Blog Entry Five

7:01 AM

Blog Week 5:

I started this week off with a hike to through the mountains of Praslin to spend the day replanting the palms that were lost in the fire in 1998.  The fire started because the local fishermen felt that without the vegetation, the walk from one end of the island to the other would become much more simple. Although successful in making it an easier hike, that fire destroyed over seven endemic tree and/or plant populations. A group known as TRAS (The Terrestrial Recreation Association of the Seychelles) is dedicated to replanting the lost species on the island. So my volunteer group took the day off from baby turtles and shark tracking to plant saplings along a 1000 meter stretch of land in the mountains.

The following days included hikes to the four major beaches in order to continue the excavations of the hatched sea turtle nests. But what we found one of these days wasn't any hatchlings, rather two Hawksbill turtles laying their nests. It is rare to have nesting mothers this late in the season so coming across two was extraordinary! When it comes to collecting data on laying mothers, it must be done quickly and quietly. They go into a trans-like state in which during their trans you must measure them, both length and width, tag both the front flippers if they are yet to be tagged, take a DNA sample from their back flipper and (if you see them nesting early enough) count the eggs as she starts to lay them. (In the photos, I am counting eggs and measuring width.)

Finally at the end of the week, I got the chance to track the location of the sonar tagged shark (Little Kalina). It was exciting to see that she was healthy, swimming from in the mangroves out to the ocean on a daily basis.