2019-2020 Sea turtle nesting season update

This season 2019-2020 has been a very busy one so far, with relevant improvement compared to the previous season, especially in terms of the number of emergences and nests recorded.

Safely heading back to sea after successfully nesting

So far, MCSS has recorded 444 emergences and 266 nests in total from both Green and Hawksbill turtles, with the majority of records being related to the Hawksbill turtles. Green turtles are observed nesting all year round compared to Hawksbill turtles that particularly nest during October through to March.

A beautiful shot of a Hawksbill turtle heading back to sea

We had the chance of having 41 Hawksbill turtles encounters so far in the season, and these can sometimes be from the same turtles being encountered several times in the season. Through our photo-identification process, we discovered that one of the turtles was last seen back in 2015, so it was a great joy to see her nesting successfully again for this season.
Poaching remains a major concern and unfortunately at least a dozen turtles have been recorded as poached for this season by MCSS, with the majority being Hawksbill turtles and in most cases the female had obviously not had the chance to lay her eggs, but was instead dragged away by poachers.

A vulnerable female turtle seeking to nest

Hawksbill turtles are listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red list, consuming their meat is also very risky as they feed on sponges that contain toxins, but it is nonetheless still practiced with consumers either buying the meat off as Green turtle meat unknowingly or some others claiming to know how to prepare it without being intoxicated.

Poached turtle carcass

The fact remains that sea turtles are protected under the law and their population are still at risk of extinction, so conservation of the species remains one of our main goal.

Experienced volunteers

Hello all!

Hawksbill hatchlings starting their journey

I am Jacqueline from Switzerland.

I fell in love with Seychelles flora and fauna after visiting the islands of Aride and Cousin in 2008. I love nature, in particular plants, birds, turtles and mammals, and feel it is my moral duty to spend some of my time helping to preserve the beauty that nature brings in our lives! What would it be without it?

Data recording on the Trimble

After having volunteered with sea turtles in the Maldives and on North Island, Seychelles, I wanted to learn more about turtle conservation, photo identification, nest relocation, nesting behavior and collecting accurate data for the purpose of conservation and protection of the beautiful Hawksbill and Green Turtles which nest on Mahé Island.

Subduing a turtle for data collection

As well as the turtle patrols, I love the bird surveying we do at MCSS. It’s also great fun to learn about beach profiling, feeding and cleaning the Giant Tortoise enclosure, and giving them a scrub once in while. I hope they will eventually be released on North or Curieuse Island where they would be able to roam and graze freely, and live their natural long life for more then 200 years!

I am also looking forward to learn more about the Terrapin Monitoring Program at the Center in the wetlands at Anse Intendance.

Last but not least, I also enjoy informing interested tourists and Seychelloise about what needs to be done in order to preserve the precious coastal biodiversity, and to help raise awareness of the many threats that the wildlife is confronted with.

Digging up a nest to check hatching success

 

 

Emily Cruse

Hi! My name is Emily Cruse and I am a Veterinary Student from Bristol, England. I am here at MCSS for four weeks to gain experience in treating chelonians.

My time here at the Banyan Tree rehabilitation center started with me performing a Post Mortem examination on a hawksbill turtle that had died the day before. It is a sad but necessary part of the job as it allows us to learn what had caused the death and how others could be treated in the future.

Day to day I spend my time with the trapping team performing health checks on any terrapins we catch. This involves looking for any signs of external injuries or parasites as well as weighing and measuring them. I also X-Ray any females to see if they are pregnant. During my time here I also treated one of the resident giant tortoises for an eye infection. Luckily it was noticed early so there was no need to use antibiotics and it resolved quickly.

When I’m not treating animals I carry out my own research project analysing the data collected from the trapping team. Using over four years worth of data I have been developing a body condition index scoring system for both the black mud and yellow belly terrapins. I hope this will be used in future to aid the rehabilitation of sick terrapins and help select the most appropriate ones for the breeding program.

THe Maritime students are back!

Beach patrol on Anse Grand Police

Hi I’m Esthel Didon from Seychelles Maritime Academy and I’m  studying Advanced Certificate in Fisheries Science and Fishing Technology. I’m currently on attachment at MCSS (Marine Conservation Society Seychelles) at Intendance, WCRC & Terrapin Project.

