Blog Entry One

Week One (Jan. 23-27):

This week included mostly measuring ocean levels from low and high tide. This means measuring the distance from the beginning of the beach line to the water line at both the highest tide and the lowest tide. I did this on beaches on the three islands, Mahe, Praslin, and La Digue to see how the location of the islands may change the amount of beach lost with rising ocean levels. I found that the worst case of beach loss was on the northwest coast of Praslin, whereas during high tide, there is no beach left. The locals have built rock piles in attempt to keep the water from diminishing the land behind the houses but have found that as the water levels continue to rise, the rocks will become obsolete. Many houses along this coast are already vacant in preparation for this unstoppable water rising.

Other than this, I had a proper introduction the giant tortoises that I will dedicate a lot of my time to in the next month. They're big.

I've sent time in the rain forests on Praslin marking trees to avoid the poaching  of the Coco de Mer. The Coco de Mer is like a giant coconut, about the size of my torso, that is the national symbol for the Seychelles. The issue is, although it is illegal, many of the native people want to harvest them to tell to tourists or use for their homes, etc. This becomes an issues because the seeds take seven years to become fully grown and when people are cutting them down at such an alarming rate, the Coco de Mer trees don’t have the time or resources to regenerate. What we did was mark the trees, each with a specific number and counted the number of seeds each tree had. We will return in a week or two to see if the numbers stay constant or if there is poaching in that area. 

The Seychelles is one on the most beautiful places I have ever seen. The people of the Seychelles have recently enforced a policy to keep their islands clean from pollution due to the effects it has on their oceans.