is being conducted in one of Earths most precious biodiversity ‘hotspots’ with its unique rates of endemism. This includes being one of the top 5 places in the world for the critically endangered Hawksbill turtle to nest. Poaching and coastal development is a big problem here, threatening the turtle populations,so protected areas hopes to allow them the space to reproduce safely. However, creating TPAs and managing them is also a complicated issue, of which has interesting solutions.
So far things have been going very smoothly, everyone here is super kind helping me stay busy and integrate me into the project. With the TPA project I spend most my time beach profiling and beach monitoring/patrolling. Although TPAs are not officially established on a legal basis, MCSS is operating as if many of the beaches here are TPAs already to help turtles and illustrate the benefits of protected areas. Such work includes collecting data to measure the rates of erosion on the beaches and monitoring beaches for anthropogenic obstacles that would obstruct the turtles nesting. At the moment, it is not turtle nesting season, yet it is important to still check for nests and how able they will be able to nest when they do arrive.Everyday I’m in the field on some of the most beautiful and wild beaches I’ve ever seen.
Beach profiling Anse Bazarca
Beach profiling Anse
In addition, I have begun working with the AnseForbans wetland restoration project. This has been really exciting as there’s loads to be done! This is the great thing about MCSS, when there is help needed, they allow you to integrate into other projects too. My main job with this is to start mapping out the whole wetland area including the rivers that feed and stem from the wetlands. This means I am having to battle with GIS software, but useful knowledge to have. We have just begun terrapin trapping also, something I have assisted with at Banyan tree, and also water sampling for pollutants. All of this is helping me see what needs to be collected in order to develop plans for restoration projects and to learn more intimately how ecosystems are all interconnected.

Hopefullythere is a chance to communicate more with local farmers/residents at AnseFrobans about the importance of wetlands, and how they will benefit from wetland restoration and how they can be part in the decision making over the restoration plans. But for now work is sweet and pleased to have several more weeks here on Mahe!



2016-2017 Seasonal Report

The 2016-2017 nesting season has come to an end and we have already entered into the 2017-2018 nesting season, although at the moment it is very quiet  with no  Hawksbill turtles nesting so far, except for a few Green turtle tracks found over a month ago on the main nesting beaches.

For the 2016-2017  season, we recorded 370 emergence on the 14 monitored beaches, along with 164 nests.
MCSS also had the chance to encounter 40 nesting turtles, which is always very interesting and we get to collect some data on them; carapace length and width, check for any injuries or abnormalities, check if they have a tag number and also get good pictures of the left and right side of the face for identification. The best task though is to try and do an egg count as they are laying...this can be very tricky as sometimes you can have 3 or 4 egg coming out at the same time..and this happens fast, so the final count is always an approximate count.

The MCSS team is now looking forward for the peak of the nesting season for 2017-2018, new volunteers and interns will be coming in and they will be keeping an update of all the highlights of the season.
Other than that, we will soon be celebrating the Sea Turtle Festival Seychelles and the team is ready to participate in the March and spread sea turtle awareness in the country.