During the work attachment trapping is one of the many activities taking place here. Trapping is done to catch terrapins around the wetland to monitor their development, as in growth and weight, and also marking them by colouring their scutes with nail polish for identification. Treatment can also take place if needed. There two species of terrapins found in Seychelles and they are both critically endangered, those are the Black muds and the Yellow belly. The traps for the terrapins are set on Mondays and are continuously monitored during the week for any terrapins, then the traps are removed at the end of the week which is on Fridays.

Invasive plant removal

In addition to the above, removal of invasive species is also done when necessary, as the word itself says it’s to prevent its invasion in the wetland. The invasive species causes many threats to the wetland most especially the terrapins, that might eventually create an imbalance in the wetland ecosystem.

Beach clean up

Nevertheless, beach patrol takes place everyday during the turtle’s peak season (mainly for the Hawksbill species), however when its not the peak season the beach patrol is done only once a week on 14 beaches down south that are covered for any turtle related activities such as nests, tracks, hatchlings and also human impacts (such as poaching, picnicking and pollution). The Green turtles usually nest all year round.

Besides the field work, there’s also interaction with the guests where I need to take the guests for a tour around the center and explain how things work, especially about the project itself.

Joshua's internship with MCSS

Beach patrolling

Hi, my name is Joshua Maria, I am currently studying environmental science at the University of Seychelles. My interest is doing wildlife activities, such as taking part in beach clean ups conducted by The Ocean Project. For the summer, I am undertaking my internship at the Marine Conservation Society Seychelles’ Wildlife Conservation and Rehabilitation Centre, located at Intendance. 

During the past few weeks of my internship, I have gained knowledge about freshwater terrapins and sea turtles, taken part in beach patrols. These required us to assess the beach for any sea turtle tracks or nests present, as most of the beaches located in the south of Mahe are popular sea turtle nesting sites.

Invasive plants removal at the banyan tree wetland

I also had the opportunity to assist the Animal welfare officer in relocating the 8 freshwater terrapins back to their natural habitat, at the recently rehabilitated Anse Royale wetland, witnessed by Anse Royale secondary and A level students. However, I had the most extraordinary start to my internship, because I witnessed the release of the hawksbill turtle named Pink, who was released back into the sea after 2 months of rehabilitation. I hope to come back for my next internship.

Harry the long term volunteer!

My name is Harry Johnson and I am with MCSS for 5-6months of volunteering. After graduating from my Master’s, I decided I needed some practical conservation/research experience. I chose MCSS because of their project on Temporal Protected Areas.

Investigating a possible turtle nest

Additionally, the Western Indian Ocean is an area which has received less scientific attention than others e.g. the North Atlantic in the field of marine science /conservation. This means it can be argued that data collected in this geographic area disproportionately more value than elsewhere.

Beach profiling with the ladies!

So far, I have learned how to feed and care for a variety of chelonians, learnt the protocols for beach patrols and what data to collect. Other skills include what to do from a research perspective when encountering a turtle that is nesting or attempting to nest. More novel skills include how to use a machete. I intend to broaden my skill set as much as possible during my time here and am confident that I will be a better researcher/ conservationist by the end of it. I have three personal goals as well; to improve my diving, to climb Morne Seychellois, and to see as much of the wildlife the Seychelles has to offer.

Ambre's intoduction

Hi! I am Ambre Chabert and I come from Marseille, south of France. I have a degree in biodiversity and ecology, and I am going to start a master's degree in marine ecology (IMBRSea). I have always been interested by the ocean and its secrets. Therefore, I would like to become a marine ecology researcher.

conducting beach patrol

To gain more field experience, I am now an intern at the Marine Conservation Society Seychelles, as part of the Temporal Protected Areas project. For this project, we, along with other interns/volunteers and Vanessa (the project coordinator), conduct beach patrols to monitor nesting turtles. As it is not the peak nesting season, we monitor anthropogenic disturbance to evaluate factors that could be an obstacle for nesting turtles. There are only two species of turtle that nest in the Seychelles: the hawksbill turtle and the green turtle; critically endangered and endangered respectively. The hawksbill turtle nesting season is from October to January, whereas green turtles nest all year round. In fact, there is a green turtle nest currently and we might have to relocate it, since it is washed away by waves. MCSS monitors nesting turtles, identifies them, monitors the nests, relocates them if necessary and escorts the hatchlings to the sea when encountered. By doing so, they discourage poachers and increase the chances of survival of the hatchlings.

water quality testing

I also participate in other projects: monitoring terrapin population, birds, marine litter, water quality, invertebrates and undertaking coral restoration. Finally, I help at the Banyan tree center with chelonian care and maintenance.

