Aride Island

Our Aride life is over.

2009-08-03T06:08:00.000-07:00

It is hard to believe, but our time on Aride has come to an end, although slightly premature, we have been away for a total of 20 months and I can’t quite believe where it has gone. Everyone said it would fly – and it has!

As we made our last boat launch into some difficult surf and rough sea, it was impossible to think that this was going to be the last and that our time in the tropics had finished. As I looked back to see the pairs of fairy terns and tropic birds flying along the beach, the frigate birds soaring over head, the noddys and sooty terns flying alongside us, I had to wipe away a tear. I caught the eye of our boat driver and ranger, Bryan, and I had to look away, I was saying good bye to what had been an amazing period in my life, although very difficult at times, it was a part of my life that will stay with me for ever, both the highs and the lows.

The journey across the 6 nautical miles to Praslin was full of wildlife treats, from flying fish to shearwaters. Although cloudy, rough and wet, the trip was warm and I thought about how strange it will be to be going back to a colder climate and one where clothes and shoes are a necessity. We were dropped at the beach stop for the airport and our heavy cases, and unconventional luggage in the shape of fishing rods and ukulele seemed very out of place as we balanced them on the fallen tree out of the sand. The flight across to Mahe gave us our last view of Aride, that small 73ha where we had spent the last 20 months of our life, this was the start of the long trip back to the UK and a new way of life.
As I write this we have been back to the UK just a week, with some much needed time to catch up with family and of course cheese and fruit. It is very different life and as I look back the differences are both good and bad. There is a lot to do as you would imagine, from becoming reacquainted with your clothes and stuff to trying to pick up where we left off nearly 2 years ago.

It was lovely to walk back into our house, which was in excellent condition, as we breezed through the kitchen door and set foot on the wooden floors, the colours rang our clean and bright like they had always been and I had forgotten how special a place this was, how much work had gone into it and much love and effort had been needed to make it this way. The sun shone through the arched kitchen window and lit up the yellow walls and made the room sparkle.
Re establishing our selves has been a constant process of rediscovery and one I feel has been a real privilege to do, not many people get chance to take a second look at life through different eyes, to clear how they felt when they left 2 years ago and come back to see it from a different view point, to re discover their old life. There have been many occasions when the reassuring British way of life has felt strikingly good. From the obvious, hot showers when ever you want one, the cleanliness of it all, the clean shower tray, sand free towel, soft carpet under your feet, no sand to brush off your feet before you put socks on or get into bed. To waking up in our south facing yellow bedroom with the sun reflecting on the walls at 5am, not 7am - and the long days, although not warm summer nights yet, the length of day light is fantastic.
There is much, much more, the choice of vegetables and food in the shops, simply the selection of tomatoes; beefy ones, plum ones, cherry ones, on the vine, bog standard ones, organic ones just to name a few, then the same for potatoes; white, red, organic, Somerset white, jackets, new, it is all a bit mind blowing.
I am just starting to get time to catch up with friends and gossip, and enjoy the process of rediscovery, however I suspect that rebuilding life will take a while. Although my time on Aride was the most physically, emotionally and mentally challenging thing I have ever done in my life, I also know for sure that I will really miss the Aride life, and that there will be many times that I will want to swap the safe, well equipped British world with many types of tomato and potato, for a chance to just sit on the Aride beach in a world of my own.

The other side of Aride Island

2009-07-10T23:42:00.000-07:00

With the arrival of a night time predator to the island recently, we have been experiencing the other side of Aride – the hill at night. It is unfortunate that the reason is due to the predation of roseate terns by barn owl, but venturing up the hill under the cover of darkness is an experience that is mind blowing. The whole island becomes alive with a completely different set of wildlife to that we experience during the day on the plateau.
Anyone who has chance to visit Aride will leave with the impression that it is literally alive with wildlife. The day time is full of tok toks bouncing from branch to branch, sunbirds nosily chattering in the trees, magpie robins foraging under leaves, lesser and brown noddys ducking and diving in the breeze, tropic and frigate birds soaring on the thermals, whilst fairy terns flutter above your head and crabs and skinks scurry under your feet, often so plentiful it is hard to take a step without fear of squashing them. But at the night it is a different Aride, a walk up the hill is a full sensory overload of a special kind, the sights, sounds and smells are like nothing I have ever experienced. The sounds alone are beyond belief, as the wedgetail shearwaters wale like babies from their burrows and the Audubon shearwaters hurtle past with their wheezing, puffin-like cries, so close you can feel the air movement from their wings on your face. Then there is the bark of the sooty terns as they defend their nests or small chicks which huddle beneath for warmth in the cool night. The quiet pip of the small fluffy youngsters can be heard out of the darkness, a torch trained on the ground essential for the worry of stepping too close.

But it is the large millipede that means every step has to be measured, as the ground is littered with them. Over 6 inches in length, they resemble a prop from a science fiction movie, everywhere you look they glisten in the torch light, as their many legs scale the trees and rocks and carry them slowly along the path.
The shearwaters too leave their burrows and take to the clear ground of the path; many pairs of wedgetails can be seen sitting together like elderly couples, but soon to scurry off at the first sign of light, their short legs doing well to negotiate the uneven terrain, as they skulk once more into the darkness. The Audubons by contrast will remain, sometimes head tucked under wing asleep, or just starting to wake, then to get entangled in your feet as you try to creep quietly by.

Wearing a head torch can sometimes be a little disconcerting, the light may often attract unwanted attention, shearwaters will come careering into your face, lesser noddys and sooty terns startled by the light will flutter in front like bats, drawn helplessly to the brightness. The fairy terns remain undisturbed as they watch us as intruders into their night time world, their all white plumage lighting up as the beam of the torch flashes in front.

The scent of the night flowering cucumber drifts across the path as it opens its dusky yellow flowers into the darkness and the wonderful sweet smell fills the air. This rare flower unique to Aride carpets the ground in some areas and uses the trees to clamber and climb in others.

As we complete our mission and finish our decent we are greeted by the roar of the sea which echoes out of the darkness. The waves crash against the rocks, throwing the smell and taste of the

Breeding Seabird Census

2009-07-04T06:53:00.000-07:00

Although the breeding seabird survey is most definitely one of the most physically demanding sides of the job here, it is also one of the most satisfying once it is completed. It is the time when almost every inch of the island is visited to count the breeding seabirds, well that is not exactly true, it just feels like it.

The island has a grid system which is a 50m x 50m grid marked out on the ground, by tape on trees and these points are used to locate plots which are counted. We count five species, brown and lesser noddy, sooty and fairy tern and white-tailed tropic bird.

Ideally we are a team of five people, each taking a species, but more often than not it is less, this year we were a team of four, so it slowed us up a little. The timing of the survey is crucial and has to be completed once all the sooty terns have laid, but before any of them have hatched. Once there are young chicks about disturbing the nests will most likely result in death of the chicks, as they panic and leave their nests running into other territories to be then instantly killed by other adults birds.

With the survey come many challenges; such as having the physical fitness to be able to stick it and see it through, the survey can take between 6 to 8 days dawn until dusk and the terrain is tough, sheer rocks and steep slopes. Having the right temperament and patience in the team to keep it together and deal with tough situations, especially when people are tired, hot and hungry, and become ratty. Having the navigational skills and always trusting your compass when a grid marker becomes elusive, but knowing it has to found and your legs hurt so much that you really don’t relish the prospect of going down the hill to find it, knowing you have got to climb back up again.
There are always highs and lows of the survey, this will be the second one I have completed and both were very different. But the lows in both years were seeing the evidence of poaching, empty sacks and buckets, blood on rocks from birds being killed, smashed eggs, and plots that are deathly quiet as all the birds and their eggs have been taken. Or seeing the effects of Pisonia, the sticky seeds that stick a bird together and make it flightless, the hill claims many casualties and dead carcasses litter the woodland floor.

But then the highs are walking into a plot which is full of sooty terns when there were so many birds the noise is just intense, they all take to the air and fly above your head and it is impossible to hear each other speak.

This year we had a survey point in one corner of an area like this and it wasn't even in the middle, however over the 300m² area that our survey plot covers we recorded 308 sooty terns, so that was more than 1 per m². There was a similar area just south, which was more under the canopy of the woodland and there were 309 in that area. Just to walk in amongst them is such as experience, some birds just sit there looking at you quietly, others squawk like mad and vigorously peck at your feet, whilst the majority just take to the air and gibve off their penetrating‘wide-awake’ call.

The lesser noddys are a real feature too, it is so apparent that they have no concept of human interference at all. Some of the nests are lower than head height, the same as for the fairy terns, you are at eye level with the bird and lower when you look into the nest. But it isn't just one it is many, it just makes me smile when they look back at you with the glazed expression that most of them have when they are incubating and that look as if you haven't seen them and if they keep still then you won't see them.

But it is not just the wildlife, you get to go to areas on the island that you have never been and the views and scenery is out of this world, sheer cliffs that look down to the crystal clear water below and you look on top of the birds you are surveying. On our last day I wrote in my diary:

“We climbed up to the eastern rocks on the southern side in the morning; it was breath taking, right up there with the sooty terns, the view down in to the water and along the beach and back over the hill behind us was stunning. As I looked across the trees behind me it felt a real sense of achievement that we had completed a 50m x 50m grid survey of the island, no mean task. I could have sat at this point for many minutes, but knew it would only be as long as the survey took, which was predominately a survey of brown noddys and of course sooty terns. Before too long people shouted their figures to me and the deed was done and we headed back to the shade of the canopy.”

There will be many memorable aspects of my stay on Aride, some good and of course others not so good, but the breeding bird survey will be there in the good, if fact dam good.
Hmmm but that might well be influenced by knowing that I haven’t got to do a third – don’t think the old knees would cope with it!!

Thanks John (our volunteer) for the photos - which explains why there isn't any of you!

Seychelles Magpie Robin Success Story

2009-06-28T00:41:00.000-07:00

Last week we completed the breeding seabird census which is one week of the year that we have to cover the whole island to record breeding numbers. However as well as the expected sights of the woodland floor covered with sooty tern eggs and the canopy full of lesser noddy nests, we encountered something else which was rather special.
We were in an area on the south west corner of the island, under the shade of the trees counting the 5 species of seabird within our 300m² plot, when our two magpie robins that have started to frequent the hill joined us to capitalise on the disturbed ground which we were creating with our feet. We stopped for a moment to enjoy their presence and as we did there was the sound of a third bird higher up in the glade. Now there had been 3 birds at one time that we aware of, using the hill, but this sound was different, we knew it was the sound of a youngster. Quickly we made our way up the hill towards the noise and there sure enough to our amazement was a healthy young magpie robin, still with a bright yellow gape, squawking!
A huge smile came across my face this was such a discovery; on two fronts, it was the first time in the history of the magpie robin on Aride that these birds had ever proven to have bred on the hill and secondly it was the first pair of Aride born magpie robins that had ever successfully produced a fledgling.
I have always felt it to be such a privilege to work with birds such as the magpie robins, and previous to coming to Aride it was only something I would ever dream of, or read about in the RSPB’s Birds magazine. Still an endangered species with just approximately 190 birds on 5 islands in the Seychelles these birds are still up against it. But now here I was witnessing this species pushing out the boundaries, and succeeding against all odds. When I first arrived sky-blue blue was a young female still with her juvenile feathers and now here she was, a mother. But the best part of this story has to be that there has been no need to provide nest boxes or feeding and watering stations for this pair, they have done it alone and the only assistance required from the Aride team is to be but witnesses – wonderful.

One of the best Aride jobs ever - counting roseate tern nests!

2009-06-19T00:12:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday it was time for just two people to go into the colony and count the nests and eggs, it was not a job neither Chloe nor I had done before and with the birds very prone to disturbance I was more than a little apprehensive to say the least. But we had discussed our plan of attack and were ready and prepared for the task in hand. We both had a soft spot for these birds and were looking forward to getting up close and personal with them. Due to a lack of food last year none of the birds survived, but this year was looking good we have seen numerous birds flying along the beach, so fingers were crossed that there would be over 500 pairs, which would be amazing.

Roseate terns have become a real rarity in the UK, I remember as a teenager I used to make the trip to Cemlyn Bay on Anglesey that used to a couple of pairs and sometimes I might just to get a glimpse of them, through my inadequate telescope. Here on Aride we have the only woodland nesting colony in the World and the only colony in the granitic Seychelles – so it is of major significance. Hence the excitement...

After breakfast we headed up the hill path, now out of bounds, the sootys had taken up residence in many spots along the path, most of them were defending eggs and they barked at us with their very dog-like call. Beautiful birds, so well defined, clean cut and perfectly built for flight, long wings, short legs and streamline bodies, as we walked through they scuttled out of the way like little old men with their hands behind their backs dressed in their dinner suits. We tried to reassure them, but they were duty to bound come what may to stay with their eggs, some even refused point blank to move and we stepped over them. There seemed to be a good number of birds in the periphery of the woods along the path - so may be it is going to be a good season.

As we diverted off the path, the roseates sounded quiet and for a minute I thought oh know may be the colony has suffered persecution from poachers, but then like magic, their high pitch calls rang through and I caught sight of their pale grey bodies and black heads bobbing about in amongst the leaves. We made a plan to walk to the top of the colony and enter in form the side and keep going across or taking sections in this way. Chloe had prepared recording sheets and small pieces of paper, these were for putting into each nest when it was counted to try and avoid double counting. I nervously collected 50 pieces ready in my hand and we entered the mass of birds. The noise was tremendous, calling and squawking, unlike the sootys gruff call they were high pitched and sounded at times like geese.
We were both in bare feet purposefully so as to ensure that we could be sensitive about where I was putting my feet, at times the eggs were particularly well camouflaged and my walking shoes just made my feet feel big and bulky. I tiptoed through the nests shouting out to Chlo the number of eggs in each and then placing a square of paper beside each. It worked brilliantly and without the paper it would've been pretty much impossible.

A large percentage of the nests only had one egg in, but there were some with two and even three and four - amazing. We worked our way through methodically, breaking the colony into sections so it was manageable. In places the noise from the birds was so loud I had to shout the numbers out for Chlo to record them. The terrain was quite difficult and it was hard work to be nimble, quick, but as accurate as possible and of course avoid breakages.

It was a relief to see that sections of the colony settled down again as we moved on, as the Seychelles skinks were all waiting in the wings as soon as we pushed the birds of their eggs, for an easy meal. We needed to be as quick as we could or otherwise our visit would be detrimental to numbers and that was the last thing we wanted. It surprised me how quickly the birds settled again and they would snuggle down on top of their eggs and with their sharp beaks there was no skink that would take them on.

The area we had cleared was proving to be very successful, the birds were in the area freshly opened up by felling the small Pisonia and also on the tree felled last year, which we had taken the re growth off. The birds would walk up and down this objecting to our presence. Every now and again I would look up for my bent position as I nest counted and just glance at the scene in front of me - it was outrageous, beautiful and such a privilege to be here doing this, although a big nature conservation responsibility. The birds themselves were stunning, their red legs and beaks looked unnatural, but set off perfectly by their black caps and rosy tummies. There was one individual that particularly objected to my presence and invasion on its privacy. It sat on its nest until the last, and in fact almost refused to move at all, located on a small terrace I was at eye-level with her, no more than 2 foot away, with beak open I could see down her throat, I smiled, this was out of this world.

It took us about an hour all told and once completed we sat out of sight at the western end and just watched and listened, the sweat was pouring off me , Chloe did a tally up and we had recorded 524 nests, fantastic. We watched the birds return to their positions sitting back on top of the eggs in amongst the leaves and really nestling in, they looked quite comical, tummies down, tails up. The noise had subsided and it was just a gentle back ground level of high pitched chattering, as they squabbled a little and chattered to each other.

We headed down the hill smiling, as we got to the beach the light was bright after being under the canopy with our heads bent down for so long, it had been a very special day and one I’ll remember for some time, one of the best yet.

Aride in the south east Monsoon

2009-06-13T02:16:00.000-07:00

It will be the second south east monsoon that I have the privilege to see on Aride Island, however living on a small island like Aride a change in the wind direction and climate can have a huge effect on life. Aride is known for its difficult landings at the best of times, but the large waves that the south east monsoon winds can create, means launching and landing on this special place is not for the faint hearted.

As the monsoon approaches there are many days when the winds subside and the sea goes like oil, like a sheet of glass it becomes so clear, snorkelling trips are a real treat, the rich shallow, turquoise waters which cover the reef are full of underwater delights from fish to turtles. But we know that during these times what we are experiencing is merely the calm before the storm.

In between the monsoons the wind will fool us, it will change directions many times and will often revert back to the north west, and we enjoy the calm of the southern beach sheltered by the granite outcrop of Aride behind. However when the winds finally turn we prepare for a very different life on the island. It is one of few visitors, and long periods of limited trips to neighbouring shores. We stock up our food cupboards and close the windows and doors to prevent the salt laden winds from penetrating into our possessions and clothes. We know that the island is going to become a very different place for two or three months, as we swop the calm seas, perfect sandy beach and pure blue skies for the big waves, white horses, rocky beach and cloudy unsettled skies.

However this time of year brings visitors of a different kind, the south east monsoon marks the arrival of thousands of seabirds, which come to Aride to breed. At first they arrive in small numbers, as we hear the familiar calls sometimes as early as January. But with the turn of the winds the island becomes alive as the many, many terns come to share this wonderful place and make it their own.

This granite outcrop, a small dot in the Indian Ocean, provides a breeding destination for species such as the sooty tern, brown noddy, lesser noddy and rare roseate tern. Although all a species of tern, they are very different. The sooty tern, has a very distinctive black and white plumage and is very clean cut, with a black cap and mask, black wings and back, they look like gentleman dressed for dinner in their black suits, as they hold their wings behind their backs, . They are built for flight, with long wings and tail and streamline bodies, and their wide-awake call can be heard echoing along the Aride shores.

The brown and lesser noddys are heard all year round in small numbers, but they too come in on mass and they pepper the beach, and with their all brown plumage, they look like shadows on the sand. They spend a lot of time on the beach, where they display, court, collect nesting material and eat coral fragments, as the latter they need for the producing their eggs. They are comical birds, with short legs and a nodding display, they stumble as they try to impress their partners with funny walks and poses and their calls are more crow-like than that of a tern.
Then there is the roseate tern, a very special seabird that breeds on Aride, the island provides the only nesting colony in the granitic islands. Although in appearance quite delicate, they are bulky terns, with pale plumage, distinctive black cap, red legs and feet, with a rosy chest. Probably one of the most special sights on Aride is the flight of the roseate tern along the beach, with the clear Seychelles’ light catching its pink tinged chest.

But all these wonderful birds will be up against difficult times, the breeding season isn’t easy for them. With the only desire to produce young to keep their species going, they face many obstacles. First they need to find a suitable place to nest, which can be fraught with difficulties as habitats change and present new dangers from year to year, and with that there needs to be a food supply. Last season we saw a change in the sea currents, causing a shortage of fish for our avian friends and many of them failed to breed with young dying in the nests. They also need to stay clear of introduced avian predators such as travelling barn owls which may venture across from neighbouring islands such as Praslin.

