Weekend Argus 23rd March, Aldabra Journal Part 03
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 yesterday, 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. The Save Our Seas Foundation is dedicated to learning more about 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 the baiting stations to attract the sharks to us are set up how many large shark species we will find.
Visit http://www.saveourseas.com to learn more about SOSF, whale sharks and to read my daily blog of the SOSF Aldabra Expedition
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Weekend Argus 16th March, Aldabra Journal Part 02
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.
Weekend Argus 9th March, Aldabra Journal Part 01
Journey to Untouched Paradise that Man Forgot
With Arabs settling in East Africa from the 7th century and the island sitting close to their trade links with Madagascar and the Comoros it is possible they were the earliest visitors to the island. The derivation of the name is from the Arabic word for ‘green’ (al-khadra), describing the reflection of the vivid green lagoon upon the clouds, or it refers to the star ‘Aldebaran’ which guided the Arabs in their journeys across the seas. Either way it is to this isolated island of forbidding terrain and childhood dreams that I will be traveling.
As part of a team from the Save Our Seas Foundation (SOSF) that includes scientists, cameramen and Cape Town based photographer Thomas Peschak, I will be on a once in a lifetime expedition to explore, research and document what Jacques-Yves Cousteau once called ‘one of the last sanctuaries on our planet…a place that man has not yet spoiled.’ SOSF is a non-profit organization that implements and supports a diversity of scientific research and educational projects focused on the marine environment. It aims to learn more about the role of marine species, particularly sharks and rays, and their role in maintaining a healthy marine ecosystem.
This UNESCO World Heritage Site, since 1982, was once a well-known location for large shark species, but with heavy fishing pressure (long liners) in the Western Indian ocean linked to the huge trade in shark fins and illegal fishing in the vicinity of Aldabra we want to know if man has spoilt even the most remote of locations. Has the shark population, especially the large species such as tiger, oceanic-white-tips and great hammerhead sharks, here been decimated as it has in all our oceans?
The inventor of SCUBA, Cousteau, first opened the world’s eyes to the atoll’s natural magic with his pioneering film based on the reefs of Aldabra in The Silent World. This March and April, I hope to take you on a journey to the island man forgot and its Indian Ocean waters with stories of what our expedition finds and perhaps more importantly what it does not find.
….who knows with a little abracadabra it may even be on a Magic carpet.
Visit http://www.saveourseas.com to learn more about SOSF, the marine environment and to read my daily blog of the Aldabra Expedition