In one week, I have learnt so much and I can’t wait to see what these next 5 weeks have in store for me. 

Ambre, intern, June 2019

2018-2019 turtle nesting season overview

 

As the 2018-2019 turtles nesting season almost comes to an end, with the peak of the season long gone and hatching season also over. We have done a preliminary analysis of collected data to see how productive the season has been. In terms of encountered turtles, there were 49 encounters this year compared to 26 in the previous season 2017-2018, noting that several times these were the same turtles encountered. Moreover, far more tracks and nests have been recorded for both Hawksbill and Green turtles:

Hawksbill turtle emergences: 283

Hawksbill turtle nests: 147

Green turtle emergences: 15

Green turtle nests: 8

Rupert Stacy

My name is Rupert Stacy and I am a master’s student on the IMBRSea program, focusing on management of marine biological resources. I came to Seychelles to work with the MCSS and gain valuable insight into how their project on temporal protected areas is implemented. The idea of temporal protected areas is an interesting one. Having management plans for threatened species at vulnerable life stages is critical for conservation efforts. Thus, identifying how the project has collected, analysed and reported on seasonal habitat use of species, in this case marine turtles, I thought would be a very useful set of transferable skills that I might be able to use later in my own career.

Mylene and Maiwenn from France joins MCSS for a short internship

We are two interns at the MCSS currently working on the temporal protected area project with the help of our project leader, Vanessa. Our aim is to collect and analyse data from the main sea turtle nesting beaches and try to make it a protected area. To achieve this, we are helping on patrolling the beaches to find tracks (turtles, anthropogenic, other animals…) and checking the recorded turtle nests, to check the hatching success. 
When a nest has hatched,we excavate the nest and count the number of hatched eggs, the predated ones and the ones that didn’t make it and we collect the data .

helping a weak hatchling

 When we get some luck, as we did on the last Tuesday, we can witness the nest hatching and help the baby turtles get to the water safely  by removing obstacles in their path and guiding them as they make their imprints on the way to the sea, we can count them directly…although this can be a bit difficult ! However that was an incredible experience, something we thought we would never see !

one of the many little ones!

The other part of the time, we help at the office by taking care of the giant tortoises and the center itself. Finally part of our job is to raise awareness about the Seychelles wildlife by giving tours to the tourists and children by organising presentations and short workshops at the schools.

Breakfast time!

Justin's internship so far..

My internship with MCSS

Hey, my name is Justin and I am a master student in marine biology doing my thesis research in the Seychelles. Here I am studying the hatching success of the Hawksbill sea turtles in the South of Mahé island together with the staff of MCSS. I have been here now for a month and I must say that, even though I am here to work, every day feels like a holiday. 

watching out for a weak hatchling

Watching turtles nest on the beaches every couple of days, giant tortoises at my backdoor, all kinds of colourful birds flying around. Life in paradise..

Not every day is a holiday of course, because I am here on an internship studying the hatching success of hawksbill sea turtles, so my job here is to do beach patrols every other day to try and find tracks of nesting sea turtles, and by doing this, identifying nest locations. Furthermore, I have to dig up hatched nests to see what amount of young turtles made it out alive. Then I will try to link this to several environmental factors to find out what is actually the cause of a good or bad hatching success.

Other than that I always try to help out at the centre by feeding the tortoises, cleaning the terrapin tanks and cleaning up when necessary. i already learnt a lot regarding the local wildlife and  I hope I will be able to learn much more in the coming months!

Samantha's internship so far

My name is Samantha Stott, I am 22 years old and currently doing my master thesis with MCSS. The aim of my project is to assess potential Hawksbill nesting sites using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) in Mahé.

learning to handle the drone!

 I decided to do this project with MCSS as they have a long history of working with marine turtles. It has now been a month since I have started my project, although it did not start well due to the rainy seasons which meant we were not able to fly the drone we are now on target to finishing all the data collection thanks to the nice warm sunshine.