But it is not just these natural events that they have to face, which can prevent them from completing their natural cycle. Poaching will play a big part too, as people come and steal both sooty tern eggs and birds and crush others such as roseate terns in this quest.

So our avian visitors of the south east monsoon take their chance when they come to Aride to breed. Nature has ways of coping with the natural events, but will poaching force these birds to such low numbers that next year the south monsoon on Aride will be a very different place?

What next - we have now got HOT Water

2009-06-12T00:00:00.000-07:00

Aride moves closer towards the 21st century

2009-06-05T22:57:00.000-07:00

At last the pipe finally arrived, the pipe that was going to make life on Aride one hell of a lot easier. The pipe in question was the flexible hose that was needed to take water from the well to fill a tank on the hill.

This was the secret to running water!!
It has been a long story about the pipe, but let’s just say we have now got every type of pipe imaginable on the island - from braided hose to PVC waste pipe, and finally the one needed arrived on the latest shipment.

So GUESS WHAT...

We have got running water and not just running water much, much more...
The water project as it is fondly known has been going on for some time, as many things do here in the Seychelles, especially on a remote island. But it was a simple plan and one Melv has been chipping away at since we arrived, it’s not been easy – but perseverance has paid off.
It all started with the moving of the tank, which needed to go up on the side of the hill, this was going to give us the head we needed to feed the houses by gravity.

From the tank we laid the pipe which was going to take water to each of the properties.

When we went back to the UK for our holiday we returned to Aride with a suit case full of plumbing fittings, well over weight it coast an extra £50 to get it on the plane, we even sacrificed chocolate for a bag of copper fittings and a bit of flux!
So we were all set, we had the pump, to take the water from the well and push it up the hill to the tank, but we needed the pipe...

Well the pipe arrived, unfortunately without any fittings, but by hook or by crook we now have running water. For the first time ever Aride Island has running water, pure luxury, no more carrying heavy buckets from the well. We have got a tap...it’s amazing you can wash your hands, wash up, it’s like magic!

But it doesn’t stop there we have got a shower too – no more pouring a bucket over one’s head – no more sand left in your hair, no more trying to make a bucket of water stretch far enough to make sure all the soap and sand have gone – we’ve got a shower!
But that’s not all; we have even got a WASHING MACHINE...

So its goodbye scrubbing brush, welcome Electrolux, clean clothes yippee!!

Christmas came early on Aride

2009-05-08T02:01:00.000-07:00

Hey guess what... We’ve got ELECTRICITY again – YIPPEE!!!!!
Last week there was finally the big delivery that we have all been waiting for and with it was a generator – it may not be grand, but it gives us all the power we need for each house to have lights and a fridge – just in the nick of time as the candles on Praslin are now ‘All Finished’.

But there was a catch – hard work...
The delivery was the largest Aride had ever received and to stop the invasion by rats there was lots to be done before hand. Rat proof compound and traps were to be set and the island prepared for what was to be a major event.

We were expecting 25 barrels of fuel, 6 tons of aggregate, 50 bags of cement, 2,000 blocks, 3 tons of timber and several miscellaneous things like a new boat, pipe and freezer!

The danger at this time of year is that as the winds move round to the South East with the changing of the monsoons we can lose the beach at anytime and it isn’t a safe place for storage, so this means all the stuff had to be moved and taken into the island ASAP, once it had been confirmed to be free of rats and invasive species!!
We had a bit of help in the shape of extra pairs of hands from Mahe and Praslin, and a helicopter, but it was one of the hardest days we have ever worked, exacerbated by the temperature a mere 34°C!
Concrete blocks, timber, a new boat and freezer were brought in by boat,

fuel, aggregate, blocks and cement were carried by helicopter. It was not only the time to bring items to the island, but also to take them away and we manage to move a large amount of rubbish that we had inherited that has accumulated over the years.

It had the potential to be a logistical nightmare, with unknown staff, changeable weather and sea conditions and the pure volume of stuff, but I needn’t have worried, the team worked like a well oiled machine, any problems were over come and after an early start, by 4pm the job was complete.

The delivery marks the start of the renovation of the island’s properties, including running water, reliable electricity, with a complete solar system and back-up generators which can tolerate the harsh conditions. This not only means that Aride will become a more comfortable place to live, but that it will hopefully attract and keep more local staff and have the continuity that it needs, which is a massive step forward in sustaining the island in the future.

And then of course all that was left to do was to relax with a well earned COLD beer and pizza!!

Birthday to Bonito

2009-05-01T03:37:00.000-07:00

Well it’s been another busy week, it started with a lets shall we say a significant birthday for Melv.

For which after a busy day of guests we had a rather civilised get-together in the village for tea and cake.

The cake was excellent a triple layer chocolate cake made by Chloe and volunteers, it was a well needed sugar rush for all, after we had just launched 55 teenagers 6 at a time against some extremely large waves.

There were some alcoholic beverages later – but all rather reserved due to limited supplies and the thought of a hangover in 36˚C!! We managed to improve on our visitor figures from last week, with a final total of 553 paying guests and 672 guests all told for the month – one heck of a tally, and both Melv and I (the old ones) are feeling every muscle as a result. We are currently enjoying a very quiet and much needed weekend with the island to ourselves whilst the workforce have hit the bright lights of Praslin and gone clubbing!!!

We still don’t have electricity, and as a result the office continues to move depending on where the portable generator is working. Although it is kinda becoming the norm now, it makes the days short without lights in an evening. There is talk that power may be resumed next week, with a big delivery of building materials, but I ‘m certainly not holding my breath as they were due in Dec 2007!!

But there is still fresh fish on the menu, certainly no shortage of that, as Tony and Anselm illustrated with these two rather large Bonito (like the UK mackerel), that they caught in the middle of the week.

We are breaking records even without mod cons.

2009-04-25T00:28:00.001-07:00

This month already we have greeted more visitors on the shores of Aride than has ever been done since the island became open to visitors as a nature reserve in 1978.

Already with still 5 working days to go during April we have had 509 paying guests to the island and including non paying visitors this rises up to over 560. Now this may not sound a lot but when the average years total visitor figures are in the region of 2,000, this means we have already achieved a quarter of this figure in month 1. The only month that has ever come close to this was 489 paying guests in Feb 2004, apart from this the average for this time of year is more in the region of the 300 mark.

So even without electricity, running water or any of those luxuries, the Aride team is doing good, there are times when the office moves with the generator and the laptop is taken to wherever it can be charged,

or we run out of day light and there is still work to be done.

All in all this increase in figures is against all odds, the economy here in Seychelles is suffering like the rest of the world and there was a predicted 30% decline in tourism and then there are the pirates, that are currently operating in Seychelles waters. So far 3 boats have been hijacked and 10 Seychellois have been taken hostage and apparently they are only 2 hours away from here – if you believe what the papers say – won’t find much here though – have already banked the month’s money!!

We are hoping that this success is the results of the hard work we have been putting in to marketing and improving the visitor experience. With limited resources we have installed new displays in the boatshed, tarted up the shop

and generally become far more professional in the way we greet our guests, we are flexible in our opening times and welcome all shapes and sizes of boats, and it seems as though it is paying off.

Now before you get concerned that island life is getting to me and that I am craving for human company and need to be amongst large numbers of people, don’t worry I haven’t changed – still as antisocial as ever. The significance of more visitors is literally more money to spend, all the money we raise goes straight back into the island, whether it is spent on employing more staff or buying a new boat – so at the start of the financial year this will put our Chairman (who is an accountant) in a very good mood!

The Wildlife is still Wonderful

2009-04-18T02:14:00.000-07:00

Even after being here since Dec ‘07, over 16 months now, the wildlife still amazes me. I still firmly believe that there can’t be many places on earth as rich in wildlife as here on Aride, it truly is alive. It carries on in its own world, regardless of what we are doing, electricity or not, the sooty terns still circle nosily above the hill as they come into breed and the magpie robins still sing their beautiful song after a shower of rain.

Even after all this time, I am in awe that I live in such a place, where turtles make their way up the beach during the day and where thousands of seabirds will soon be congregating to breed. Everywhere you look there is movement, whether it is the scurrying of skinks or the fluttering of fairy terns, from dawn to dusk and through the night the wildlife does its stuff.

Every so often this hits home and today as I showed a group of the local school children round, it reminded me what a special place Aride is. We are just so spoilt, the young people were able to stand no more than a metre from white tailed tropic birds, fairy terns, clear the ground for magpie robins to feed in front of them and watch geckos protect their eggs on our spectacular Banyan tree. Aride inspires many people, adults and children alike and I still feel privileged that part of my job is to facilitate this, to open up this wonderful island for visitors, to let them too enjoy the wealth of wildlife it supports.

Wildlife is great, and that phrase the RSPB use ‘Aren’t Birds Brilliant’, yes they are, we have tropic birds that think they are magpie robins,

fluffy fairy terns that are so tiny I never know how they manage to hang on to the most knobbly branches,

Audubon shearwater chicks snuggled in their burrows on the side of the path

and then there are hermit crabs that are so orange they look like they’ve been painted.

There are eagle rays the size of blankets surfing the waves and fish so colourful they look like they belong in an aquarium.

As I sit and write this, the sooty terns are here in their thousands, as they begin to come in to nest, they look like a swarm of mosquitoes as they circle above the hill chattering to each other, a family of Seychelles warblers feed in the vegetation by the side of me,

and sunbirds flit backwards and forwards through the veranda, the brown noddys croak like crows in the Casuerina tree whilst the sea roars in the back ground, and there is the shrill sound of our youngest magpie robin alarm calling as it gets dark. The crabs start to collect around my feet as they seek to scavenge on any scraps that we may have thrown out through the day and it will be shortly be time for the shearwaters to start hurtling past as they make their way out to sea and of course our friendly gecko will soon be on the alert just in case there is chocolate cake on the menu tonight.

Life Without Electricity

2009-04-09T06:04:00.000-07:00

So it has been exactly a week now that the island has been without electricity and if I’m honest I think it will be the first of many, knowing how long things take in Seychelles. Back in the UK, having no electric was usually for a few hours or at worse 24, may be possibly 48 when your mum and dad used to say don’t open the fridge for too long or lift the freezer lid, but then we always knew that as if by magic the electricity company would get it sorted and with a flick of a switch normality would be resumed. It was always kinda exciting when you were allowed to have a candle to read a book by in the absence of the television and you could pretend that you lived in a time when there was no electricity, like in some of the dramas on the TV. But when there is no magical electricity company that flicks a switch and normality returns, the story is a little different:
The main added complication we have is the climate, where the sun shines so intense that the sand is just too hot to walk on and the humidity makes all the envelopes stick together without licking them. This means the main major difficulty we now have is keeping food, with inefficient fridges and freezers that let ants in once the temperature raises a few degrees; it is a constant battle to stop either food being eaten or going mouldy and smelly.

There are now distinctive dead smells around our house, where the communal freezer lives, of gone off food and dirty water, which runs out of the back of the freezer as it defrosts. The operation of the small portable generator on and off throughout the day does not stop the residue water from coming out of the bottom that sticks of rotten fish. This putrid liquid oozes out onto the floor in the back office and has been successfully attracting an array of flies and insects and doesn’t smell good in 36°C!!

But having had a moan and said all this I really don’t mind, we generally wake up when it is light and go to bed when it is dark, any dark evening is currently lit up by the full moon which lights the whole island and silhouettes the bats and birds, the palm leaves shine and the beach glows – it is beautiful, especially now with no light pollution from the island at all.

However it is quite apparent that Europeans find it rather more exciting using candles and torches, it can become a way of life, than the locals. We had a new ranger from Mahe start last week and it isn’t the best introduction to life here; no running water which you can kinda cope with, but no electric, no fridge, just a communal freezer that is kept chilled and the smelly water that runs out of the bottom of it. But worst of all seems to be the island recently acquired a TV which was very popular with rangers and volunteers, but now sits in the corner teasing – and there is a now a lot of hope resting on one of our rangers, Brian, who in a previous life was an electrician, as he now does his best to harness the energy from the sun for power.

I’m sure Brian will find a way; we have got what often feels like an endless supply of sun to provide solar power with hardly a cloud in the sky most days, which we already use to charge up batteries and phones easily.

Cooking can be a bit of a challenge though and if not achieved before the sun goes down does often needs the assistance of a head torch, but shearwaters can regularly kamikaze into the kitchen attracted by the bright light. As for washing up in the dark, I have given up and the resident crabs deal with most of the leftovers on the plates and pans until the morning.

But the one thing that no freezer and inefficient fridges mean we have the perfect excuse to go out fishing everyday and today brought in a Dorado – my what a whopper!!

Life of Extremes

2009-04-04T00:24:00.000-07:00

It has been a bit of a fortnight of it, some of which I will mention, others best not to, but there is one thing that it has reinforced is that life on Aride is extreme. I finding it so amazing that for an island only 73ha in size there is a never a dull moment, how wrong I was when I thought I was coming here for the quiet life!!

A couple of weeks ago I had one of the most amazing experiences ever, I learnt to dive, to breath underwater and go down to depths of 30ms.

The underwater world is a fascinating one, full of strange creatures, spiny, spongy, colourful and bizarre. The water is so clear it was wonderful to see the regenerating coral,

to see creatures like sting rays the size of blankets, barracudas over a metre long and to swim with turtles and brightly coloured fish . I learnt how to roll out of the boat backwards, fins and all, just like on the films, how to buddy breathe, to use my lungs like floats; breathing out to take me to the bottom and breathing in to inflate and make me float, and how to sit suspended in the water just off the sea bed. However this is certainly the climate to learn in, no need to wee in your wetsuit here to keep it warm! The end of financial year revealed that we have had the best year for visitors for the last 12 years with over 2050 paying guests coming ashore. Shop sales were the best ever, with over 76,000 rupees raised in the March alone which covers our monthly wage bill 3 times over, equivalent to £3,300, working out as an average spend of £10 per visitor, modest but not bad for a shop the size of ours!

This weekend has been our first weekend off for some time, the last 3 weeks have been busy with guests, training and school groups, we were looking forward to a quiet time, the rest of the team had booked to go away to hit the bright lights of Praslin and the old ‘uns; Melv and I had a crate of beer, a bottle of rum the island to ourselves. But before this could be so Wednesday night brought with it darkness at 9pm, the lights went out, so Melv went down to the generator shed to see flames licking round the door. 8 fire extinguishers later, several buckets of water and several buckets of sand, 8 tired people had successfully extinguished the flames and although we saved the shed there won’t be electricity generated from there for many months in the future especially on Seychelles time.

So now it is back to basics, portable generators and solar power, smelly freezers and fridges as 36°C turns food in seconds, and warm beer, cooking by candle light and doing the dishes by head torch, which can result in interesting encounters with shearwaters!!

Then there are the staff; they are as changeable as the weather and little like the sea – turbulent and volatile one minute and calm and quiet the next. The breeding season is on its way, with over 45,000 noisy sooty terns having already arrived and punching pigeons, a strange past time of the Madagascar turtle doves use their wings to take punches at each other, as part of establishing their territories. We must enjoy the calm seas while they last, as with the breeding season comes the onset of the south east monsoon with rough seas and driving salt spray – yet another extreme.
Tomorrow we have to be ready to meet and greet 80 guests off the National Geographic Explorer Cruiseship, what ever happens the life goes on and it’s business as usual.

Island to Island

2009-03-13T23:13:00.000-07:00

The timing of my recent trip back to the UK really reinforced the sharp contrast between the two places I currently call home. February in North Wales is a shock to the system after14months in Seychelles.

There was snow and frost during my stay, but compared to some we got off lightly, as a call from a friend in Dorset reported that they had 3 inches of the cold white stuff whereas in Rhos-on-Sea at least it was confined to the tops of the mountains.

But there were some mornings were it really felt like spring, when you walk out of the door in a morning and the cold hits your face, or in an evening when you leave the warmth of a pub and a clear night makes your face tingle.

The primroses, snowdrops and blossom were beautiful, as were the garden birds; blackcaps, nuthatches, song thrush and blackbirds, very different to the magpie robin, sunbirds and Seychelles warblers I have become used to.

The lifestyle too is very different, the UK with coffee shops, full of cappuccinos, hot chocolates and rich cakes.

With pubs that sell steak pie and chips, when the gravy from the pie makes your chips soggy and stops your peas from having to be chased round the plate and of course pints of Guinness and big glasses of red wine, then there was a trip to the cinema – I haven’t done that for years!

Then there are so many types of cheese, fruit, chocolate, crisps, and vegetables, and of course family and friends full of hugs and love.

As I sit and write this, I have once more swapped the armchair and wood stove for a deck chair outside; ghost and hermit crabs wander about the sand in front of me, fairy terns cackle above me and the chorus from the sooty terns is deafening, only over powered periodically by the wail of the Audubon Shearwaters as they go hurtling by on their way out to sea – it’s pretty magic.

The moon has just risen in the nights’ sky and has lit up the island, although just past its full phase, it is still large enough to reflect on the sea looking like a strip of gold, it makes the silver sand on the beach glisten. And as I watch the fruit bats fly silhouetted in front of it, although hard to believe, it is very nice to think that this very moon is same moon that lights up your night world too.

The Vallee De Mai – like going back in time...

2009-01-24T03:46:00.000-08:00

Last weekend we finally after 14 months managed to get our first weekend away, although it did turn out to be more trouble than it was worth (that’s another story), the day we spent at the Vallee De Mai was amazing. It was super to be spending a few nights away from the island and on the Saturday morning it was great to be free, to wake up and feel we have got all day to ourselves, with no one else's problems to think about.

We hopped on a bus to Baie Ste Anne, as the bus winds its way right through the Vallee and down to the coast at the other side. We had taken this route many times before, but never had we had the chance to get off and explore. The entrance for the Vallee De Mai is about half the distance from Grand Anse to Baie Ste Anne, and it only took 10 minutes before we got off the bus and stepped out in the scorching sun surrounded by lush green vegetation. Once the rattle of the aged bus had left we heard an unusual call neither of us were familiar with, as we looked up we saw black parrots flying over our heads. Quite large about the size of a crow, they were squawking as they flew around the tops of the trees and palms - this only increased my excitement to see this place, the lush green tropical vegetation beckoning us forward.

The Vallee de Mai is a palm forest and a remnant of when Seychelles' granitic islands were still part of Gondwanaland, the huge land mass which included what is now Africa, Madagascar and India. Millions of years of isolation enabled a unique community of plants and animals to develop and now some species can be found nowhere else. Up to the 1930s the Vallee De Mai remained as a virgin forest and was little affected by man, however a new land owner decided to beautify the valley and decided to introduce a variety of ornamental trees and fruit trees. But in 1948 the area was acquired by the Government as a major water catchment area fort the island of Praslin and rehabilitation became a priority and in 1966 it became a nature reserve. The rehabilitation involved the gradual removal of the exotic and invasive species and already today after a short time, the Vallee is starting to take on its primeval appearance once again.

