Cheryl-Samantha Owen

On a Quest to Shelter Gentle Giants

A cyclone hit the Mozambique Channel on Saturday night and on Sunday afternoon, after an equally turbulent night of last minute packing chaos and an early morning flight to Joburg, I was in a Air Seychelles plane heading straight for the Southern Mozambique coast. “Welcome aboard, it was a bumpy ride down…” greeted the flight attendant. The remark didn’t register, all that mattered was that I was on the plane with 130kg+ of SOSF-marked luggage fastened safely down below, I hoped.

Landing on Mahe, home of the capital Victoria, late at night you can’t see the ocean rolling in on your right or the tropical forest covered mountain on the left. Only the lights of houses suspended in the darkness give away the first slice of land on our route since the northern tip of Madagascar, some 930 km away.

Apart from the dramatic scenery, créole cuisine and the fact that it is one of the smallest nations on Earth, the Seychelles claim to fame is that it consists of the only isolated oceanic islands in the world built of continental rocks, rather than oceanic basalts or reef limestones. These are the granitic islands, and the mammoth-size granite boulders that outline the islands’ sandy edges are the physical evidence of this wondrous geology, not the breadcrumbs of rampant giants. The granitics consist of some forty islands and islets rising from the Seychelles Bank, an area of shallow water less than 60m surrounded by ocean 4-5 km deep.  Mahe is the largest island with the highest mountain peak, Morne Seychelloi, rising dramatically from the coastal plain to 914m. Even though I haven’t yet reached ‘the island that man forgot’, with a tropical down pour shrouding the lush green peak in a white mist, the cries of birds echoing loudly through the rain, and the waves crashing wildly with the wind I already feel like I am sitting in a true Jurassic Park.

The other two types of islands consist of small low islands on sea-level coral reefs and islands of reef limestone now slightly elevated above the sea. The latter includes all the islands of the Aldabra group (Aldabra, Cosmoledo, Astove, Assumption), which are approximately less than 8m above sea level, not including the sand dunes that rise as high as 32m. The volcano that became Aldabra emerged about 20 million years ago; rising from the sea floor it became the island’s foundation. As the volcano ceased to be active it gradually subsided and the coral growth on the limestone ring maintained contact with the ocean’s surface. Today the oldest surface rocks are only a few hundred thousand years old. This process is what made Aldabra an atoll rather than merely an island.

Before diving into the volcanic waters off Aldabra I have a day left on Mahe and can’t help but wish it was whale shark season, but the waters here don’t start teaming with the world’s largest fish until later in the year. The Save Our Seas Foundation supports a whale shark research project that, under the supervision of David Rowat from the Marine Conservation Society Seychelles, provides much needed information on this threatened species. It is increasingly important to have accurate information about migration routes for the effective conservation and management of migratory shark species such as the whale shark. The project studies the occurrence, behavior and conservation biology of whale shark in Seychelles waters, with a view to developing a management strategy for the species. To date research has revealed their seasonal occurrence around Mahe and has recorded distances traveled in excess of 3600km, proving that the sharks pass through the territorial waters of many countries in the Indian Ocean. Data from research tags has shown that whale sharks prefer swimming in relatively shallow water, spending up to 60% of the time in water less than 10m, but are capable of diving as deep as 1000m.  SOSF has been instrumental in assisting with the international conservation of this endangered species.

Bats are roosting in the tops of palm trees as the night draws in and luckily cyclones don’t hit this far north, as tomorrow I will be winging my way 800km southeast to the Aldabra Atoll.