Every Monday, Wednesday and Fridays, I go on patrol looking for new nests and turtle tracks, some patrols have been very wet and others very hot, but it is always very rewarding when we get to see a turtle come up the beach and lay its eggs. In fact, I was lucky enough to see a turtle come up the beach and lay its eggs the second time I went patrolling. This was an amazing experience to be able get close and be able to admire such a beautiful species. However, do not underestimate how strong these beautiful turtles are…. During one of the patrols we had to restrain a Hawksbill turtle to measure its carapace and take pictures of its head for identification purposes…

Trying to get photo ID shots

 However, this never happened as it was just too strong to restrain, leaving me with scratches all over my feet and ankles (No hard feelings still love them).

Hawksbill turtle hatchling

As time goes by, I am getting to know more about the MCSS team and the surrounding environment. I have had the opportunity to try a lot of the local food including breadfruit which is very nice even if my pallet was a bit confused as it tasted sweet like a banana but had the texture of a potato. I have not been able to get around to trying the fruit bat though… And probably won’t ever.

It is a great opportunity to be able to do what I love in such a beautiful environment. I would like to say a special thank you to Vanessa for all her guidance and support during my stay on this beautiful island. 

Blue Economy Internship students

It is with great pleasure that we have been hosting two students from the Blue Economy Internship Programme, who are both showing great interest in the work that we do, especially at the Wildlife Conservation and Rehabilitation Centre where they are based. In the following blogs they share their experiences so far:

My first week at MCSS...

Hello! My name is Johnise Philoe, I’m 17 years old (well until next week), I live at Baie Lazare and I’m a Blue Economy intern with MCSS that is situated at the Banyan Tree Resort’s Wildlife Conservation and Rehabilitation Centre. Being there for 2weeks will and is allowing me to experience, widen my knowledge and develop my skills towards the conservation and rehabilitation of Seychelles’ terrapins ( i.e. the yellow bellied and the black mud turtle species, also known as ‘Torti soupap’ in creole) and the different types of sea turtles ( but mostly about the hawksbill and green turtles since they are the only species which nests on the many beaches of the Seychelles).

 Stephie, Simi(volunteer) and Johnise with nesting turtle

Even though my first week of working at the Centre is almost over, there has been joyful, memorable, collective and even tiring moments, and lets just say that there are still more to come. These are some reasons as to why I wake up every morning to attend my working days there. 

Johnise measuring tracks

tagging a nest

My name is Stephie Dubel, I am 16 years old. And currently interning at MCSS (Marine Conservation Society Seychelles) on the south Mahe projects, is located at Banyan Tree.

It's been a week already since I've been working at the MCSS and throughout this week I managed to mastered as many as I could about Wildlife Conservation and the projects that are ongoing at the MCSS.
I've learnt that there's only two species of Terrapins in Seychelles! They are the Black mud Terrapin and Yellow -bellied Terrapin. Apparently I was told by the Animal welfare officer at MCSS Mr Max Bonfatti that these little creatures are critically endangered species facing a numerous threats through residential and commercial development, invasive spices and diseases, pollution and so on.

During this first week of interning I also learnt how to do the trapping which is very easy! In the afternoon you just put the traps in some different pond sites along with some bait in it and every morning we went by each of the pond sites to check if there's any Terrapins trapped inside. This is usually done twice daily.
The Terrapins that are caught in the traps are taken to the centre were they get measured and weighed later they get released back to the pond.

Furthermore, we also do daily patrol.
This is normally done in the morning. We use a Trimble to record any necessary data for example if we encounter a sea turtle nesting!

collecting encounter data on a nesting turtle

To my knowledge I was told that whenever you encounter a turtle nesting its better to stand behind  her rather than in front of her because, she might get stressed or feel threatened and return to the ocean if she notices your presence.

So far I am enjoying my experience. It's amazing how much I have come to learn in just one week. And I strongly believe that MCSS I doing a great job.

seeing off their first turtle encounter with  MCSS

NEVER DID WE EVER THINK WE WOULD

-Get a bruise from a tortoise “running” into you 

Anna chatting with Armando

-Apply nail polish on a terrapin 

Terrapin spa!