The reserve is most important for its coco de mer palm surrounded by myth s and legends this palm has male and female palms, the female produces the largest seed in the world and it can weigh more than 20kg and takes between 6 and 7 years to ripen. Growing up to 30m for the male and 24 m for the female these palms are thought to be able to live for between 200 and 400 years. These coco de mer palms grow naturally on only two small islands in the whole world, here at the Vallee De Mai, Praslin and on the island of Curieuse 2 nautical miles north of Praslin.

We were in for treat, as we walked up the entrance path the tropical forest got thicker and before long we were under cover of the huge palms and lush green vegetation. The wind blew and the sound of the palms crashing together was like something we have never heard before, the coco de mer palm has no trunk, just the long leaves coming from its base and their movement in the wind rattled the leaves together. They towered above us and we were completely enclosed by them, with no sky to be seen, we could hear rain, but didn't feel a drop. The bird noise of black parrots and bulbuls completed the experience, we could've been in an extensive tropical forest miles from anywhere, rather than a remnant on Praslin, as I stood and looked I tried to imagine that this is what it would've been like, and that some of these plants would've been on Aride too.

We walked up to the view point and there we were welcomed by a bulbul, a beautiful bird, obviously he had been fed at this point before, he was curious and tried to investigate my bag.

He hoped along the bench to where we were sitting and sat and watched, bright orange beak and feet with lovely spiky black crown, and iridescent green back and wings.
The view point gave height to look over the mass of green tropical vegetation, the sun brought out all the different shades and colours, the black parrots flew across in front of us calling and we had the place to ourselves, there was no other sound than the natural sounds, the wind blowing through the palms and the birds calling out from the shelter of the forest - a very beautiful place, like going back in time.

Fancy a bit of chocolate cake?

2009-01-10T01:41:00.000-08:00

First it’s turtles round for breakfast and then it’s geckos round for tea!

This was the first time we had seen this, although skinks are regular visitors to the kitchen, especially when a cake has just been made, geckos usually stick to flies and cockroaches – but not this one we caught it after the chocolate cake - cheeky!

Geckos are amazing creatures; the sticky pads on their feet mean that they can go anywhere, clinging to vertical surfaces is no problem, ideal for climbing up kitchen cupboards.

We have got two sorts on Aride, this one, which is the bronze-eyed gecko, which are extremely variable in colour, the one who has found our kitchen is one of the best marked individuals I’ve seen, and its stripes look like the pile of a carpet. Then there is the green day gecko, which is not seen as frequently, but is a wonderful bright green.

Over here cake is very precious and much sort after, with our diet severely lacking sugary things, so we moved it out of geckos’ way and replaced it with a few spare crumbs and it immediately found those as well!
Since then he has become a regular visitor and ‘Art’ can often be seen peeping round the window with those big bulging eyes.

Shoes

2009-01-06T05:15:00.000-08:00

Emelda Marcus would’ve been lost on Aride, as shoes aren’t the practical thing, with the climate being the way it is; hot and humid, feet in shoes would rot in no time. So it is bare foot for pretty much everything, even going into town and shopping its common not to wear shoes.

However for us there are two occasions on Aride when shoes are a must; going up the hill, the rocks are sharp and the terrain very uneven and when walking out and about at night. The latter is something you are always warned about before coming to the island, to guard against stepping on a giant centipede and as the name suggests they are big and have a very nasty bite.

But last night I saw another reason why from now on I will always put shoes on at night:

What was it - A robber crab, once common, now only found on Aride and Cousine island, in the Granitic Seychelles as they are extinct elsewhere after being killed for food. This one was outside the volunteers’ house eating the leftovers out of their frying pan last night, 15cm wide across its back it was amazing. They are extremely agile and known for climbing coconut trees, it climbed up this wooden bench with ease, almost like spider monkey, using all its legs to hang on and swing to reach its next point.

I have never seen anything quite like it, it was a bit like a giant hermit crab, but with a shield on its back instead of a shell and its’ legs were more articulated and a beautiful purple shade with pales flashes and striking red eyes.

Today I read up about it, and in the 2006 Annual Report the previous Warden wrote, ‘Robber crab seen three times this year, once at the volunteers’ house and twice in the Wardens’ bedroom’!!!

The best turtle experience yet.

2009-01-02T20:19:00.000-08:00

It all started with our usual cup of coffee on the beach crest at 5.30am, but today Melv never even got to chance to sit down for his. As soon as he came up on to the crest to the table, he caught sight of a ghost crab with a green turtle hatchling in its claws, we rushed round the nest and there true enough the nest was hatching in front of our eyes.

There were two holes that had appeared in the sand, both about the size of a saucer, and inside I could see a mass of small hatchings all squirming around standing on each other in an attempt to get out.

The small heads poking up through and their front powerful flippers trying to get purchase either on the sand or in amongst their brothers and sisters to pull them up and on to the beach.

They had travelled a long way in the sand, the nest typically between 50cm and 60cm deep. But we had a job on our hands, the crabs were evil and they looked to every opportunity to grab hold of the small creatures and then make a get away. Although chasing them and the stamping feet does make them drop the hatchlings, it is a different story if they run under the vegetation, where it is impossible to get hold of them. But there were plenty of us, after I had raised the alarm people came rushing out of their houses like there was a fire.

After the first batch of youngsters had come out of the hole we helped them out by lifting a lot of the sand away and relieving the weight off them.

Once they were out we collected them all in a bucket so that we could release them all together and stand a chance at keeping the crabs away. Aride has a very large population of crabs, whilst they do an excellent job at keeping the island clean they can devastate a turtle nest in next to no time. J

The hatchlings were really strong little fellas and they had big necks and looked so healthy, just like perfect little turtles, their shells were dark and black, smart looking with their white trim. Their flippers were continually on the go, whirring round trying to propel themselves as quickly as they could to get to the safety of the sea. I lifted one up and it resisted my fingers as it tried to ‘swim’ away, they had only just opened their eyes which were like small slits, but the shells were so perfectly formed, just perfect and smart. Not in the slightest bit ugly like the hawksbills tend to be, but real smart.

It didn't take us long to empty the nest and then move them further down to the beach to release them. We needed to give them a bit of a run, but we needed to keep the section of beach clear of crabs.

We lifted them gently out of the bucket and as soon as they touched the sand they were away, they powered on down the beach towards the light, like little clockwork toys, one after another they headed down to the sea, it was magical to watch.

We were just in time the sun was just coming up, soon it would be daylight, but it was a perfect morning, the sea was a lot calmer than it had been and they stood a good chance, we were giving them a head start, which these green turtles desperately needed, they need every chance they can get. With 7 of us on the case the crabs didn’t stand chance and the hatchlings could take all the time they needed to reach the safety of the sea.

We managed to release a total of 130 into the water and there were only 5 dead in the bottom of the nest, which may have been crushed or died from a lack of oxygen, and then there was a late developer still coming out of its egg shell. This one we will hold on to until it has used up its yolk sack and them let it go at dusk, probably in a couple of days time.

Once we had finished excavating the nest we had found a total of 144 egg shells and so it is possible that we may have lost 8 to crabs or they came out early and got away, but hey 131 out 144; 91.5% aint bad!

Happy New Year to you all

2008-12-31T22:35:00.000-08:00

The packaging is often as good as the contents.

2008-12-29T21:21:00.000-08:00

This is going to sound really sad, but it is true, a lot of the time the stuff that we receive things wrapped up in over here is often as good if not better than the contents. Typical examples are for instance, items that come in small re-sealable bags, these are excellent as they are extremely versatile great for stopping mobile phone, alarm clock and MP3 player from getting wet and covered in salt. Or the there are padded envelopes or A5 envelopes, both seem to be very rare in Seychelles, or the card board from cereal packets, the cereal is awful here, but the cardboard gets used for all types of things, especially to make resources for school work, oh and of course small boxes, some friends sent some chocolates out recently – Ferrero Rocher, the contents were amazing, but the plastic container is great for freezing specimens in, like dead turtle hatchlings or moths.

But this Christmas it was the best yet, a volunteer who had just left after a 3 month stay here, sent through a parcel and it contained small net bags of Christmas chocolates, well whilst the chocolates were very nice indeed, the small net bags well... they managed to catch tea for the whole island tonight.

How? Melv made them into two fishing lures and each time we put them in the water pulling them behind the boat, we managed to catch fish on each – result. Melv has become a bit of a magpie like that, he collects all things shiny as potential fishing lures, whilst I often make fun of him, I can’t knock it after today’s success!

Christmas on Aride

2008-12-26T19:52:00.000-08:00

Several people have said ‘I can’t imagine what it would be like to have Christmas on a tropical island’, so whilst many of you were inside keeping warm, opening presents wrapped in glossy paper and eating turkey for lunch this is what we did...

The day got off to a slow relaxed start at the usual time of 5.30am, it was a beautiful morning, as soon as the sun came up we knew it was going to be a hot one, by 11am it was 34°C in the shade!

We had two presents to open which were wrapped in newspaper – Chloe had treated us to two of the things we miss most in the food here – ferried over from the UK, by her sister who is here on holiday.

The daily jobs still needed to be done, Chloe and her sister walked the beach to check for nesting turtles

and Angie recorded the weather.

But there was plenty of time to relax, Pete found time to do a bit of art work

and Phil came in to see how dinner was going.

Christmas dinner was going to be a joint of pork and all the trimmings, well all that we had anyway and everyone was going to prepare a bit and we all planned to eat together. There were 7 of us left on the island and we were all from the UK, with the local lads having gone to the main land to be with their family. Melv as the chef prepared the meat and roast potatoes and whisked up a pudding.

When it got too hot in the kitchen we both went in the sea to cool off, the water was like a mill pond, and it was incredibly calm and amazingly warm.

From 12 noon we were all relieved that technology behaved and we were all able to contact friends and family, so text messages, emails and phone calls flew backwards and forwards with the UK through out the afternoon and evening.

Once all the daily jobs were complete, the magpie robins had been fed and the beach checked for tracks for the final time, we all sat down for dinner at 5.30pm, which was amazing:

Main Course
Roast pork, in honey and soya sauce
Roast potatoes
Pumpkin and aubergine
Carrots
Papaya chutney
Pineapple sauce, (we didn’t have any apples), bread sauce, stuffing balls and gravy

Sweets
Trifle (with rum as we didn’t have sherry)
Pumpkin and coconut pie, with cream topping
Pineapple upside down cake

Followed by Christmas chocolates – (thanks Jean)

Accompanied by glasses of red wine and other alcoholic beverages!

Chloe and her sister used their artistic skills to create hats and decorations, and we opened parcels that past volunteers and visitors had sent us.

What about the wildlife well that was great as always, all day the fairy terns chuckled, the sunbirds rattled their song and warblers piped their melodious tune, even the bee eaters visited for a short while, the frigate birds chilled out on the thermals and the Audubon shearwaters serenaded us with their eerie call as we watched the sun go down.

The sunset was out of this world, turning the whole sky pink and producing a 3 dimensional light which makes the island looked surreal.

So what was Christmas like on a tropical island: hot, relaxed, quiet and rather special – Cheers!!

The Aride Fairy would like to say...

2008-12-23T20:00:00.000-08:00

Yesterday a Hawksbill Turtle came for breakfast

2008-12-11T04:04:00.000-08:00

She must’ve been desperate as it was rice pudding!!

As we took our breakfast to our table and bench on the beach crest there coming towards us was a hawksbill. We quickly sat down so not to disturb her and she went through the process of laying her eggs right in front of us!
She was desperate, but not for rice pudding, she had been up on the beach a couple of days before and not managed to lay and now today to get to this site she had had to climb a metre high sand bank. As a result she was desperate to lay and she did so in the middle of the beach.
However many times I see these creatures each time I am in awe, they are magnificent and truly amazing, and in disbelief I watched this one today complete her main purpose in life less than 3 metres from where I was eating my breakfast.
We knew there was no need to count the egg clutch size, as soon as she had finished and we had time, we would need to move the clutch off the beach and to a place high enough up away from the high tide line. Which in itself is yet another amazing turtle story...

Yet another turtle treat

2008-12-07T21:28:00.000-08:00

You are all probably fed up of hearing about turtles, well tough because I have got to tell you about this turtle treat – a green turtle nest hatching:

We made our usual 5.30 am start to check the beach for turtles and tracks, it was another great morning and as we sat and drank our coffee, the bee eaters were waking up above our heads as the sun came up and a calm sea lapped against the sandy beach - beautiful. Then suddenly we heard a whistle, it could only be Tony, the head ranger, and it was, he was furiously beckoning us over. I gulped my coffee down and grabbed the turtle bag, expecting to see an adult turtle track or turtle on the beach. But no, Tony was clutching something and I would've never have guessed what - it was a green turtle hatchling.

There were a few coming from the first nest site, they can hatch between 50 and 70 days, it was 50 days to yesterday and so they hatched exactly on the first day, and they were on their way as fast as they could to the safety of the sea. But as we looked we started to realise that many of the ghost crabs that were skulking around were actually clutching young hatchlings. Instinctively to try and give some of the rarest creatures we would ever see a chance, we both started to chase the crabs away. I tried stamping my feet to make them drop them - it worked and I collected up the small hatchling just the size of a 50p piece and took it nearer the sea. They felt so strong, the large front flippers characteristic of a green turtle, were trying to pull through my fingers, not even the size of my little finger, the flippers had so much power and were to be crucial in the survival of this small turtle.

There was little evidence of a mass hatching and there were very few tracks in the sand to be seen, whether on the beach itself or around the nest site, however there were a lot of crab tracks. Until now I hadn't realised how much of a threat crabs were to these little fellas, even though I was amazed at how fast they could travel down the beach - they were no competition for a crab, they didn't stand a chance.

From memory they looked slightly bigger than a hawksbill hatchling, but they looked very different with their flippers and soft parts all lined in white. So cute, they made their way down the beach like little clock work toys, one flipper after another giving them a rather comical gait.

After seeing so few we knew there must be more and so as the evening got closer we staked the nest site out, in an attempt to try and reduce the amount of crab predation, what a way to spend a Saturday evening.

By 7.15 we started to see yet more movement from the nest and once again hatchlings started to emerge. This time dealing with the crabs was more of a challenge because it was dark.

It was a catch 22, as we would shine the torch to get the crabs we would then attract the hatchlings as at this age they respond to light and changes in temperature.

Melv had the answer he grabbed a big stick and went further down the beach and began to clear the way for us to guide the hatchlings down, he effectively started to play golf with the crabs, it was quick and efficient – although at times not too good for the crabs– it worked a treat with the way clear for the rest of us to guide the small defenceless hatchlings down to the sea.

It was once more a truly amazing sight a real turtle treat, and one I really never expected to see, seeing hatchlings making their way down the beach was exciting enough, but those from a green turtle - well unbelievable, some of the rarest turtles in the world and we were privileged enough to be able to give them a helping hand - how lucky was that

Special Visitors

2008-11-28T20:26:00.000-08:00

In just a weeks time we will have been working on Aride for a year and we will soon start to see things going full circle. Like the change of the monsoons, one bringing visitors the other breeding birds, or the turtle season - full of highs and lows, much like the time of flowering Pisonia and its deadly sticky seeds.

Well November is still a new month for us and it has been the time for migrants bringing plenty of new visitors of the feathered variety to the island. Although Aride has many thousands of pairs of birds on its 73ha, it does fall short on variety, so the arrival of some new species has been quite a highlight. For me they have been what I would call quality birds too, like the Crab Plover.

A really bizarre looking species with a bill like a tomahawk and legs, well it had a stride almost the length of one of my feet, its legs are extremely long! Very Avocet like in movement, but purpose built to catch crabs, a long stride and a bill like a chisel. I would watch them stab a ghost crab and then like a young boy would do with a spider, pull its legs off one by one, then run around with the body in its beak. They seldom flew anywhere, but made full use of their long legs and ran to where they needed to go.

Then there were the sanderlings, although common in the UK, here they have absolutely no fear of humans at all and we have been able to walk within a couple of foot away. They scurry around our feet as we haul the boat up the beach and run up to us as we sit and wait for turtles to do their thing. Just the other evening we were waiting for a turtle and a volunteer was eating his tea on the beach, he spilt some veggie curry on the sand, then to our amazement it was eaten by a sanderling as it scurried past.

There have been the little brown jobs as well, like the lesser and greater sand plovers, which in summer plumage look stunning, but by the time they get to Aride they are both a rather dull brown colour. Still not to be knocked they are a welcome addition to the group of turnstones that frequent the beach daily.

However the stars of the show so far have to be the blue-cheeked bee eaters, they arrived last week and are still here. They are magical and seem very fitting for a tropical island, with their bright colours and wonderful call. We have had up to 18 along the beach crest, and currently there is at least a group of 8, a mix of adults and juveniles. Some of the adults have still got their blue-cheeks, together with a yellow chin patch and rusty throat.

The beach crest is their favoured haunt, where they seem very successful at hawking insects; they are particularly active at dawn and dusk and tend to go quiet in the heat of the day – like most of us!

Unfortunately none of these birds are immune to Pisonia and both the sanderlings and bee eaters have been a victim of it, the sanderling managed to deal with it, but the bee eater needed a helping hand – for which we obliged.

That’s one thing about life on a remote island you never quite know what will turn up next and that can happen with both birds and people!!

One of the advantages of having composting loos.

2008-11-03T04:04:00.000-08:00

Well before last night other than the environmental reasons, I didn’t think there were that many other advantages to having composting toilets, but now...

For composting loos to work effectively it is best not to wee in them, and it was only because of this that we were both going for a wee on the beach late last night. Melv lead the way, but then came rushing back;
‘There’s something big in the bushes on the beach crest, thrashing round’ he said excitedly.
He grabbed the torch and took a quick –oh my word it was a green turtle – right next to our house, she was digging a nest chamber to lay her eggs right next to where we sit on the beach crest.

Hawksbill turtles frequently use Aride’s beach to lay their eggs at this time of year, with over 60 emergences last year. But green turtles are extremely rare and Aride didn’t have any emergences last year and only 3 the year before. Greens are much bigger than hawksbills, with an average track size of 110cm compared to a hawksbills’ at 75cm. So you can imagine the excitement having one right on the doorstep, never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would see a green turtle, especially as they only come out at night, compared to hawksbills which will emerge to nest at any time of day.

We walked round to reach the beach so we could get behind her and not cause any disturbance that is the golden rule, until a turtle has laid stay out of her sight, or they may desert. She was now covering up, busy camouflaging her nest site by moving large amounts of sand and vegetation, hawksbills also do this to disguise where their eggs are, but greens disturb so much ground it looks like a building site.

We sat in the darkness and listened, the noise of the surf made it quite difficult to pick up the noise at times. I strained my eyes to try and see what she was going, we could see sand being flicked up every so often but it was almost impossible to see the turtle herself. I so wanted to put the torch on just to get a glimpse, but I had to wait. It was just amazing to think that there was green turtle, the size of a dinner table, less than 5m away from where I was sitting and yet I couldn’t see her, I had to wait.

Then there was an almighty crash followed by breaking branches and she emerged out of the large sandcastle that she had built, it was now safe to shine the torch just to the side of her for a minute to catch a glimpse of what she was doing – yep she was on her way down to the sea, the nest complete.

