Emiel's final blog

Hello everyone, it is Emiel again. The journey comes to an end.

 It has been an amazing experience and I learned a lot. The hawksbill turtle nesting season was just ending when we arrived so for our project we did not have a lot of work to do with nesting turtle as there weren't any!

Green turtle track from above using the drone

We (me and my buddy Tarek) went on beach patrolling every Wednesday, on all the 14 main nesting beaches, to see if there were any emergences and nesting of green turtles. Green turtles nest the year round. Every second week we found green turtle tracks and also some nests, mostly on Anse Grand Police and AnseBazarca. The last week, we even got to fly a good high-tech drone! We were testing if it would be a more efficient way of patrolling the beaches. It wasn’t at that moment, probably because we were still figuring out how we could do it in the best way, but regardless it was awesome.

The other days we helped out with the other projects. We helped out Inga with here terrapin trapping project, even taking over her project for a week when she was away. This was very cool as we had the chance to drive around the south of the island, to all the different wetlands. Some of them were in the forest, some of them in local farms or even in peoples’ backyard. Everyone was

always really friendly and interested in what we did, asking us questions and being enthusiastic when we caught a terrapin. We even got filmed by a crew of CNN, for a documentary.

On Tuesday and Thursday, we usually did bird monitoring. I really liked this one. We had a few transect across the Banyan Tree wetland where we would then count all the birds we found on our path. This was a great opportunity to learn about all the different birds in the wetlands in on Mahé. In the end, we saw all the birds there were to see in the wetlands and from some of them even their nests and juveniles. 

Luckily, after three weeks, we did not have to do the water hyacinth clearing anymore. It was not the most fun job in the world and on top of that it did not really feel helpful. They were growing way to fast! The resort finally realized they had to do something about it and hired an external contractor to

Last and not least, everyones’ favorite, the beach profiling. To do a beach profiling, you have certain fixed points along the beach, on the most inland side of the beach. At low tide, you define the angle/inclination of the beach and the distance towards the sea. You repeat that for each time the angle changes, until you get to the water. You repeat all this for all the points on the beach. We did this for 6 nesting beaches (Anse Intendance, Anse Grand Police, Anse Petit Police, AnseBazarca, AnseCorail and AnseCachee). This way if you do it each month over a long period of time, you can see how the beaches evolve over time. Do they rise because they get more sand deposit from the sea or do they erode? Interesting job but time consuming and exhausting as you spent the whole day in the sun.

All in all, it was an amazing experience with a lot of amazing people to work with! I really enjoyed my stay but sadly, now it’s time to go back home to Belgium. I would like to thank everyone I worked with for the great time I had here. Thank you Vanessa, Alessia, Rebecca, Tarek, Elena, Luana and Inga.

A shot I took with the drone!

Tarek's final blog

It´s time to say good bye....

After 9 weeks of volunteering with MCSS this amazing experience is coming to an end and I have to go back home to Germany. During the last weeks, I learned a lot about sea turtles and their nesting behaviour (hawksbill and green turtles) as well as about their small relatives the freshwater terrapins. Especially in the last weeks we were lucky to find some new green turtle nests in AnseBazarca and Grand Police. It is really impressing to see how much effort a mother turtle takes to protect her offspring, digging multiple holes to camouflage the actual nest. Of course, as soon as the mother is done with laying up to 200 eggs in the nest (multiple times per nesting season)her job is done and she probably won´t see her offspring again.

Green turtle track on Grand Police

Also, the hatchlings have a hard time to survive their first days, digging out of the nest, escaping the crabs, and finally surviving the dangers of the open ocean. Sadly, not all of them even make it to the ocean.

Dead Hawksbill hatchling on Anse Cachee

Furthermore, I participated in several other projects like the AnseForbans terrapin monitoring project, the bird monitoring project in the Banyan Tree Seychelles Resort and the clearing of invasive water plants in the wetlands.

Black mud terrapin caught in AnseForbans, marked for identification if recaptured

I really enjoyed the time volunteering with MCSS and because of the possibility to participate in different project I could archive many new and diverse skills. I am very happy for meeting all the people working for MCSS and for spending time with the other volunteers hiking, diving and of course working.

Thanks everyone for the great experience,

Tarek 

 Night Heron in wetlands of the Banyan Tree Seychelles Resort