-Hover in the bushes like a military, to count turtle eggs 

observing a nesting turtle

Let’s start from the beginning. We are Astrid and Anna, from Sweden and Germany. As we wanted to work with turtles, we were placed at the Conservation Centre at Banyan Tree resort. The staff here monitors the terrapin population in the wetlands around the resort, track turtles and takes care of six giant tortoises.

Right on our first day we fell in love with the gentle giants here at the conservation centre. Four of the tortoises were donated by their previous owners as they were not able to take good care of them while the other two had to be bought after some generous donations in the effort to rescue them. Daily duties are feeding them, cleaning the pond, and take away poo to the composter. We always imagined reptiles as independent animals, but these tortoises love to get a scratch. They are trying to get your attention so you pet them. But beware to never stand between a tortoise and her food- she can cause lovely bruises by “running” into you. Still we can’t stop gazing at these amazing animals.

The next day we went on terrapin tracking. We were lucky that there were two terrapins in our first trap. We have noticed it is not so common to find them in the traps.  What we usually do when finding a terrapin, is taking them to the centre to measure and weight them. We use the data to keep track on their health of the population, if they change ponds, and to understand terrapins behaviour better. Oh, and by the way, the nail polish is to mark them.

The first week went by, many things happened and we learned a lot. We did bird-surveys, beach-patrols to look for turtle tracks and nests, and we were cleaning coral tanks.

Then Friday came along (our favourite day so far). We were doing turtle-patrols on five different beaches. Quick summary of how we do that: Walk along the beach. Look for tracks. If we find one, we measure it to find out how big and what kind of sea turtle it was. Hawksbill and green turtles are nesting at the beaches here.

with their first turtle track

 Hawksbill turtles are critically endangered, and the green turtles are endangered. So, it is important that their nests are in good places, and that tourists and dogs for example don’t scare them away. When we got back to the office after the beach-patrols we got a call from someone that saw a turtle on the beach. In order to measure her and count the eggs, we hovered in the bushes behind her. That was one of our best nature experiences ever, as we never thought we would be so close to a turtle in such an intimate situation. When she was finished, we took ID-photos of her which we compare to previous taken pictures at the office. We think doing this is very exciting, in contrast to previous volunteers apparently.  (Vanessa knows how much we love it.) That’s how we keep track of the turtles.

I3S fanatics!

Now we are at the end of our second week. We are staying here one month. We already know that we’re going to miss the turtles, tortoises, terrapins and the lovely colleges. So, we are just trying to take in every moment and enjoy our stay here as much as possible. 

selfies while waiting on a nesting turtle

Astrid and Anna, volunteers November 2018. 

Plastic Debris and 'Microplastics' Monitoring

While doing monitoring and assessment activities in the Grand Police area, we noticed something in the beach sand that we haven’t noticed at any of the other beaches around Mahé: many small pieces of broken up plastic. Though there is no as yet global standardised size, these plastic fragments are referred to based on their size, generally; macroplastics if they are larger than 25 mm, mesoplastics if they are between 5 mm and 25 mm, and microplastics if they are smaller than 5 mm. Plastic fragments such as these represent one of the lesser understood, yet seriously concerning, impacts that marine debris has on the health of our oceans and us.

While primary microplastics enter waterways and eventually the oceans in a micro size, secondary microplastics – such as the ones that are washed up on Grand Police beach – are the result of larger plastic debris in the ocean (eg. plastic bottles) breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces due to factors such as the movement of the waves and the sun’s rays. But it doesn’t end there. As they continue to fragment into ever smaller pieces, they absorb organic pollutants and toxins in the seawater like a sponge, and are then often mistaken for food and ingested by marine life. Accumulation of this kind of marine debris in the gut of various species can cause them to die of starvation. Little yet has been confirmed about the impacts that this may have on the health of humans, but it is possible that the chemical contaminants in the gut of fish species may be released from the gut wall into other tissues, which are then consumed by humans.  

It is undeniable that the ultimate measure to stop this problem from getting any worse is to stop plastic debris from entering our oceans altogether. However, until that can be achieved, we have to monitor and measure these plastic fragments washing up on the beach in order to try understand the scale of the problem and how best to manage it – “what gets measured, gets managed”. We do this by using sieves of two different mesh sizes to sift the sand along the strand line at a certain area on the beach. We then take the collected fragments back to our offices where we carefully measure and quantify them. Meticulous work it is!