The first snatch of what she looked like was amazing, more rounded in shape like a tortoise than the flat appearance of a hawksbill and massive; her front flippers were the power, as she dug them into the sand to drag her body behind.

As her name suggests her shell had a green tinge, Melv kept the light behind her as she made her way down the beach slowly, I put my hand on her shell, quite taken a back at the size of this animal trudging along in front of me. The tide was out and so the beach was long and there was time to take a few photographs, but I was conscious of the bright flash in her eyes.

She was leaving an uneven track behind, with a large indent made for every ‘step’ taken, a look at her rear flippers revealed that one was damaged, with no soft flipper left, just a stump, this explained the unevenness of a track we had seen early in the week – so we knew that this turtle had been up the beach at least before, this was quite common these turtles can lay 3 to 4 nests on the same beach.

Her head protruding out of the large shell and in between the two large front power house flippers, looked small, she lacked the ‘bill’ of the hawksbill, with a rounder face and a deep dark eye. What a privilege to able to stand this close to such an animal. Our time with her was soon to end as she edged closer to the water. She stopped at the water’s edge for a short while to take a rest and let the water lap up against her head and flippers, washing the sand off. You could almost sense the relief and achievement in her as she had successfully managed the huge upheaval of laying her eggs, in a place where her movement was so awkward.

As she entered the surf he movement was transformed and she became graceful once again as the large front flippers took her effortlessly out into the deeper water, soon the round dark lump of her back disappeared. I stood in the dark staring at the surf for a while is disbelief and then glanced at the beautiful clear skies, full of stars twinkling at me - what a magical moment that had been.

Back into the Swing of things

2008-11-01T22:43:00.000-07:00

Well it will soon be 3 weeks since we have been back on Aride and I am still yet to unpack all the goodies we brought back with us. Mind you in most cases, (apart from the chocolate), things are far better left inside the hard-backed suitcases – safely away from all the wildlife that we share the house with.

We were both looking forward to getting back to the island and when we stepped on to the beach after our month away I realised that I had forgotten how beautiful it was. The light was the first thing that struck me; it was so clear and bright, as if everything was lit up with an electric light, it looked amazing, followed then once more by the abundance of wildlife.

It hasn’t taken us long to get back into the swing of things, and the weeks once again are starting to fly by. We are entering into the busy time of year now, as the seas calm and the North West monsoon begins. The visitor numbers are increasing each week, as our regular clients return and we already have cruise ships booked in for the Christmas period.

In addition to the daily tasks, Melv has been busy building a new composting loo, gaining the materials needed by recycling one of the verandas off an empty rangers’ house. It took sometime to source a new toilet seat though, with only one shop selling such an item on the whole of Praslin. But it was worth the wait and is now pure luxury.

I have been catching up on going into schools, we have finished the Aride corner at Grand Anse and I have been working on a mural at Baie Ste Anne. One of our volunteers came in with me to talk about adaptation and we used his musical talent to good end, as a song on the ukulele will make birds and adaptation a subject the children won’t forget for some time.

The wildlife is still out of this world, whilst a lot of the breeding birds have flown, we still have lesser noddy chicks just about ready to fledge and the residents, such as the white tailed tropics seem to be rearing young successfully. Visitors to the island have included a crab plover, which was a new bird for me – with such an amazing beak and legs like a stilt. Things have gone full circle and the turtles start to come up the beach once more. We have been lucky to have at least 2 of the very rare green turtles in the last few weeks, followed by the start of the hawksbills. Even though we are desperately short of water, the Wrights gardinier has been flowering, it is hard to believe that Aride is the only place in the world where this tree grows naturally, the smell from the flowers is exquisite.

Of course we have been fishing, and fresh fish has been on the menu most nights of the week, on several occasions we have tried to pull sharks into the shallows with the remains, which has provided evening entertainment for the whole island.

I still have to pinch myself most days just to check that I really am living in this amazing place, where the blue sea is so blue it hurts your eyes and the sand is so hot it burns your feet. There is always something new to see, from humpback whales to the thousands of roosting frigate birds, but it is not without its challenges, and who knows what the next 12 months will bring...

Hols in the UK

2008-10-17T06:39:00.000-07:00

I should apologise for the lack of entries over the last month, but we have been away enjoying our annual leave, but now back in residence on Aride we have got chance to catch up. As part of our contract we get two months annual leave, one of the months comes together with a return flight to the UK, so all excited on the 12th September we found ourselves on Air Seychelles actually flying back to the UK for a holiday, at this point I realised I had never actually gone to the UK from another country for my holidays before.

A month sounds a long break and it was going to be the first time that Melv and I had actually ever taken a holiday for such a length of time and not been building a house or the like. But having said that, looking back now I can’t believe how quickly the time actually went.

We had a wonderful break; a large percent of it was spent staying with mum and dad on the North Wales coast, slightly different temperatures to the Indian Ocean that we were used to, but a fantastic coastline, with sandy bays and rugged cliffs and excellent walks. I managed to meet up with family, and Melv who was experiencing withdrawal symptoms from no fishing managed to buy the cheapest rod in the local shop and with the first cast bring out a 4 ½ Ib bass that was the talk of Rhos on Sea seafront.

We did manage to get to Spain to see friends Steve and Kate, for which our livers will never forgive us. Now living near Grenada, they have started a project restoring an old mill house in Bazza Natural Park and it was excellent to be able to explore a part of Spain that we have never been to before. A very quiet and beautiful part of the world, and on walking up the valley beside the house over a weekend we saw more golden eagles than people all day. Melv particularly enjoyed sampling the tapas, and I managed to take two dips in the Med – blinkin freezing after the Indian Ocean.

Towards the end of the month, our travels took us to Somerset for a very short stay, limited by this time by finances, but we managed to meet up with family and friends and of course went out to the local curry house. Melv put his liver through yet some more abuse, from which his mate took two days to sober up, whilst I managed to get a ukulele lesson over a bottle of wine or two.

There were loads of things we had hoped to do but never managed to, sorry Bob I never got to the AGM, but it was excellent to see the photos and sorry Von and Sarah; I never got to give you a call our time in Somerset was very brief.

Some of the other highlights of the month were to walk into a supermarket and just look at the fruit and vegetables then being able to fill our basket with whatever we wanted, especially bread, cheese and chocolate. To have a cup of builder’s tea with semi skimmed milk every morning, probably one of the simple things I’ve missed most! To go to the pub, where I had been dreaming of eating steak and ale pie and chips – and do so – hard to believe I used to be vegetarian. To watch footie on the TV, especially Liverpool beating Man Utd, sorry Melv, and drink beer.

We got back to Seychelles just a couple of days ago and it is good to be back, even though on our first shopping trip we were to be told that milk, milk powder, vege oil and cheese were ‘All finished’!

'When I'm An Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple'

2008-08-14T23:55:00.000-07:00

Purple hermits have obviously been inspired by this great little book, there is nothing quite like them here on Aride.

Follow this special sequence - this one moved home in a matter of seconds

The Toktok

2008-08-09T07:00:00.001-07:00

Toktok is the local name given to the Seychelles Fody, the closest species in character that we would have in the UK is probably the house sparrow. However believe it or not the toktok is even cheekier and probably one of the cheekiest species I have ever known. Endemic to the Seychelles, in 2000 there were under 3,000 birds left, particularly vulnerable to cats and rats the population has significantly declined. 65 birds were reintroduced on to Aride in February 2002, and are now doing very well, and are a very common sight around the houses and buildings. They have a loud little song, kind of like the British wren and they will give it full pelt especially if they are after something like food or in this case today a piece of the office sweeping brush.

The sweeping brushes we use here are made out of grass and the thin fibres are excellent for picking up sand, but also excellent nesting material as our friend the toktok has found out. Now as a weaver bird they are rather fussy about the nesting material they use and on an island as limited for vegetation types as Aride, the sweeping brush has an important role to play for the toktok.

Like most birds the toktoks are nesting at the moment and so they are on the cadge for anything that looks remotely good for building their intricate weaver bird type home. As a result they have staked out every location where a brush can be found. With the amount of sand about, we keep one not just at home but in the office too, to at least try and limit the amount of sand that gets close to the computers.

Well today I just had to smile as I sat at the computer I could hear a scuffling behind me – it was a toktok, it had designs of the sweeping brush. Now instead of sneaking into the office once it sees the door open and grabbing a bit of brush fibre quietly, without me seeing, oh know it had to do it toktok style. This cheeky toktok came into the middle of the office floor and gave a full blast of song, loud and clear, which echoed round the wooden building, after drawing attention to itself it then proceeded to hop over to the brush and started to tug at the bristles. Successfully managing to dislodge a beak full, it then flew out of the door. It didn't just use this tactic once either - oh no two or three times at least, you have got to admire such cheek.

It is impossible to be annoyed with them; they look so innocent as they persistently tug at the brush for several minutes to collect a beak full. The 10cm length of grass then sits like a moustache, an even length either side so it is balanced and easy to make off with. Half the brush at both the office and at home has now gone and is forming toktok nests right across the plateau – bless ‘em.

One of the rarest forms of therapy – the Seychelles Magpie Robin

2008-07-28T06:24:00.000-07:00

When you read the title you would be forgiven if you thought ‘that’s a little sad’, or ‘she’s finally gone mad, the isolation has got to her’ – but hear me out.

When the local school children, or my nephew and niece - Sam and Lucy ask; ‘What’s your favourite bird then?’ - My answer nowadays is always the Seychelles magpie robin. Why? Well they are not just special because they are one the rarest birds in the world at a population of 160 and endemic to the Seychelles, but they are cute, intelligent and smart.

I remember reading an article many years ago in the RSPB’s magazine, Birds, about the work that was being done to address the declining population of just 21 birds in 1990, little did I know that I would ever be working and living with them. They are now present on 4 Seychelles’ islands and Aride is one of them and we can boast of having a total 23 birds – with one on the way. First successfully introduced to Aride in 1999, they stayed at a population of 15 for many years but over the last 12 months have gradually started to increase.

Many of you won’t know what a magpie robin looks like, well as the name suggests they are a cross between a large robin and a small magpie. They have the behaviour, stance and movement of a robin, and the colours, cheekiness and brains of a magpie. Altogether they are a pretty stunning little bird, about the size of a blackbird.

So how do they help me keep my sanity?
Living on Aride gives you the fantastic but rare opportunity to get to know birds and other wildlife individually, now with magpie robins this is made even easier, as to track the population each magpie robin has a different ring colour combination on their left leg, so we know who is who and who is doing what with or to who!!

Much like the robins in the gardens of the UK which will be on the end of your spade, magpie robins too are opportunistic and hang around people for the chance of a snack, either in the form of a cockroach or a piece of biscuit. As a result they become part of the fixtures and fittings at home and there is hardly a time in daylight hours that there isn’t one hopping round the veranda or kitchen behind you.

But they are smart, the sticky Pisonia seeds have killed many a bird on Aride, but magpie robins have got it sussed, what ever it takes they pull out all the feathers necessary to remove the sticky seeds, at times I‘m not sure how they manage this but we have seen it on numerous occasions.

They are very territorial birds and tend to hang around in gangs and if a bird ventures into another territory it will cause a coming together of the gangs from either side. The calling together of the gang is done with a penetrating alarm call to which all birds in the vicinity respond and fly to where the action is. They have a range of vocabulary, of course a full song which can be heard as you walk around the plateau, but particularly after a period of rain, and then a sub-song, which is one of the most amazing sounds ever. The sub-song seems to be a sign of contentedness, sung from the throat without opening their beak, it is a fluty warble which has little pattern or predictability, it is beautiful and often very timely as if they can sense the moment.

Well neither of us like giving names to wild animals and loathe these TV programmes that do so, but I’m afraid it has just kinda happened, rather than being known by their colours, the new recruits to the Aride magpie robin family have been christened. In our time here there have been 3 new recruits that have survived through to fledging – Squeaker, Ziarrah and Charlie, the latter of which is still at the age that Squeaker was when he got christened and so still a noisy little blighter. Ziarrah called after the daughter of the head ranger and Charlie christened such as he shares a birthday with another Charlie. The danger of this is that the blood test identifying the sex of each bird is always delayed and so after several months we may well find that Ziarrah isn’t the little girlie we thought she was.

Magpie robins when in a hurry move a little like Labrador dogs, with a sideways gate, instead of hopping or running they tend to have a bit of a limp and one leading leg, the concrete floors pose a challenge to this and many a robin has learnt to do the splits on our veranda floor in the rush for a piece of cheese. On the subject of food, they will eat anything, from spicy pumpkin soup to rice pudding and if you’re not too careful they will have a good go before you do. That is rule number one here regarding all wildlife, never leave food unattended for a second. Then there was a time when we thought we could throw away our mousetraps, the day that Squeaker caught a house mouse.

One downside is that they do pooh everywhere, but then so does everything else, but Ziarrah is particularly good at strategic poohing, not sure if it is out of excitement, or appreciation, but she will always leave a little message in most places, chairs, tables, worktops, the water filter – not fussy.

So... that’s how – and that’s why they’re my favourite.

The Hulla Bulla Shouting Man

2008-07-19T00:51:00.000-07:00

“What dya want to do today Sal” (Sat day off)
“Let’s catch some fish for dinner”
“Great I’ll sort the boat”
We set off in the small fibreglass with the 25hp engine, we just got to the east of the island and there, 20ft from the cliffs was an octopus boat (that’s not a boat shaped like an octopus or a boat driven by an octopus, it’s a boat with people catching octopuses). It should have been 200m off our shore, but what’s a couple of hundred meters between friends. So me and Sal confidently take our boat close to theirs and say, in a friendly manner you’re much too close. Well, the 2 people in the boat said “huh” looked away from us and carried on fishing and the chap in the water chucked another couple of octopuses in their boat. Sal, in sensed by their lack of respect for the warden of Aride said “right” got out her camera and took their photo. Bad move. I was amazed at how quick belligerence can turn to aggression.

The one who looked in charged started shouting (in Creole) and I’m now slightly worried. They pull the other chap into the boat and come towards us, luckily I never switched off the engine and I kept our distance, the shouting man was really shouting now and getting closer. If they get to close and throw their anchor into our boat we’re knackered. Now we’re starting to shit ourselves. So as always the discretion and valour old bollocks comes into play and we leg it!

They gave chase. Both boats had 25hp engines but we were lighter, 2 of us to 3 of them and a ton of octopuses so they couldn’t make up any ground on us, it was who had the most fuel or determination. We kept circling the island with them 500m behind, luckily the rangers saw that was happening and launched our tornado with 5 staff. They stopped, and we used the tornado as a shield and let the shouting man catch us up, he was not a happy bunny, as we pirouetted around the tornado he was shouting his head off and our rangers were desperately trying to calm him down. After quite some time he either got a sore throat or got fed up and just left.
Well, I thought I did bloody well to keep the distance between the two of us, with them weaned on the water and me all of 3hrs experience, I still got a smack on the head for letting them “get to bloody close”.
This was a few months ago, and I’ve seen shouting man several times fishing legitimately since then, I always get the same reaction form him, arm out straight finger pointing and the shouting “hulla bulla hulla bulla” of course it’s not hulla bulla but that’s what it sounds like. I’ve never bothered to get it translated, because I know it’s bound to be about my parentage and what he’s going to do to certain parts of my body.
Last week on a shopping trip to Praslin we came out of a shop and there was shouting man across the other side of the track. I quickly went through all the permutations in my head, i.e. should we turn around and pretend not to have seen him, buy him a beer, smack him over the head with the shopping bag. I thought no you b_____d your going to talk to me! so I put on my friendliest smile, walked over to him, put my face right in his, stuck out my hand and said “how’s the fishing buddy”. I defiantly caught him off guard, what could he do, I had the big smile and the hand out stretched so he had to take it, he did, and said “yaa fishing gud” He seemed to find it all very amusing( to my relief ) and after he shook hands with me and Sal, he left, phew.
When I see shouting man next time fishing, if he still is shouting man, my tactic will be to moon at him, or perhaps we’ve pushed are luck too far with him already, we’ll see.

One lump or two?

2008-07-19T00:23:00.000-07:00

After working with the school children before we came out and their main concern being me having to live without chocolate whilst I was away, together with all the stories we were told before we came out here; I can remember thinking as we prepared to leave, I wonder where we will get sugar from in our diet, no more chocolate or sugary drinks. Trish the Ham Wall Administrator and I talked about this during one of our tea breaks as we each devoured a Danish pastry, and we decided that it would be from natural sugars – from fruit etc, hmmm, at the time I remember thinking that won’t be very exciting...

Over the last 8 months we have both noticed that due to our change of diet, we don’t get sugar as we suspected, we don’t eat processed food or sauces, or bought biscuits or snacks – as most of the time there aren’t any in the shops, or we don’t get to the shops to buy them. As well as this, the big source of sugar we used to have was in alcohol and now we are down to one bottle of beer a night that has dried up too. Well there are the natural sources of sugar, but they aren’t very exciting and we have found that we crave for sweet things, having never been pudding people before we now crave for cake and custard!
When we first got here we did buy biscuits when they were available, but going back to one of my earlier entries, they were never what they said they would be, pineapple crunch biscuits would taste like wet cardboard and imitation bourbon creams would be cardboard – they were atrocious.
Well I am glad this effected Melv more than it did me – the reduction of alcohol made him, loose weight dramatically, but not only that, it has inspired him to start making cakes!

Anyone who knows us will know that Melv is the cook in the partnership, and Sal is only allowed in the kitchen to clear up. Sal cooked Melv a meal shortly after they first got together 13 years ago, and it was so good he has never let her cook again!!
First started by one of the volunteers here, Melv has progressed from biscuits to muesli bars to pineapple upside down cake and they are all fabulous.

One of the latest inventions are coconut mountains, which are dependent on jam being available, but are now well known even in the Mahe office and have been a welcome addition to a cup of tea for many a visitor to Aride.

So much for thinking I was going to lose weight whilst I was here...
Ps – I’ll get Melv to write up the recipe.

Poaching

2008-07-19T00:14:00.000-07:00

The Seychelles is no different than most places around the world wildlife wise; it’s knackered; basically where there’s people there’s no wildlife, similar sad familiar story we know so well from the UK. The reason it’s gone of course is us, with our rats, cats, chemicals and chainsaws, again just like home. Where it differs from the UK is that the Seychellois eat everything! With the excuse of tradition they eat the birds, birds’ eggs and if they miss the eggs the first time round they come back and eat the young. So with no birds left on inhabited islands, to serve tradition they come and poach on our nature reserve. The main bird they are after is the sooty tern, which arrives in it’s thousands during May to Aride to breed, they cover the higher areas of the island in dense colonies. Of course we were aware of this problem before we arrived, but we were pleasantly surprised by the outgoing warden who told us “don’t worry about it it’s not much of a problem”. Well we still don’t know to this day why he said that as we later found out he couldn’t have been further away from telling the truth if he’d tried. A few weeks later the good Seychellois staff told us a much different story, they said “it’s a commercial operation here”. So we decided to spend as much time as needed to assess the problem for ourselves.
The poachers are more active during dark, but not exclusively, so we set up watches on the beach from dawn till dusk to look for boats with more than 2 people in them (normally only 1-2 people fish in a boat) and at dusk we went in pairs to the colonies on the hill. The intention was firstly to deter the poachers by letting them know we could see them, then ring in their details to the only good bloke here re anti poaching, he would then contact the police (they deserve a blog entry all to themselves, but not while I’m still here!) so they could catch them as they got back to the mainland. Armed with a massively powerful torch and a machete, me and Sal took our first shift on the hill, at 140m high the cliff where we watched the sea - it is just stunning, sat here with 1000s of sooty terns flying right above our heads the noise was indescribable.

