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| Really like the Trimble:) |
About a month ago, I (Annabelle du Parc) joined MCSS and the Conservation Team as a volunteer to help Vanessa monitor the nesting
beaches for turtles in the south of Mahé. Since then, we have found tracks of
turtles on the beaches, new nests, damaged nests (by dogs), we have relocated a
nest which was too close to the high
tide line on the beach.
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| taking emergence GPS |
Then on September 30th , while
Vanessa was attending a very interesting workshop on Protected areas, organized
by IOC, Aleks and I had the chance to encounter our first hawksbill turtle.
Awesome!!!
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| Turtle encounter on GPO |
Today, while MCSS was
welcoming 2 students form Maritime School, we encounter as well a Hawksbill
turtle who tried to find a nice place to lay her eggs, but unfortunately she
left without nesting: the place was not comfortable enough!
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| Turtle Encounter on COR |
However, we
restrained her while she was on her way back to the sea and checked if she had
a tag, if she was not injured and we took identification pictures as well as
measurements. What a great experience!! As The nesting season for hawksbill
turtles has just started, this should happen more often and we should be very
busy for the following months!!!
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| New maritime students (Celeste & Lynn) |
Besides nesting turtles
beaches monitoring, we also do beach profiling, in order to study the erosion
of nesting beaches and their impact on turtles nesting behavior. With climate
change and sea water levels increase threatening, this exercice done by MCSS
once a month is of a great importance. Sea level rise could lead to erosion of coastal ecosystems and
eliminate nesting beaches as well as wetlands.
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