Meet Turtle Chick!

Elke Talma, a.k.a “turtle chick”, is the Research Officer for the Marine Conservation Society, Seychelles (MCSS). Elke has worked with MCSS since 2002 and is in the only full-time paid, employee of MCSS. Originally, she was involved in the Whale Shark Programme (http://seychelles-whale-sharks.blogspot.com) but an aversion to getting wet and being seasick meant she was more than happy to take over the Turtle Monitoring Programme in 2004. She has since expanded the programme to cover a total of 14 nesting beaches on Mahé Island and 3 on Praslin Island, compared to the one beach which was being monitored by MCSS in 2003 when the Turtle Programme was started.

MCSS Research Officer, Elke Talma, photo Alice Reynaud.

Elke has a BSc. honors degree in Marine Biology from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in the U.K and while she would be keen to do an MSc., lack of funding, a deep seated fear of statistics and a year round turtle nesting season have so far proven a significant deterrant.

Elke has tagged 61 individual turtles in the past 4 years and prides herself on being one of the few people in Seychelles who regularly gets ‘attacked’ by nesting turtles…fortunately the battle scars are never permanent!

Scars from turtle attacks, self portrait by Elke