As the sun set the first poachers arrived, as they came to land I shone the torch at them, the torch was telling them you’ve been seen and you will get in trouble if you land, what they said to the torch was f—k you and landed anyway. These are serious people who can’t be messed with, so we legged it, with only one escape route we left in quite a hurry because of the real risk they would get around the back of us and cut us off. With the other observation points faring no better, the total amount of poachers on the island on that first night was 9 confirmed, with the certainty there where a lot more unseen. The next night we did the same, in the same place, this time, no birds no eggs just a few they had broken and no noise, all gone! What they do is strip an area clean, load the eggs into containers, so not to break the eggs they pack the containers with dead sooty terns, and if it’s just eggs they want, they break them into jerry cans so they can sell it by the litre. Well as you can imagine we were shocked and piss off, and any of you reading this who knows us will know we wouldn’t be quiet. We rang the good chap every night with what ever details we could get re boats and it’s occupants, but no arrests, which we were not at all surprised about, as we rang in more and more instances of poaching, the good chap (who has a lot of clout here) said it was getting to dangerous for us to deal with by ourselves, he was going to send in the armed police. Just to fill you in a bit, the armed police in the Seychelles, like their jobs and they shoot people.

Our CEO (Sal’s line manager), rang the director of police and asked what they intended to do, and she was told “ if there’s people on the island that shouldn’t be, they will be shot!” Shit! that sent us into a panic, don’t get me wrong, I would like all the b_____ds shot and wouldn’t lose one moments sleep no matter how many they killed. But the reality if that were to happen, would be an unthinkable back lash from the relatives and friends of the shot poachers, we, that’s all the staff would not be safe anywhere either on or off the island. Thankfully, strangely, because all Seychellois eat wild birds and eggs the chief of police thought it would be too contentious an operation with political ramifications and put a stop to it.
At the end of the poaching season 65% of our sooty terns’ eggs were taken, with that and a month of 15hr a day 7 day a week fatigue, put me into my first big sulk here, I could have caught the next flight home and said f—k it. Thankfully it only lasted a week or so.

Just pop down the shop for a pint of milk...

2008-07-13T05:45:00.000-07:00

It has been by far the busiest time here recently, with the breeding seabird season, which brings with it the poaching and the seabird census. The 70ha of Aride have felt like 700ha, as we have tried to get a grip on the number of eggs that have been taken and then count all those that have been left or relayed. After recently completing the poaching report, I can now give you an idea of the scale of the issue, which is certainly food for thought and not for the light hearted. Here on the island the sooty terns nest on approximately 30ha, which over the last 5 years has held an average population of 105,000 nesting pairs. This season 18ha of those 30 were poached, which working it out on a birds per hectare calculation comes to a total of approx 63,000 eggs that could’ve been taken and ended up on people’s plates. I couldn’t believe it when I heard some of the stories that our head ranger had to tell, particularly the one of the poachers bringing jerry cans across and breaking the eggs into them and taking then back as a liquid to sell – so people can make scramble eggs and omelettes. Then also the one about taking the live birds, they fill a sack with a mix of eggs and live birds and the birds help stop the eggs from being broken. It is a real shock to think this still goes on and on a commercial scale too – in the last 10 years the sooty tern population on Aride has decline by 50,000 pairs – although some of this can be attributed to habitat development and change, it makes you think after witnessing what we have, that poaching has a significant part to play.
Anyway that is enough of a rant, it is just hard to accept that conservation over here is in a completely different world to in the UK.
The seabird census has now been completed a week and my knees have just about recovered, it was the hardest conservation task I have ever done and by far out did reed cutting on the exhaustion front - which is saying something. The island is marked out with a 50m grid which is used to census the millions of birds we have here and each year we survey every other point which can amount to 125. The location of the point can only be found by taking a compass bearing and even then it is sometimes impossible. Well my rock climbing skills from my Berry Head days came in handy and there were many times I thought – if my mum could see me now...
It was good thing that Melv opted out, it was not a job for those that don’t like heights. In order to follow the compass bearing you are unable to deviate from the route indicated by the compass, so sheer rock faces, steep slopes, thick ferns full of ticks and slippery rocks all had to be negotiated. By day 5 of dawn till dusk I was hanging, no training could’ve prepared me for this – it made Langport Triathlon feel easy! Must add though as the oldest one there by far I was glad to see even the youngsters felt the same – even the locals!
What I was starting off too say was that whilst all this has been going on we have experienced a change in the seasons, from the North West monsoon to the South East. The south east has brought strong winds and rough seas and the quiet, calm days of the earlier part of the year have left us. It is hard to find out if the weather we are experiencing is the norm for here – locals don’t seem to notice such things – which does seem a little odd coming from the UK, where we are all obsessed by it. A typical morning is currently part cloudy skies, a cool breeze and in fact a very autumnal feel. All the leaves on the trees are starting to fall and the island is looking a little tired. The main consequence of the SE monsoon for both the vegetation and its inhabitants is the salt spray. As the waves come crashing onto the beach the spray is carried by the brisk SE wind and distributed across the island. The leaves of many of the trees have a low tolerance to it and fall to the ground and the effect on everything else is that it gets covered by a slimy, greasy film. And I mean everything else, this ranges from the bed clothes to the cooker, as far as possible everything we can are put in sealable plastic bags, from the mobile phone to the alarm clock, but this doesn’t work for all – like the laptop and the ukulele! I don’t know how it does it but the slime even gets into the cupboards and puts a coat on the books, fishing gear and food, you name it Mr Slime has been there.
This time of year means that we don’t get to leave the island much , the rough sea makes boat launching a challenge, this together with low levels of fuel means we restrict boat journeys to once a week and then only for a few people. All our endeavours in the garden are now really coming to fruition as Melv’s green fingers have got a full range of fresh vegetable starting to grow, this together with a well stocked food cupboard (a mouse proof one at that), fishing when ever the boat is out and creative cooking is the key to life on Aride for the next few months – it’s a good way to live and self sufficiency taken to the extreme. – Must admit though I’m glad Melv is the cook – bit too challenging for Sal!!

DANCING ON THE CEILING

2008-06-17T00:59:00.000-07:00

Strange title, wasn’t it a song, we’ve been trying to think who did it, I think it was blancmange, if anyone reads this old bollocks and knows, give us an email, it’s starting to annoy me. Anyway, we are now in the bird breeding season, literally millions of um, but I’d like to tell you about one, just one individual. The bird in question is a Brown Noddy, they’re about the size of a smallish gull and a fantastic looking creature. They are called Noddies because of their display. To attract a female Mr Noddy with his ridiculously short legs walks like a clockwork toy on amphetamines around Mrs Noddy, if she’s impressed with his pythonesque prowess, she also walks in a similar way, and when there’s been sufficient walking to make things descent, right and proper, they nod. We live in a bungalow with a tin roof, the upper side of the tin is the roof, the under side is our ceiling, and in this particular case, our bedroom ceiling.
At the moment we are starting work at 6am and finishing at around 8pm(this is our busiest time) so sleep is the most important thing on everyone’s agenda. Friday night, bed at 9.30 and out like a light, 12.30 a weird noise wakes me, I turn to Sal zzzzzzzzzz not to loud for her then. The noise had to be a bird because there isn’t anything other than birds on the island big enough to make such a din. It’s hard to describe a noise, but imagine an empty coke can, you dent the side with your thumb and it makes a sound, when you take the pressure off and the dent pops out it makes a slightly different sound, to me its kulink kulunk. Now imagine your in the coke can! that’s what it was like, I was lying there thinking do I wait this out, kulink kulunk kulink kulunk, no I had to do something. I get out of bed put on my head torch and get the steps. The eves of the roof are about 10ft high so I had to use the very top of the steps. There he was, the bastard, Mr Noddy, giving it the kulink kulunk, what he was doing was tapping one foot on the higher profile of the tin then quickly shifting his wait and tapping the lower profile with the other, he was dancing! and I tell you what, he had bloody good rhythm, Fred Astare or not, he had to go! I gave him full power from my torch - zap, I reckon he thought it was stage lights, all it did was rev him up kulink kulunk kulink kulunk with a slightly quicker tempo like he was auditioning for some poxi channel 3 program, “It’s Jeremy Poxi Beadle’s Celebrity Wild Animal Time”
As I said, I’m on the top of the steps with the roof about 3ft above that, I’m looking at Fred who’s not at all perturbed by the 1000 candle torch that shining right up this nose, so in the name of sleep and sanity , I have no alternative, I must climb on the roof and do battle! Show down, me and Fred.
I should add, that it’s so hot here we sleep with no clothes on, not a stitch, and, as I thought the torch would be enough to shoo off Fred, I didn’t see any need to put shorts on.
The roof pitch is not so steep; I’m thinking I should have no problem. I cock one leg onto the roof, then, gingerly manage to get the other one up, as soon as my whole weight is off the steps and on the roof, Fred flies, coward, now I need to get down.
A head torch does what it’s supposed to, it shines from your head in a forward direction, as I’m on the roof and the steps underneath me what I need is an ass torch. But besides the predicament I’m in at the moment here can’t be much of a call for such a thing, even if there was, I’m sure we wouldn’t have brought one with us. So, I’m on the roof butt naked and have to get down. The last leg up is now the first leg down, out it goes into the dark fishing around for the top of the steps, got it first time. I ease my weight onto the tread, unfortunately my aim was not perfect and my weight went to the far edge of the tread, as the steps are on sand they slowly move away from me. I’m now in big trouble, one leg on the moving steps, one tucked under my arm pit and my naggers caught in the guttering! I don’t have long here as the steps are slowly sinking and moving away from me. All that’s keeping me up there is the suction of my body sprawled on the tin and my naggers in the guttering. Do I call Sal for help, well, if she could sleep through Fred tripping the light fantastic she sure aint going to wake up with a quite “Saaaal helllp” from me, the danger of a louder cry is waking up someone else, what a sight that would be! I’m definately not showing my best side from the ground looking up. I am now desperately looking for some sort of purchase on the roof, all there is the little plastic cups that cover the nails that fix the tin, I wrap a finger around it and pull, I move, just a little but enough to relieve the guttering pressure, you wouldn’t think guttering is sharp until you dangle delicate bits of your anatomy in it and apply pressure. I get off the roof and go back to bed, exhausted. Alarm goes off far too early Sal leans across and says “morning, sleep well?“

They said it would be tough

2008-06-15T04:38:00.000-07:00

And now we are entering into the breeding season I can confirm that they were right, but it is not the breeding season itself that makes it tough, but the Seychellois opportunists that exploit it. I am talking about poaching and the collection of sooty tern eggs for Seychellois consumption.

This is so far away from what we are used to back in the UK, the scale and industrial nature of the poaching here has taken me aback. On Aride there are 350,000 pairs of sooty terns and they breed right across the island, on the rocks, in the woods, on the paths, in fact on any bit of spare ground they can. They are beautiful birds, with their distinctive and immaculate black and white plumage, they are quite a large tern and one built for long distant flight and life at sea. They return to the island to breed each year and each year they are persecuted here in the Seychelles for their eggs.

It is times like now that you really experience what living on a small remote island nature reserve is like; we are chiefly here for the protection and preservation of the island and all the wildlife that uses it. Now that protection and preservation may come in many forms, from increasing awareness in the local community and schools, to raising money to keep paying the rangers’ salaries, but of course it is also in our physical actions on the ground. Back in the UK the protection that a nature reserve of this calibre would receive would mean that people even sneezing in the wrong fashion could be prosecuted. But here on Aride, when even something as detrimental as poaching is occurring, we are on our own. In preparation for this time, we met with the local police last April, wined and dined them and talked about the way forward. Their reply was how many eggs do you think you can get us this year? So I don’t exaggerate when I say we are on our own.

Poachers arrive in groups and land on the island at all times of day and it is quite a lucrative business. Each egg may fetch 2 to 3 rupees, now a teacher may earn 3,400 rupees a month, so it doesn’t take a mathematician to work out collecting a couple of thousand eggs is a good nights work, with only the boat fuel to pay for. It can be a risky business due to rough seas and difficult landings on the rocks, but these men have been brought up on this work and know the island like the back of their hands.

The first sooty tern egg was laid 1st June, now at the 14th, there is evidence of the mass poaching that has gone on, large swathes of the island have been stripped. Then birds will re lay and so in two to three days of clearing a section the poachers will be back again and so it goes on until the birds can lay no more.

At the moment all we can try to do is to gain evidence to illustrate the scale of the problem, to do this we are undertaking poaching patrols dawn and dusk to record the boats and number of poachers we see. It is times like this that 70ha of island made up of 90% hill and rough terrain, feels like 570ha, there is no one vantage point from which you can see all approaches. Which also makes things easier for the poachers; not that they ever seem to really worry about been seen. In order for them to be prosecuted they would need to be caught with the evidence, but from what we have seen and heard this is a job for armed police – so as I said earlier we are on our own. There is no way any of us are going to stand between a poacher and a sooty tern egg.

Beach landing - American Style

2008-06-07T00:58:00.000-07:00

Four Americans were booked in to visit the island last Wednesday, but little did we know how difficult a day it was going to be. We prepared the island as usual for a Wednesday and ensured that all paths were raked and tidy. It was a mammoth task with just 4 of us and it literally took us all 2 hours of raking each. Just time for breakfast before our visitors were to arrive we sat up on the beach crest for a rather large bowl of rice pudding and bananas. This has currently become our favourite breakfast, which had kinda developed on from porridge, but now oats are ‘all finished’. But we found it was a good way to start the day, cheap and reasonably healthy. This morning Melv was rather generous with the portions and looking back I'm glad he was. As we sat and ate, the self sail yacht was sailing its way towards us, taking advantage of the wind the mono hull was rolling in the choppy sea. Half way across it turned tail and dropped it's sail and for a moment we thought it had decided to alter it's course. Now looking back I kinda wished it had, but no, it proceeded to power towards us under engine.

We sat and watched it approach the mooring, towards to which it proceeded rather fast, however there were people up front with the hook and they managed to hook the leader rope, but the boat continued to move forwards. At this Melv shouted
‘He's going to drive over the mooring rope’,
‘Don't be alarmist he'll be ok.’ I replied – famous last words...

They seemed to moor up, however the boat lay at a peculiar angle and looked awkward in the water. But we just accepted this and continued with our usual routine, the visitors were brought ashore and I took them to the shop where we stood and chatted for a while, Regis then took them off on a tour and we all dispersed to do our thing.

Melv and I came back home to get changed out, I disappeared out the back to put dry clothes on and Melv put the kettle on. As I dried myself I heard a distant call from Melv, and thought hang on I'm not decent yet, he called again and seemed a little more anxious, I thought it must be some wildlife spectacle out to sea, I quickened at getting dressed. Melv often shouted to me 'quick, look' and my reply nowadays is usually 'I don't do quick'. But then from the top of his voice Melv hollered for me, this was urgent and I thought there had been an accident, as fast as I could I pulled my vest over my head and grab my phone, I ran out of the kitchen to see him running up the path out of breath, shouting:
‘The boat's off its mooring',
‘What! Never,’ I replied and ran to the beach crest. Sure enough the yacht had come loose and was now on the reef about 10ms off the shore, I felt sick, my god I thought, what the hell do we do.

Fortunately the guests were back and running down the beach with Regis, I ran to them and we stood and looked in complete horror, unable to believe what was happening. Then there was this awful sound as the waves pushed the boat further onto the reef, a grating noise and a banging, followed by the clacking of the ropes on the mast. There was a bit of headless chicken running going on from most of us - me included. Then Melv shouted call the boat hire company, the skipper said it is Moorings Mahe, I dashed to the office and found the number, completely out of breath I got through and explained the situation. We have been trying to develop our relayionshop with this company and as I spoke I thought thid really isn’t going to help, telling them that one of their £150K yachts was currently being washed up onto Aride’s beach right across the reef. Still they had to know and hopefully come out and recover it. I returned to the beach and the conclusion of the call was that they would send a representative out from Praslin to assist in the recovery and to deal with the situation, were his words.

So that was step one, but knowing how quickly the Seychellois don't respond the boat could be in ruins by then. Still currently very much in one piece, Regis, 1 of our rangers, proposed we used our anchors to hold it off the beach. It was high tide at 4.50pm and if we could hold it where it is we should gain enough water to free it. At first I resisted the idea and thought of insurance claims and negligence, but he convinced me that this was the right thing to do. I spoke to the skipper and explained our plans and he hold heartedly supported them. So we took to the water and managed to secure the two anchors in place, it was easier said than done, this large vessel crashing around in the water, with no guarantee which way it was to lie next and the footing was terrible, the rocks where it was washed up were extremely uneven and then of course the Aride waves were crashing in one after the other. But Regis and Melv persevered and did an excellent job.

Fortunately Regis persuaded 3 of the visitors to carry on with the tour and the skipper stayed with us and we gave him tea and chatted. Sitting up on the beach crest we could still see any progress and yet sat out what was now the burning sun. By midday there was still no sign of help on the horizon and the skipper phoned Moorings again. The voice on the other end of the phone reassured him a vessel was on its way and it was large enough to pull the yacht out, but of course this meant it was a little slower. By this time the yacht had started to swing round a little on the anchor ropes as it gained more water every so often. Before too long it was moving with the waves, facing into them, but swaying from side to side, indicating the tide was coming in, but was putting huge pressure on the keel of the boat. As it moved onto its right hand side the damaged side was there to be seen and much to my surprise there were no visible holes or gashes, apart from a few scratches it visually looked unscathed. With the keel stuck in the sand there was huge amount of pressure on it, but all we could do was wait and hope that the anchor ropes held. The securing the anchors was a very good move as they were now starting to take the tension and if it wasn't for them the boat would have been pretty much up on the beach by now and fully grounded, creating a lot more damage and a logistical nightmare to try and remove. Not to mention the high probability of fuel leakage and contamination.

