Cheryl-Samantha Owen

Published on the 25th March, 2008

Conservation biologist and photographer Cheryl-Samantha Owen has just arrived on the remote Aldabra Atoll for a four-week expedition with the Save Our Seas Foundation (SOSF) to document, film and photograph the abundance of large shark species in the surrounding waters and the marine life in this unique environment.

For as long as I can remember the Indian Ocean has captivated me. As a child its seemingly endless expanse of blue wilderness held a life full of adventure and of places even more mystical than those in Enid Blyton’s Magic Far Away Tree. Growing up in Kenya I often escaped to those picture perfect white beaches where the rock pools, filled with hermit crabs and brittle stars, became my playground. It wasn’t until later when the natural world became a complete passion that I first heard of ‘Aldabra’ and I have been drawn to it ever since. On a map it is only a stone’s throw away from the Swahili coast I know so well, but in fact this coral atoll is 400 miles southeast of Mombasa tucked away in a lost corner of the Seychelles Island Group. Described by explorers as ‘the island man forgot - a living natural history museum’ there is something magical and mysterious about it. Even the name rings of magic, say Aldabra to someone and the chances are ‘abracadabra’ pops to mind!

Aldabra greeted me this morning with a gently rolling lapping against the sandy shore and the sun lighting up the crystal clear waters beyond. A far cry from my wake-up in the darkness early yesterday morning on neighboring Assumption Island when an exceedingly aggravated sun burnt-sounding and tone deaf cockerel took out his frustrations on our bleary-eyed expedition team a few hours too early. 

The journey to Mahe was a piece of cake, effortless, compared to what turned out to be the logistical nightmare of getting to the airstrip on Assumption Island, let alone getting there before dark. I am convinced that visiting another planet would have incurred only slightly elevated stress levels. When the Seychelles Island Development Company (IDC) ops manager said, with a big smile on her face, “When the weather gets bad it gets tricky” I severely underestimated the extent of the trickiness and the amount of times we would have to unload, reload, unload, reload … all 1,515kgs of indestructible pelican cases, Himalayan trekking bags designed for riding on the backs of yaks and the seven of us. The ultimatum for the journey progressed from a créole accented “it is not possible” to “you can all go with your gear as long as you don’t complain to the pilot that it was a hard landing”.

Although the prospect of sleeping on a runway, being attacked by mosquitoes and eating stale oatcakes may leave some feeling rather soggy, when the engines did finally fire up for take off into the unusually stormy skies above it was music to my ears, and 2.5 hours later we made the short unlit airstrip with 25 minutes to spare before blanket darkness. We spent the night in the IDC outpost on Assumption because transporting our equipment to neighboring Aldabra by boat at night even though it is only 20 miles away was too risky.

Aldabra and Assumption are two island extremes. The latter fell to the hands of man and for most of this century guano lust for the layers of white gold deposited by sea birds for thousands of years left the island bereft of most of its indigenous animals, as this nutritious material was harvested and shipped away for use as fertilizer. Assumption used to be one of only two places in the world that the Abbott’s boobi bred, but the bird was driven from here long before my visit. Aldabra escaped this fate and today is still one of the wonders of the world mainly because it is built like a fortress, its fossil corals providing an impenetrable lunar-esq barrier to all but the absolute determined. It almost fell in the 1960s, but the plans to turn the island into a military base and build an airstrip for bombers over its lagoon were thwarted by outraged conservationists. Had Aldabra fallen humanity would have lost its jewel of the Indian Ocean.

Shiny sleek fins with black splashed across the tips converged on our boat as we arrived, a welcome party of inquisitive black tip sharks eager to investigate the newcomers to their shores. This was the first clue that at least the inshore waters here are healthy. A large population of reef sharks is rare in this day and age when more than 100 million sharks are killed each year. As part of a team from the Save Our Seas Foundation I am on a once in a lifetime expedition to explore, search and document in camera what Jacques-Yves Cousteau once called ‘one of the last sanctuaries on our planet…a place that man has not yet spoiled.’ SOSF is dedicated to documenting the role that sharks and rays play in maintaining healthy marine ecosystems and the consequences of removing them from the world’s oceans. Seeing for myself so many reef sharks I am nostalgic for days gone by when reefs all over the world looked like this before over-fishing wiped out the fish populations and wasteful long lines with baited hooks destroyed the reefs’ essential key top predators, sharks. This drills home the importance of our mission here on Aldabra, and I wonder once all the baiting stations to attract the sharks to us are set up how many large shark species we will find and film. 

Visit http://www.saveourseas.com to learn more about SOSF and the marine environment.