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.