Finally by 2pm, on the horizon we could see a large mono hull boat heading our way, once we could see it, it soon arrived and was on our mooring in no time, we launched the tornado and collected the rep, who was a very large Seychellois bloke with a neck like the size of my thigh and a handshake that was painful, he wasn't to be argued with. He took charge and there was soon an attempt to pull the yacht out was being executed. However for the first two attempts the rope broke and the yacht wasn't going anywhere. They the tried to pull the mast down to release the keel, but this was using our small rib and we had visions of the rib being catapulted into the air as the yacht swung upright again and of course there was risk of damaging our boat. The next plan was to attached a shorter rope and pull from a slightly different angle to take the yacht over the sandy channel that we daily bring our boat through. Also in our favour by then the tide was coming in and providing the yacht with more water. This time the large Seychellois man was in the driving seat and it was slowly does it. Taking the tension on the rope the large passenger boat tried to ease the yacht with it, then the rope released suddenly putting all the weight back on the anchor, then to our horror one of the anchor ropes snapped. It was going to be now or never for this to get moved or it really was going to end up on Aride's beach and possibility stay there for some time. Tension went back on the toe rope once more and slowly does it the passenger boat crept forward we all apprehensively watched the yacht trying to judge just the slightest movement. Then it did, it made it forward a few feet, the next big wave was going to be key, giving the boat more water. Thank goodness the driver got it right and she moved forward again, then again and then she was out on the open sea and floating. Gosh that was a nice sight - amazing, she looked good and it was difficult to see the evidence of her ordeal.

The relief was tremendous and we all cheered as it left the bottom, thank goodness, it was a float. There was a bit of tidying up to do, but before long the visitors were back on the board the passenger boat and them were all heading towards Praslin towing the damaged yacht. Once up the beach and in the shade we gathered round the boatshed and heaved a huge sigh of relief. We were all exhausted, both mentally and physically and scorched from the hot sun. The skipper and I had exchanged addresses, much like you do after a car accident, so now I expect it will be the battle of the insurance companies. We recovered the mooring rope and were all of the opinion it had been cut, but was it his propeller, we will never know for sure, but thank goodness we had had 3 divers to check the moorings just 2 weeks previous.

Drunk and disorderly

2008-05-25T22:04:00.000-07:00

I know what you will all be thinking when you read the title, ah, they are back to their old tricks again, alcohol every night and in excessive quantities. Well for first time ever, no – we’re not, in fact I am completely off the pop at the moment – second week now, and Melv, well he is down to one bottle (of beer, not wine like the Godney days) a night. The climate and alcohol just don’t mix and it is easy enough to become dehydrated without the help of the old jungle juice.

In fact believe or not I’m talking about the wildlife!

Particularly fruit bats and blue pigeons who gorge themselves on fermented fruits and end up looking like many of us have looked after a heavy night out. They stumble about unable to fly and in the case of a fruit bat unable to do the bat thing of hanging upside down to sleep it off. Today Melv found such a bat in the garden under the fruit trees in a bit of a state. The problem of Aride is that if you stay motionless on the ground for long enough other wildlife like crabs, ants and skinks will assume you are dead and then arrive in the 100s. Even the crabs do this with our toes at night, if we stay stationery for too long they come over and take a nibble. Well this poor old fruit bat was becoming the centre of attention and so Melv brought him back to the house and the safety of a card board box, to sleep it’s hangover off for a while.

An hour or so later Melv and Tony persuaded it to hang upside down, well nearly, or at least to stay out of the way of the scavengers, by lying on a tree stump off the ground. Come the evening it had recovered and was nosily flying around with other fruit bats, chattering, boasting about his drunken antics.

Fruit bats are excellent creatures and it was a real treat to be able to see one close up, with over a metre wingspan, they are large mammals and have the body the size of a large rodent. They don’t actually breed on Aride, but fly over from Praslin to feed on the rich fruits here. They are really spoilt for choice here as there is plenty of food, there is even a tree called the fruit bat tree.
They are widespread and endemic across the Seychelles, even on the larger islands, Praslin and Mahe, and are taken legally in some places for human consumption; fruit bat curry is quite a delicacy and often talked about. But after seeing this one close up today I think I can definitely say that is one Seychellois recipe we are not eager to try.

Thanks for all the treats

2008-05-22T23:52:00.000-07:00

It is amazing how living on a remote island in the middle of the Indian Ocean alters your perspective on life, but also your priorities and how small things make a huge difference! Now don’t worry I’m not going to get all philosophical or talk about how this experienced has changed my life and I am a better person. I am merely talking about the excitement of going to the post office and receiving a parcel. This isn’t to promote people to send us more parcels, but just a mention to say how appreciative we are to those that have.

In the early days, parcels kept me sane, not because they had goodies for me inside – but tobacco for Melv. Cigarettes here are particularly poor and hard to come by and also very expensive in the Seychelles, so smuggled in tobacco from the UK disguised as sweets, swimwear or toiletries was a life saver!

At first we lost faith, mum and dad packed up a parcel as the requests for supplies were made; tobacco, calcium tablets and laxatives. Well perfectly wrapped and loving prepared, customs took great delight in seizing it – 3 months later it arrived. Fortunately this wasn’t the pattern of things to come, mainly because our suppliers were more cunning, using the art of disguise! This then worked marvellously well for the recipients – us – as sweets are an excellent form of disguise – obviously the man from customs is a smoker but doesn’t have a sweet tooth. Then it progressed, my clever sister in law – with health news travelling faster than any other – thought they like sweets, they need laxatives – liquorice allsorts – brilliant. Do you know liquorice allsorts straight out of the fridge in a hot climate are top; we never liked them at home.

Now there has to be a comparison made – sorry Matt – woolly hats and gloves from Melv’s mate, mini cream eggs, Angel Delight, herbs and spices, sauces and mixes, from Sal’s mate; Ali – cheers girlie. But I can’t deny Matt on the tobacco front – and now the seeds – makes Melv a very happy chappy.

Then Lisa and Carla nail brush, socks, of course tobacco, Anthisan and medication, brilliant. Socks to keep the mosies off Melv’s ankles, Anthisan to treat bites already received, nail brush for Sal and tobacco....and I thought he was giving up.

But there has to be a special mention to mum and dad, the star suppliers, who have coped with requests of all different kinds, sent on missions for strange items such as a head torch, fishing rod eyes, (I drew the line at lead weights!), seeds for the garden, tea strainer, ukulele music to name a few, oh and tobacco - all disguised with a good old bag of sweets – perfect – thanks you two.

All these items are things we would just take for granted back home, just pop down to town; here even if we could regularly get to a shop, we couldn’t buy it anyway. When we are living in a country that runs out of milk, onions, garlic and ginger, we don’t stand a chance with a tea strainer and nail brush.

There is a little story behind the tea strainer, we went to buy one, as Seytea (local tea), is only produced as loose leaves. I must commend the little Indian man we went to, we asked for a tea strainer and came out with a teapot with a strainer in it – great - but it lasted all of one month!

Finally, cheers Leigh from the BBC, for the mixed herbs and writing paper and on the writing paper note – thanks Fran, Rich, Lucy and Sam, of course I’ll keep writing!

We will soon need the earplugs!

2008-05-18T23:58:00.000-07:00

It is quite bizarre, living on an island with only 6 people and before too long it is very likely that I am going to need earplugs to sleep. No it isn’t because Melv has started to snore, but because we are starting to share this beautiful place with thousands upon thousands of birds!!

The last few weeks we have noticed the numbers of sooty terns, lesser and brown noddys increase dramatically. Well over the last few days they have started to come in off the sea in large numbers and are now appearing in all kinds of places, and that includes our tin roof!
When I first heard that there were 1.25 million birds on the 70ha of Aride I wondered where they all live, well now I am beginning to understand – everywhere!

When you are out at sea and look back at the island, especially early morning or at dusk, the seabirds are like a large swarm of bees gathering over the tops of the hill, they come together in clouds and circle in huge numbers. In fact another analogy comes to mind – it is like the Somerset starling roost, without the people.

This morning as I sat on my log seat for our 7am meeting in the village, I faced the long wide path lined with trees that leads to the rather splendid restored Plantation Lodge. As I looked, the avenue was full of lesser noddys all flying around in a somewhat coordinated but chaotic way. They looked beautiful, so delicate with their long slender wings, pale heads and slim bodies. At this time in the morning, the sun is still rather low and the path to the Lodge is shady, so many of the birds just appeared as moving shapes and silhouettes. Their all brown bodies were like moving shadows; gracefully dancing in mid air, with a flutter and a glide. They are such delicate birds their pale heads shining forward like a head torch coming through the sea spray as they fly towards you.

Every Sunday morning we rake the paths ready for guests to the island and this morning I knew it was going to be a treat and I wasn't disappointed. As I made my way along the crest path, all the noddys were busy collecting nesting material. They hover over the ground trying to select and then pick up leaves without touching down. It is almost like a game for them as they use their agility to gain the material they need to nest build. They often do this on the beach collecting seaweed, or even over the surface of the water itself. It is excellent to watch and the amount of birds doing this today had dramatically increased from yesterday. As I continued, I walked underneath an area where the lessers are starting to group together in a colony, my presence made them start to cackle and chuckle in a chorus as they looked down at me curious.

The larger brown noddys stand in groups on the path and they are less tolerant and far more aggressive, looking disgruntled as you move them on. They are quite bulky birds, with a call most un-tern like, but similar to that of a crow. They too are now starting to establish territories and are settling in a wide range of places, from the crowns of coconut palms to our tin roof. Their head markings are beautiful, with the finest detail, and immaculate definition around the eye. But they always seem to wear a frown and as you approach them they eye you up and down before flying off and often stand their ground following you with their eyes, like the Mona Lisa.

Along this stretch of path there now seems to be far more fairy terns around too, as they hover very close to your head making their electronic call. You can often feel the wind displaced by their wings as they un-aggressively fly around you. With their pure white plumage they look like little angels, dancing against the blue sky.

Walking this path is always a treat – when we first arrived here it felt like the island was alive, now it just feels like the whole place is moving with wildlife. It is everywhere, the sky is starting to fill with birds, as is the sea, the woodland, the plateau, the beach and our tin roof - it is wonderful - what a place to live!!

Sorry do you speak English?

2008-05-02T05:46:00.000-07:00

Obviously one of the main concerns about working abroad is not being able to speak the language, well here on Aride it is exacerbated by the fact that the visitors we rely on to keep the money coming in, are a complete mix of nationalities, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Russian, to name a few. For me the hardest part has got to be communicating with people from across the globe via the telephone. When face to face you can use gestures and expressions, but on the phone it can be extremely difficult, especially when I am often struggling with a poor reception too.

It is often the case, as the day gets underway, the phone will ring, to place a booking for a 10am collection off the mooring buoy and 9 times out of 10 the person on the other end will not be British. Boats calling before hand is not essential, but as we get towards the south east monsoon, when the sea gets rough at Aride, it is good practice, as there will be days when we can’t land guests because of the conditions.

Well today it was a little touch and go whether it was too rough as the wind continued to come from the south east, causing the sea to whip up. To launch the Aride boat in such weather it needs many hands to hold it still whilst the engine is started. To start, the engine needs to be in deep enough water and the difficulty is hanging onto the boat whilst being pushed off by strong waves and struggling to keep your feet in the swirling water. With this in mind we were a little concerned when Silhouette cruises (0ne of our regulars) called with 18 guests, but we accepted. It was too early to be turning guests away, we need the money and we need to boost the figures for April. Seychelles is a small place and at this time of year as soon as we start to turn guests away, the word would get round that visiting Aride is now too difficult.

So sticking by our decision we went through the usual preparation to meet and greet the visitors. Before too long the phone rang again, and looking back now I can laugh, but at the time it was a classic situation where if I had spoken Italian, it would’ve helped!

'We like to visit Aride today, we group of 6.' The voice on the end of the phone said in broken English.
'That would be excellent, we would love to see you', I replied in the back of my mind thinking well we can combine them with the 18 from Silhouette and make a full tour and we will have to cope with the rough sea; it would only mean 4 trips of 6 people.
'Is somewhere to moor?' the Italian lady asked
'Yes' I replied 'There are moorings outside the island, you can take one of those and we will come and collect you'
'Is enough room?' she asked
'Of course' I said, 'There are 3 buoys and you will only need one, there will be no problem'.
'But we are group of 6' she repeated.
I tried to be assertive, without sounding impatient, together with trying not to shout – why do we do that when people are struggling to understand.
‘Yes’ I said, ‘we don't have anyone else booked in needing a mooring...' Then it dawned on me - a group of 6, surely she wasn't meaning a group of 6 boats? I asked her
‘Yes 6 boats’ she replied.
I swallowed and took a deep breath, my mind working hard, trying to stop the ££ signs from flashing up too much, preventing me from making an informed decision.
'Ok' I said, 'how many people are you?' As I asked my head was thinking that could be a lot of people, these self sail catamarans aren't small.
'48 persons' she replied
Not wanting show any hesitation, I said quickly, 'that will be fine, 3 boats can moor up on the buoys and the others will need to anchor, no problem, there is plenty of room'
'What about the waves?' she asked
'It is a little rough' I replied crossing my fingers,' but ok, so we will see you at 10am'
'Yes she said 10am.'
I pressed the phone to end the call, and looked at it in disbelief, that booking was the size of La Ponnant cruise ship, blimey, together with Silhouette Cruises it was going to be one hell of a busy day!! Normally that wouldn't phase us, but with the sea as rough as it was it was going to take all of us to make it work and all of us to work together.

We could time the start perfectly as all the self sail left Praslin at the same time and looked like a regatta coming across the stretch of water in between, every one gathered on the beach all a little apprehensive, but excited at the busy day ahead. It was super to see, all boats heading our way, so often have we seen them not venture out to us. A private hire sped through the middle of them and pulled up at the mooring before them and Silhouette cruises snook round the back and took his time in finding a secure anchoring.

Well it was a brilliant day, it went like clock work, smooth, professional, excellent team work, resulting in happy customers and a happy team. The total number of guests reached 70 Adults and 5 children, but worked well, all tours went off as soon as there were enough guests for one, which staggered them beautifully so that people did not follow each other round and did not all end up on the hill together. The end result was a heap of money on entrance fees and an amount not to be sniffed at in the shop. It was all hands on deck at all times as the last group left the first group was soon to return, from 9.30 to 3.30 it was constant, lunch didn't feature and not even a cuppa. The total number of boats was 7 self sails, 1 private hire and 1 Silhouette Cruise boat, it looked like a marina outside.

Once the island returned to the peace & quiet, we sat up on the beach crest with a cuppa and enjoyed the moment, we could still see a number of the yachts in the distance, it always gave the island a buzz when we had a successful day with clients, and today had been exceptional. I will remember it as the day the Italian group of 6 came to Aride.

Absent minded

2008-04-20T03:34:00.000-07:00

I think deep down I have always been a little absent minded or forgetful – whatever you like to call it, which is why I always write lists and then I can happily forget things. Having this trait of forgetfulness has meant that I rarely ever have to cook a meal, which is a real bonus; as it was the burning of the boiled eggs that put Melv off my cooking.

Well coming to the Seychelles hasn’t helped this trait, Melv asks me to stir the dhal and I forget - so yes it burns in the pan. However it turns out to be more serious lately in relation to our drinking water supply. Aride doesn’t get its name from a history of being wet – it is dry for many months and at times the rain clouds just seem to avoid us. Well we have two seasons, the North West monsoon which is the wet one and the South East which is the dry one. During the North West we have to fill all our barrels with water off the roof, which we then use for drinking, this then needs to last us through the SE and into the next NW when it rains again, so a period of what can be 5 months without rain. The other added complication is that the number of birds that live on Aride means that our roofs tend to get rather dirty with pooh and so we have to wait for heavy showers to wash them clean before we can start harvesting clean water.

Before we drink this water we pass it through filter which will take a further nasties out of it, the filter takes a couple of kettle loads at a time and so has to be filled up about 3 times a day from the larger barrels. This was always Sal’s job. Well you can probably guess what is coming, mmmm whilst filling up a kettle from the barrels one day to top the water filter up, I left the tap on and managed to drain out half a barrel of drinking water, so reducing the supplies to 5 – Melv found out...

Then when I did it the next day from a new barrel – so reducing our supplies to 4 – Melv wasn’t happy... Sal was instantly dismissed as water monitor.

I can laugh about it now – and as I write this I am sitting in a tropical storm and all barrels and buckets are full. I have never been so glad to see rain as I was a few days ago, after 6 weeks without – I thought we were heading for the SE, with not a drop of rain to be seen.

Melv's friend Matthew sent Melv & Sal some really useful presants for the tropics!

2008-04-19T22:42:00.000-07:00

Thanks Matthew we really appreciate your thoughtfulness....

Highs and Lows

2008-04-19T22:31:00.000-07:00

When we were applying for this job and contacted people who had been here and who knew the island, the general trend was that there were very big highs and equally poor lows. Well the numerous new wildlife experiences, like the turtles and the hatchlings, together with working with Magpie Robins have provided some unforgettable highs and I’ve kind of been waiting for the lows, knowing that poaching and seeing the devastation is causes would be one.

However I don’t think I was prepared for another ‘low’, which is rather apparent at the moment, and that has got to be the effect of Pisonia, the pioneering species of tree that has colonised the island since the coconut plantation was removed. It is a very clever species; it has a rather evil side and is responsible for many bird deaths. How? - well it has got very sticky seeds, which is how it spreads, but the seeds are so sticky that they literally stick everything together, as you walk around the paths they stick to your feet. To birds this is devastating and fatal, the Pisonia sticks to their feathers, so well that it sticks their wings and tails together and they literally cannot fly. It is horrible to see as the birds limp along trying to avoid you covered in this deathly sticky seed. The main birds that suffer are those that nest on the ground, like the white tailed tropic birds, however it is now common to see fairy terns, brown and lesser noddys, turtle doves, moorhens and even magpie robins. Some birds deal with it better than others, the terns don't seem to stand a chance, where as the robins, moorhens and doves seem to manage to pull the effected feathers out. Some of the terns that aren't too badly affected and that can be caught can be de seeded, it can be a difficult task, but it’s that or die anyway. It is the best feeling when you manage to clean a bird, throw it in the air and watch it fly off shaking itself disgruntled but very relieved to feel free and able to fly again.

The last couple of days have definitely been the worst I have seen it, the tropic birds particularly are suffering, they are such awkward birds, made for life on the sea, they struggle on the ground the best of times and once Pisonia is attached they find it almost impossible to take off or get rid of it. They spend so much time on the floor they inevitably in an attempt to get away just become more and more pickled in it. It is extremely distressing to see them, as there is absolutely nothing you can do. Today alone doing the fairy tern monitoring, I came across 3 on the path - just today in the space of 2 hours. We can't believe that the breeding birds are replacing the number that are being lost, especially the tropic birds. The most distressing thing is seeing the trees full of seeds, just ready to mature as the breeding season approaches; already the ground is becoming covered, catastrophic for our feathered friends. It would seem to us that poaching has nothing on Pisonia, for the number of lives we have already seen it take.

A different type of wildlife lands on the shores of Aride.

2008-04-14T00:03:00.000-07:00

By hook or by crook, yesterday we successfully got a group of 23 school children and their teachers on to the island – the first time it has ever been done. Courtesy of one of the tour operators, Masons, we managed to get a boat big enough and safe enough to bring the group over. Masons have got large catamaran, it was perfect, and a total of 45 people travelled safely across from Praslin.

It was excellent to see the children’s faces as they landed on the island, after the excitement of landing on the beach in the Aride rib subsided, they began to look and see the wildlife all around them and they tugged at my arm when they saw something new. Although I have only been in twice to work with the children from Grand Anse, for many that was enough to get over their shyness and a couple of them gave me a hug as they arrived, some just pulled at my shirt, others shook my hand, and then some just smiled shyly, still a little unsure. So I needn’t have been apprehensive about the day at all, the whole party were just pleased to be here.

The day went fantastically well, we gave two tours for the young people, one in English and one in Creole. The local TV and radio were here and they interviewed both staff and the children and got footage from start to finish, which is going to be used on the news and for children’s television. Altogether it was an excellent day and for ICS and us on Aride, we couldn’t have done it much better, and I just hope it is the start of things to come and the beginning of doing more with our local community.

In some ways compared to the UK, trips to Aride for children are so easy, good weather is pretty much guaranteed, the chance of getting a day of rain would be very unlucky, there is the beach and the sea which are fantastic places to get rid of all that energy that kids have, and cool down, and then there is the wildlife, in the UK you have pray you may get a glimpse of something to show the young people to keep them interested, here it is so close to the path you have to be careful not to step on it. But then there is the other side the small issue of the 6 nautical miles between us and Praslin which can prove to be a logistical nightmare, but not yesterday – it couldn’t have worked out better.

As I sit and write this the morning after, the storm clouds have gathered and we have got a tropical storm with heavy rain, thunder and lightning – what was it I said about the weather....

Red Snapper for breakfast, dinner and tea!!

2008-04-07T01:59:00.000-07:00

His

and hers!!

Tourists

2008-04-04T23:59:00.000-07:00

One of the jobs that I was least looking forward to before we came out, was dealing with tourists. I’d seen these poxi TV fly on the wall programmes about tour operators and facilitators in holiday resorts getting continual grief from thick drunk people who shouldn’t have been given a passport until they could prove they’d learnt some manners or knew when to shut up!. Well pleasant surprise, it’s quite the opposite.

The money we get from tourists funds the conservation work and it’s desperately important we improve on our visitor numbers. With that in mind, we have put a lot of effort into getting our operation much more professional.

We basically get three types of client, private hire; people from hotels who hire a boat to get to us, self sail; people who’ve hired dammed expensive yachts and sail aimlessly around trying to find something to do, and cruse ships. No matter how they get to us, all boats and ships have to moor off shore, we then go out to them and pick them up in our rib. We don’t allow any boat other than are own to land on the island, this is part of our invasives protocol, basically we are trying to stop rats and alien insects getting to the island. So we’ve got them off their boat and into ours, how do we get them ashore with no jetty and never less than 1m waves crashing onto the beach, simple, a very experienced boat driver drives the boat flat out at the beach, catches the wave just right and ploughs the boat up the beach, all very safe and very exciting for our guests, well, exciting anyway.

Different people deal with this adrenalin rush in different ways, most people love it and it’s a great start to their visit, puts them in a good mood which hopefully means they spend lots of money in the shop, but the odd person doesn’t deal with it at all well. The last cruse ship we had, by the way we’ve got cruse ships off to a tee, we can land 100 people and get the first tour going in less than 20mins, half the time it took before we came, anyway the last one we had went like clockwork. Our boat went out to pickup the last load of guests less than half an hour from the first, he picked them up and made a perfect landing, even with quite high waves, as the boat hits the shore, the beach crew gets to the boat as fast as possible just in case there ‘s a problem, no problem. I go to the boat and say in my cheeriest way “good morning welcome to Aride” this little white haired lady looked up at me and shouted, f--- off! The beach landing was just to far from her comfort zone. Me and the lads laughed so much we couldn’t off load the guests for a good few minutes, she latter apologised when I met her in the shop, I said “ no need to apologise, it’s one of those great moments I‘ll remember for the rest of my life. She was so embarrassed; she spent loads in the shop, good old girl.

We’ve met so many nice and interesting people in our short time here, from the doctor who works with the leperacy project in Africa, to head of finance of a top New York bank, whom by the way, I think, I convinced to give up his job and sail around the world?
The people are great, their fascinated by our primitive way of life, with some I can almost see sympathy in their eyes, but as I point out to them, we’re not leaving paradise of the Seychelles next week. I really do enjoy having guests, perhaps it’s because I know there gone in two hours and the sound of human noise fades away and we’re left with the birds and beach all to our selves.

Tricky times are behind us

2008-04-04T23:56:00.000-07:00

Not too many entries for a few weeks, because it’s been the worst 3 weeks so far, we just didn’t feel like it.

Before we got here we were told from other wardens that the staff could be a problem, they were right!

We lost the Head Ranger a month ago, he had to leave because of his family, this was a real blow to us because he was very, very good, hard working and had control of the rest of the rangers. We advertised but couldn’t get the quality of person needed for that post, so we then advertised for a ranger and employed a young lad of 22. He had good boat skills but came with a health warning, he was known to be disruptive and liked a drink. At the interviews he came across very pleasant and said that his drinking days where over, he was the only one we interviewed that could do the job.

To cut the story the short he made our life a misery, he was disruptive, he also had a negative effect on one other member of staff, who has no personality of his own (which is OK because I can control him) but parasitizes other peoples. It got to a stage where it was extremely difficult to remain in control. It’s not at all like working at home where the staff want to do well and achieve, here is like working with delinquent children and being friendly just lands you in the shit! It ended with our boat engine going up in flames, in the fuel store with all the petrol for the boat stored in it, 6 full gas bottles and the 5000lt petrol tank directly outside. If it had gone up, which we can’t understand why it didn’t, it is hard to imagine what the consequences would’ve been.

We sacked him.

We now have an extremely good new Head Ranger, Tony, who just wants the island to do well, he’s very interested in wildlife and is personally ambitious, this is just the sort of person we can work with, with Tony’s help the island is calm again and the setbacks sorted.

Snorkelling Delights

2008-03-31T03:48:00.001-07:00

I just wanted to post some photos of some of the fish using the reef off Aride - they are fantastic! Threadfin butterfly fish

Picasso fish

Pallett Surgeon fish

Racoon butterflyfish

Powderblue surgeon fish

Selection

A Wildlife Treat.

2008-03-29T03:32:00.001-07:00

It had been a scorcher of a day, with barely time for lunch, we had had a visiting cruise ship and so ended up working a 13 hour day. The guests had all been taken back to their ship and the island returned to the peace and tranquillity we know it for. Jerry, one of the volunteers thought that he may have seen a green turtle track earlier, so a few of us walked down the beach to investigate and it was only this that enabled us to experience something that I will never forget and what will probably be one of my main lasting memories from Aride.

After finding that the track was that of a Hawksbill turtle, Melv and I went in search of a coconut for tea to make a coconut Dahl, when I got back to the house the phone was ringing - I dashed to answer it - it was Regis, one of the rangers- I think you want to come quickly he said – why? I asked - just outside your house he said – what? I asked again getting little impatient - Regis has this frustrating way of not actually spitting out what he wants to say and it can get very frustrating at times. Turtles are hatching - finally he said it - WHAT I shouted and immediately called out to Melv, who was making his way to the well. I couldn't get to the beach quick enough, I ran up the path to where we sit for breakfast. I could see Ben, Jerry (the 2 volunteers) and Regis all leaning over excitedly giggling as they looked at the ground. They were chattering away to the small black objects in front of them.

It was amazing, like nothing I had ever seen ever in my life, over a hundred small hatchlings making their way out of the nest and down the beach. They looked like small black currants in the sand - dotted unevenly and moving. I ran to get the camera from the office - I ran as fast as my bare feet could carry me over the uneven terrain. There was no time to waste, it was like I wanted to freeze time, to stop the hatchlings, to hold the moment, but I couldn't. I got back to the beach as quick as possible, completely out of breath and so excited I could barely speak. The sight in front of me was indescribable, watching these small hatchlings about the size of 50p pieces making their way down the beach, coping with the dangers in front of them.

They are perfect miniatures of a turtle, but with eyes not yet open and no distinguishing markings, just uniformly brown. They kind of ‘paddle’ along the sand, using their flippers to waddle, but although clumsy they are quite swift and taking a picture of them was quite a challenge. Foot prints alone presented them with a major upheaval, they struggled to avoid crab holes, and fortunately we were there just to give them a little helping hand. The excitement amongst the group of us was infectious, whilst we wanted the small turtles to make their way and to go out to sea, we wanted to keep watching them and didn't want it to end.

We counted a total of 130, which could be a total nest or may be that some of the individuals will hatch later and follow on. It was around 7pm, the sun had only just gone down and so it was still quite light, which we never expected. I must admit I always thought that may be we would never actually see such a sight, or if we did it would be under muffled torch light (so not to distract the turtles) and never thought it would be in almost day light - what a privilege. When all the hatchlings had made their way we stood and watched out to sea, as the last of the daylight disappeared, realising that we had just experienced something very, very special and we looked back and saw all the tracks in the sand...

Day to Day

2008-03-13T22:33:00.000-07:00

The day to day living and working life here is so different than back home, which you may well think is bloody obvious, Somerset Levels to Tropical Island, duhhhh!. Of course I knew it would be different, we researched the job in great depth for some months before our departure, but there are some things you only find out about, by actually doing and living it.

Its hot and sticky! another duhhhh moment? not really. The tropical climate is intense, it slows you and makes you tried, all stuff you could imagine sat at home in a cold grey British winter. The working week is 7am to 5pm with 2hours lunch break at 12 to 2, well, being used to 30mins, I thought I’ll show um, um being the rangers, sat on their asses half the day, so I just took my half hour break and went back to work, this lasted no more than a week, I was knackered, and I knew if I carried on I’d collapse, each person is different, but each person only has his or her energy supply for that day, if you don’t pace yourself and use it to quickly, your body says no more and stops, if you let yourself get to that state, it takes a couple of days to feel right again. Last laugh with the rangers on that one.

Washing, again I was fully aware it was going to be humid, and that my cloths and body just won’t dry out completely, but what no one tells you, no matter how much, or how often you wash your cloths, they smell like a dogs slept on them, really embarrassing, at meetings in the main office, the big boss looking around for fido then realising it’s me and Sal. I was then going to tell you about the merits of baby powder and what it prevents, but Sal vetoed that, saying “you can’t say that my parents read this” so I’ll just say, if you’re going to live anywhere with very high humidity, and you would prefer not to grow mushrooms on certain sensitive parts of your body, take lots of talcum powder.

Staff, huge culture clash, as again you would expect (have to be careful here), firstly let me say the staff are extremely talented, they are weaned on the water and as a result are fantastic boatmen, they have a natural confidence that comes across so well with people which makes them really great tour guides. But this is Africa and people and culture are different, and believe me I’m not trying to say who’s right or wrong here, but we’re paid to do a job and we try to do our best, which sometimes means we clash with the rangers. We’re brought up in the UK, with a certain work ethic, (well, some of us) that the job is all important, and we try hard to do are best, as a result, most of work longer hours than we a paid for, it’s just the done thing. Not here, no more said.

Shopping, here again we new that things would be tuff, no Tesco’s in the Seychelles.
There’s nothing, it took 5 weeks to get a shaving mirror, having not seen myself for 5 weeks it did come as quite a shock, I’d forgotten how ugly I was! No writing paper, diary(had to make one out of a calendar), cloths, sun cream, screws, in fact most things, and of course, no food!

But if it wasn’t different, would we have come?

Blue Peter Badge

2008-03-05T07:48:00.000-08:00

Well the Blue Peter team would’ve been proud of me yesterday, even without the use of sticky backed plastic!! I thought my days of making educational resources out of cornflake packets and pieces of string were long over - but to my delight no!!

Yesterday was my first visit to a Seychelles school to meet some of the children for an hour and I had the challenge of telling them about the island with very limited resources. But no problem – I thought, the old ones are the best and so I set to preparing the food chain game. The only equipment needed were scissors, used cornflake packets, print outs from the computer, glue and string – excellent – oh and of course cellotape as we don’t have laminater.

The children I went to work with were from Grand Anse Primary, which is the main village where we moor up for our shopping on Praslin. The school has formed a group called the Eco-Aride Club and I plan to be working with them, together with other schools on and off through the year. I must admit I was a little apprehensive about going into a school unable to speak the local language, with a scorched white face, but I needn’t have been. All the schools are really keen on environmental education in all aspects of the curriculum. The children were extremely well behaved and really smiley, and the teachers that I meet again yesterday were quite amused that I arrived dry and presentable, unlike the week before when a drown rat comes to mind!

It was a great first session with the children and as well as talking about Aride and food chains we talked about linking up with Meare Village Primary School back in Somerset. The group were really excited and look forward to introducing themselves to the Somerset children. Ideally we need to get them an internet connection sorted out, but until them I hope to facilitate and bring things back to the island to go on line.

It was a really motivating and rejuvenating afternoon, I never thought in a million years that I would ever have the opportunity to work with Seychellois children talking about the food chain of a fairy tern. The next challenge is yet again down to logistics – to get the group on to the island – I need to twice the arm of a nice man with a nice boat!

Logistics

2008-03-01T06:09:00.000-08:00

Never again will I complain about logistics, I thought it was tough running a reserve out of the back of Landrover, and having 2 workshops and an office each 2 miles apart, at different ends of the site. However, I have looked back with fondness over these last 2 weeks, of how I could walk to see the children of Meare School, or get on my bicycle to go to a meeting with partners and colleagues just 3 miles up the road. Living on a remote island with just one southerly facing beach, puts all that in to perspective.

On Aride to try and do the mainstream things that you would expect from your local nature reserve, demands engaging in a logistical challenge each time. For example, a reserve management meeting on the main island of Mahe, means using 4 modes of transport:

The reserve boat to the airport, bare feet walking from the beach to the air terminal, light aircraft from Praslin to Mahe (15minutes, with great views of the islands), finishing with a car to complete the journey to the main office.

To visit the local schools it is just 3; the reserve boat, bare foot and local bus. However it is not just the modes of transport that provide a logistical puzzle, but your appearance after using them. Never before last week, had I got off a boat and walked to the local school to speak to over 30 teachers completely drenched from sea water, and with bare sandy feet. Here it is the norm, living on one of the remote islands people kind of expect you to look a little strange, to have a wet backside and bare feet. But thank goodness they have got a shower at the airport - as I don’t think the pilot would tolerate it.

Then there is the unknown of the weather, in the UK we have had trains stop working because of the wrong type of snow. Well here on the island with the wrong type of wind we cannot launch or land the boat, which means no one leaves or arrives on the island. So best laid plans can go awry at the last possible moment or even whilst you are away the weather can change making the return trip a real challenge and sometimes impossible.

Apparently all this gets worse as the monsoon changes and the winds move round to the South East, then we need to stock up the larder and rationalise the main stream work off the island.

So if it is ever the case again that I need to undertake trips like to Exeter from Bridgwater train station or a bus journey to Wessex Water in Bath, it won’t ever be a trial – but a pleasure.

Meeting the locals

2008-02-22T23:19:00.000-08:00

Island Conservation Society is now a growing organisation here in the Seychelles and the amount of work they are doing here for the benefit of nature conservation has really increased over the last year or so. One big aspect of the work now is to work with local people to try increase their awareness and understanding about the very important natural history asset they have on their doorstep.

This is particularly the case with the people from Praslin, who are our immediate neighbours, even if there is 6 nautical miles of Indian Ocean between us. Melv and I are very keen in our two years here to try and build up good relations with groups of people and organisations over there to help ease the way with future projects and the protection of Aride.

There is no getting away from it, although the conservation of the wildlife and habitats here in the Seychelles has moved forward in leaps and bounds, like everywhere it still has its’ problems. One of these is the poaching of seabirds and their eggs. This still goes on in many places and is very lucrative, and because of Aride's richness it is one of the target areas.

The breeding season will soon be upon us and we have already started poaching patrols. Our intention is to try and deter as many as possible, rather than get face-to-face, and we are working with the local police and other islands in an attempt to take a coordinated approach. Although taking eggs and birds is bad enough, the additional problem is that the poachers can have a devastating effect on whole colonies of birds, by crushing and trashing all in other wildlife in their way.

Currently one of the missing links with this issue which I am particularly interested to try and improve, is work with the local schools. Much like in Somerset where we wanted to work with the children over peat extraction and nature reserve creation; here we want to work with them over poaching issues and reserve protection. I s’pose I shouldn’t be surprised that the children here are not aware of what is on their doorstep. At the moment the only children who know how special Aride is are the children of the rangers who are lucky enough to stay on the island during school holidays.

So we have already started the ball rolling and we have started to go into schools. I will be visiting two next week – the local primaries in Praslin and it would be excellent if by the time we leave we are able to get both Somerset and the Seychelles children talking to each other and exchanging tales from their very different life styles.

Cyclone

2008-02-07T21:03:00.000-08:00

I’m not sure of the difference between a cyclone and a hurricane, is it something to do with the way the water goes down the plughole? Anyway we were told we were to cop the ass end of one that had given Mauritius grief, and would be up with us on Monday. Sure enough Monday morning strong winds, a few trees down and roughish seas, the wind kept the temperature down and it was really quite pleasant, we were also told it would last for four days.

(Tuesday) Tue is a special day for the inhabitants of Aride, it’s shopping day, by Mon evening or before, rangers, volunteers and wardens are out of nice food, beer and fags, so everyone looks forward to Tue. Tue morning we looked at the sea at 5.30am and 7.30 and we all decided it was too rough to make the crossing, deciding that we’d check again at 12 noon.

At 12 the most experienced boatman Gianni said “it’s fine man we go” I did think at the time, how much of this is bravado and cold turkey talking, but he’s the expert, so we got ready. Four of us were to make the trip on our 4m RIB on the 11k crossing to Praslin, myself, Gianni, Regis, (rangers) and the young volunteer Ben. We made the crossing in reasonable time, and Regis did really well negotiating at least 10ft waves with next to no boat slapping,(Regis is the least experienced boatman) we got our shopping, which took less than an hour, and set off back to Aride, Regis driving again.
Grand Anse Bay on Praslin is very sheltered, but we knew as soon as we got around the headland we would again be into the 10ft waves, but this time going into the wind and we all joked about getting soaked. We turned the headland and within minutes the 10ft waves, had grown to 30ft and breaking on the crests. I looked at Regis, who had driven so well on way to the shops, and he nodded confidently, I looked at Gianni, the same confidence, I looked a Ben, not quite the same confidence, so I smiled and shouted at him “hold on tight,” a stupid thing to say, the lad already had white knuckles - I just felt I had to say something.

Coming with little experience of the sea I had, until then, quite surprised myself at the lack of fear of the ocean, on many occasions we’ve made crossings where you have to hold on for dear life, it just seemed good fun, but not this one. Because of the shallow sea around the islands, the sea behaves in a strange ways, the waves come at you from different angles and are not regular. Regis was, as far as I could tell doing fine, powering the little boat up the steep waves which without exaggeration, was like going up the side of my house in Godney, and all the time not just getting showered by sea water, but being battered, and of course the noise. At the top of some the waves, the sea opens up into a giant hole big enough to put a football pitch in, by this time I’m not enjoying the trip at all. On the way up a wave, Regis slows the revs as we get to the top to slow down for the decent, (it’s almost impossible to hear the engine now because of the sea and wind) we go over the top and head down the wave, just as we expect to feel the power to come in and drive us up, nothing, we all turn and look at Regis who’s franticly trying to change the fuel can. I look back to Gianni at the front of the boat, who is by this point screaming at Regis, directly in front of Gianni is a bastard wall of water that even with my limited knowledge, I know if we don’t hit it with the front of the boat, we’re going to capsize. Gianni sees the wave and goes to jump, Regis is now screaming back at him and thank Christ he didn’t jump, we hit that one with the front. The rangers worked like crazy to start the engine, there was literally seconds between them starting the engine, and the next wave. The engine only fired up on one cylinder and just got us up the wave, I scream at Gianni to head for the nearest land, he screams back that he hasn’t got the power to turn; we can only go straight into the waves. I now think we are definitely going in the water, I shout at Ben, “don’t let go of the boat “as soon as I said it I knew it was a crap thing to say, if the boat had flipped the wave would spat it out like a cork from a bottle, I remember thinking to myself, when I go in keep hold of the life jacket, don’t let it come off what ever happens keep hold of the life jacket.

Even at times like these there’s humour, I tell Regis to phone Sal, and alert the nearest island to us, tell them of our plight, and attempt a rescue, his conversation started like this, “hello Sally this is Regis, we have a bit of a situation on the boat” I looked at Ben and said “a bit of a ------- situation!!!!” it was probably nerves but we both laughed. To cut it short, the engine stopped a few more times but they got it going, and we limped home on one cylinder. It turned out to be a faulty spark plug, it had been changed at the last service, so it was just one of those unavoidable things. I not sure how many of the 9 are left, but I know I used one on Tuesday.

Regis later admitted it was the worse seas he had ever been in...

Mum & Dad - Don't worry it is not going to happen again!! Sal xx

Food that just doesn’t have the Ronseal approach

2008-02-05T22:55:00.000-08:00

Cheddar cheese is probably one of the foods I really miss, it used to play such a large part of our diet; - in a sandwich, on toast, with a salad or as a ploughman’s, or just as a tasty cooking ingredient. Well it was great excitement when we were given some here last week. However, with great expectations, much to our disappointment, even when put on a very attractive salad sandwich it was hard to detect its taste. Even the texture was so none descript its presence barely featured and it certainly didn’t out compete the cucumber.

What you seem find in the Seychelles is that much of the food that you get back in the UK, like tomato sauce, butter, cheese, is replaced by an equivalent, and so you meals look like they should, eg eggs, baked beans and chips look just as good, bit don't quite taste right. The baked beans are not sweet and tomatoey, the oil that the chips are cooked in has more of a plastic taste and the tomato sauce is kinda like a tomato puree, but without tomatoes in it. The breakfast cereals are another fine example, the packets all look like what you would expect to get back home, they even claim to be the same, however the contents well, they all largely taste the same or don't taste of anything! The coco pops or Temmys choco rice as they are known here, do make the milk go brown, but that is the only real similarity. All the western type foods seem to come from Malaysia, China or Egypt, however a real find recently were the Bran Flakes and 'Crunchy Nut Cornflakes', which came from Sun Oil Ltd in the UK - or so it said on the packet!

Then there are the biscuits, they are all based on a well known brand and aim to resemble them, but on the opening and tasting they fail to even get close. We don’t have fig rolls but date rolls which look identical but are rock hard and sometimes you question if they are actually made of dates. The tins of peas are quite bizarre, on the label they look like they are going to be mushy peas, which we thought would be good for a change, but on opening the can we found they had a rather fluorescent appearance and despite cooking them for over 20 minutes they still remained like bullets and retained their glowing colour – hmmm? At lean fishing times we have also found ourselves eating tinned tuna, well we should be safe on that front, as the tuna factory is actually based in Mahe, no more than 25 nautical miles away from here, but to our great disappointment, tinned tuna has got a very close similarity to dog food, both in smell and appearance.

However the frankfurters we bought for hotdogs have got to be the most memorable, both for their taste, together with a conversation we had about them last night at a BBQ with the one of the rangers. In an attempt to try and find variety Melv & I bought a packet of frankfurters, for hotdogs as an easy midday snack. Well yesterday we tried these and to our amazement and bewilderment they tasted of fish. On reporting this during BBQ small talk last night, one of our rangers, Regis, started to defend his local processed food and he protested, well of course they taste like fish, what do you want them to taste like – dog?

POLITENESS

2008-02-01T04:41:00.000-08:00

BACK GROUND:
We live on a small island and rely on a generator to keep our beer and food cold. Generator breaks down every month or so, in comes small portable geny to rescue beer, small geny goes bang, two more sent for from the UK arrive at Mahe and sail through customs fine and dandy. We hire a shipping company to ship them from Mahe to Praslin, where we can pick them up in our small boat, but while in their responsibility (or as you would think) they get stolen.

Monday morning I set off to the police station at Praslin, (Sal said she was to busy, I think too scared), to report the theft, the nice police woman was suitably disgusted, but if I may say not altogether sincere. I fill in all the relevant forms, not really 100% sure about what I’m filling in, but as she kept putting them in front of me with real conviction, I guessed she did! When all the forms were filled in a nice police man with a huge moustache said “of course this is a civil matter, so nothing to do with us”, so in short, the authorities can’t be bothered.

The following Monday I’m on my way again to Praslin, this time to see the shipping company, who lost our goods! I’ve been told to get them to fill in a form, telling of the circumstances of the theft and admit liability, which I must say I thought was a bit much seeing we were the losers here, but if that’s how its done here, lets get on with it.

In case of language difficulties I was accompanied by Regis one of our rangers. I always feel slightly inadequate when in a foreign country, because if its not English speaking, I have to rely on them to speak English, so to make up for my linguist failures, I figure the least I can do is be polite.

We find the office at the top of a small shopping complex, I knock, and the door is opened by Mrs Shipping Company Owner, (MSCO) who after introductions invites us in. We sit at a large document covered table in her air conditioned lounge come office, me and Regis (Regis is a mouthy little sod and he’s been told in no uncertain terms to keep this mouth shut at all times unless he needs to interpret) on one side, with me quite close to Regis so I can inflict physical pain if he goes off on one, MSCO on the opposite half obscured by a computer and realms of paper. I soon find out that there was no need for Regis as the MSCO at large Indian lady was fluent in English, and I bet every other language her company deals with.

The conversation went like this:
MSCO: Oh its such a bad business, we’ve never had this happen before it’s terrible for our good name.
Me: We really don’t blame you, and well these things happen to the best of us, if you could pleee.
MSCO: No this is so bad, it must have been those costumes, you know these people, no shame.
Me: No no we had someone check after customs it must have happened when they where in yourrrrrr.
MSCO: and of course you being so new how could you have known.
At this I saw Regis lean forward to give his interpretation of events and who he thought was at fault. I got my Teva sandal on top of his bare foot just in time, pressed and twisted, it worked, he sat back.
MSCO: yes you so new, they should have told you.
(Me thinking, they? told me what? she’s trying to put the bloody blame on me!)
MSCO: you should have pick them up when they arrived you know, not have left them here.
Me: But MSCO you offer a safe warehousing service, which we paid foooo
MSCO: and me being so ill, it made me so ill this bad business.
Me: I am so sorry MSCO we really don’t blame you, could you please sign this forrrr
MSCO: in all our time no such business has happened here.
really MSCO no one blames you, we just would like you to please fill in this form.(thinking: fill this bloody form in)
I had to go to the doctors you know
(good)
He gave me sleeping tablets
(take them all at once)
They make me so tired and I have so much work to do
(fall down the stairs and break your neck)
Please MSCO it’s just a form to say what happened
Its going to affect our business you know
(I’ll kill you with this tea pot if you don’t sign)
I just don’t know what to do
(I do, sign this bloody form you old cow)
After what seemed an age, she signed,
Thank you so much MSCO we really appreciate it, please there really is no hard feelings.
(we’ll never use you again you old bag)
Outside Regis asked me why I was so nice, I didn’t tell him about my language hang ups, I just said, I’m British, Regis said something in Creole which I guess meant, idiot!
We went home

Ps – The Police got them back 2 weeks later and the beer is cold.

Birds in Bizarre Places

2008-01-24T04:42:00.000-08:00

After being here for a few weeks, it seems to me that the birds and other wildlife on Aride make up their own rules, I mean we have turnstones in the woods and moorhens on the beach – what’s all that about?

It feels like every available space on the island is taken up by wildlife, whether it is traditionally known for it or not. The roseate tern colony made up of 500-1200 pairs is in the woodland glades on the hill, with the job just before the breeding season to clear some of the trees and create open areas! We not only have the largest colony in Seychelles, but one of the largest in the Indian Ocean, and the world’s only woodland-nesting colony – there must be something in the air.

Then there are the fairy terns, of which there are over 4,000 pairs and that too, is the largest single population in the Seychelles. They lay their single egg on the nub of a branch, it is very bizarre to see a tern incubating an egg on a branch, then to see the chick perched up there too – that’s life without predators for you.

It’s great living in a place where you can make up your own rules!

I’ve handled more birds here in the last 6 weeks, than in the rest of my working life!!

2008-01-16T03:37:00.000-08:00

We’ve been on the island now for 6 weeks, and in that time I’ve handled more birds than in the rest of my working life. Because Sal’s on the adjacent computer, and the risk of getting a smack around the ear I’d better clarify that statement, of course, the feathered kind. The most common close encounter is at night in the house, we have a huge shearwater colony here 60,000 Audubons and 20,000 Wedge-tails, a massive amount for such a small island. They feed out to sea by day and come to the island at night to feed their young; it gets dark here at 6.30 so the lights in the houses are on early, the artificial light completely confuses and disorientates the birds that nest close to the houses, almost every night we get 2-3 birds come gate crashing at dinner time. I carefully pick them up and take them to the beach where it’s completely dark, let them adjust to the light levels and then let them go, this seems to work and as we go to bed at 8.30, the lights aren’t on too long.
If your wondering what handling birds has to do with wait loss, it’s the stress, not from shearwaters their fine, its magpie robins or one in particular, blue-blue. Magpie robins are one of the rarest birds in the world, numbers went down to just 12 individuals in the 70s, with a massive conservation effort, numbers are up to 180, of course with such low numbers it’s still on the critically endangered list, but it didn’t become extinct and numbers are slowly rising of this enigmatic little bird, can I just add each bird is absolutely priceless, it will help put you in the picture.

We are directly responsible for the 22 robins that live on Aride, they are monitored twice a day and all behaviour is recorded. Over the new years hols, myself and Sal were left on our own to hold the fort for 6 days, on the first bloody day we’re on our own I noticed that the bird blue-blue was holding it’s right leg up, not good! With a closer look we could see the leg was very swollen and the ID rings, blue-blue were definitely constricting the leg, whether they were the cause or a consequence of something else was unknown, but it’s clear the rings where giving it jip.

We talked it through and decided to wait until the afternoon to see how he was before we rang the alarm. Well we rang the alarm, and to be honest no cavalry came charging over the hill to help us, but an extremely helpful Kiwi girl on end of the phone saying “take the rings off!” we looked at each other for a bit, take the rings off, easy. We talked about it and came up with a plan, first how to catch it, then how to take the rings off, and then we went quite and skipped lunch because we both felt a little sick. The catching although not graceful was effective, anyone who knows these birds can imagine the noise which didn’t help calm the nerves, all the time I’m thinking am I breaking its leg, neck, back, thankfully I didn’t, we positioned the bird with its leg in the air and Sal tried to remove the rings by prising them open with her finger nails. This proved to be impossible as the rings had become too hard, and Sal’s nails aren’t that good, all we could do was let him go to reduce the stress on both the bird and us.

Back to the Kiwi girl (who is in fact the highest you can get in MR terms) who said “you must be from the UK because you’re too bloody soft! Be rough with him and get the rings off, do what it takes and call me when its done!” We were then told by another leading expert that other species of birds that had had similar conditions had lost their legs and died!
Well after that we are completely at ease, with our national pride dented we all came up with another fool proof plan using two loops of fine fishing line, slid between both sides of the ring to prise it open, it worked we got them both off, and let blue-blue go, went back to our house and drank everything with any alcohol in it, which unfortunately wasn’t a lot.

Back in the UK I have flown by the seat of my pants several times, but I can honestly say that this 24hr period dealing with blue-blue was the most stressful working experience I’ve had.

Snorkelling with a turtle

2008-01-11T05:17:00.000-08:00

Well I don’t know who was more surprised, me - when I encountered a turtle on my last snorkelling trip, or the turtle - to see me in a bikini!!

The snorkelling here is superb; as quite a novice snorkeller, with my only experience as a kid, when I used to spend all time emptying and de-misting my mask, then getting a snorkel full of water as I failed to stay at the right height - going into the water here has to date been one of my favourite bits. It is just like another world that opens up as soon as you peep through the water’s surface.

I am now starting to get the hang of the various bits of gear and also managing to avoid getting crashed onto the rocks. The current here can be quite strong and the waves are particularly forceful – so extra large fins are a bonus – but extremely entertaining for any onlookers when I try to stand up.

The underwater camera is a must and is proving to be a real asset and really beneficial when trying to identify species. The colours are fantastic and when the water is calm, with no sand being stirred up, the sun shines brightly through to the reef below lighting it up, providing a fantastic chance to get some excellent images.
Seeing the turtle was a real bonus, but the usual residents are species such as powderblue surgeon fish, moorish idol, scissor-tail sergeant and threadfin butterflyfish, to name a few. We have also had daily views of spotted eagle rays, lemon sharks and parrotfish coming in close to the shore – with no need for a mask!

Unfortunately most of the reef around the Seychelles has really suffered from the bleaching in 1998 during the El Nino event. However around Aride, much of the coral reef to the south of the beach is dominated by Stag’s Horn Coral, which is starting to regenerate and over 450 species of fish have been recorded. Other beasties which can be found are; octopus and grazing sea urchins together with sea cucumber, so plenty of delights for future snorkelling trips!!

Happy New Year!!

2008-01-01T03:42:00.000-08:00

Just to wish everyone all the very best

It is 3.15pm and we have just popped into the office to get out of the cool 32’C in the shade, it is another scorcher here.

We started New Years Eve celebrations by toasting a total of 50 Hawksbill turtles having laid their eggs on the Aride beach, a record number for this time in the season. So with at least 2 months of egg laying time left, we should easily break the best ever total of 67 - What a way to start 2008, eh!

New Years Eve was a quiet one here on Aride, sitting on the beach watching the sun go down with a bottle of Seybrew (local beer). We are really lucky and have got the island to ourselves for 5 days, with all the rangers and volunteers using New Year as an opportunity to take some of their holiday away from the island. It is an amazing place to be with just the 2 of us.

It was great to wake up without a headache and to be out on the beach at 6.30am - with us being 4 hours ahead I bet some folk back at home were still out partying! It is the first time ever I have been snorkeling on New Years’ Day, and I was rewarded with some excellent views of some great fish – like the Powderblue Surgeonfish – beautiful.

With everyone else away there are plenty of tasks to be done – Seychelles magpie robins need a feed in 10 minutes and need to see if our turtle total has gone up, so I had better go – all that’s left to say is, here’s to a fantastic 2008.

Visiting in Style

2007-12-28T00:09:00.000-08:00

I know it may sound obvious, but 95% of the visitors coming to Aride arrive by boat, with the remaining 5% by helicopter – the rich few!! But greeting visitors arriving by the crest of a wave and believe me it can be by a crashing wave, is a very new concept for Melv and I. There is no jetty on the island, partly because of the rough seas that we experience, but it is also a good precaution against an unwanted species such as rats, and cats coming onto the island uninvited. On this latter point, only Aride boats are allowed to land on Aride itself this helps us prevent the introduction of such unwanted guests, which is crucial to maintaining the bird populations here.
Landing on the island is a real art, and fortunately for us at the moment, we have some excellent boatmen.

There are 2 ways: either a beach landing, which is not advisable for the young or elderly, as it suggests it is a case of driving the boat at speed onto the beach – making sure the engine is raised in the nick of time; or there is a graceful glide to the shore backwards – which is fine and dandy for all. So why not use the latter technique all the time I hear you say – well the other side to the boat work is that everything is done manually round here, so there is no winch to pull the boat up the beach – it has to be done by hand on rubber rollers– so the higher up it can be driven up to start with – the better. Many hands make light work but it is still a heavy task, especially after shopping days, when the boat is full of beer, I mean food, complete with a 40hp engine on, or of course after fishing trips when the lads have got a good haul!

There are 2 main monsoons which affect Aride – the NW, which we are currently in, that can bring calm seas, rain and scorching days or the SE monsoon, which brings rough seas, driving wind and salt spray from the south and cooler days – something to look forward to eh!
The calm seas this time of year mean that it is the most popular time for tourists and they arrive in all shapes and sizes of vessels. Last week we entertained a cruise ship – Island Sky, which was full of 90 Brits spending Christmas & New Year on the water. This was a large number of people for us to transport to and fro – but it went very smoothly using two shuttle boats going back and to. It was an excellent day, enjoyed by staff & guests – and a very important source of income for the island. Cruise ships visit about once a month at this time of year, however on a daily basis we entertain private yachts, and self sail catamarans. We often have to pinch ourselves as we have a little swim in the glorious sunshine between meeting and greeting the boats, that this is now our job – it is quite bazaar.

Launching and landing is always a wet affair – whatever – so shopping trips, going to meetings, or greeting guests, usually means that you arrive at your destination with a wet bum and covered in sand. I s’pose it is just the way of life around here, no one ever seems to mind as you wander round in sandy bare feet, and of course the wet patches soon dry out!

A Skinks tale

2007-12-21T22:41:00.001-08:00

We share our home with many wildlife species, but Skinks must be the most common (apart from the ants) and comical. In all the literature about Aride it says that there is a skink per every square metre of island, this I found hard to believe – but now I know it’s true. Aride has got the highest density of skinks anywhere in the world.
There two main species on the island: Seychelles skink, which is the smaller, cheekier of the two and the Wright’s skink which is almost twice the size (290mm long) and rather bulkier. They like the warmth of the sun and predominately come out during the day. However, cockroaches during the evening can make a tasty meal and there are often one or two Wright’s skinks feeding as we finish our supper.

So what is it like living with skinks? Well its quite entertaining really, they skuttle around the floor in every room, which means that you just need to ensure that you don’t move too fast, otherwise they tend to get under feet resulting in a few tale less ones. They live in our luggage, which is good, as they keep all the other beasties out. We share the shower with them, the Seychelles skink seems to like the wet floor and they have taken up residence in all the open cupboards, using our books and fishing gear as a play ground. Then as for the dinner table – they are pretty athletic and will use any means to be able to reach where there is food. They like to cuddle up to the tea pot – which they seem to enjoy the warmth from, lying on the lid where we would burn our hands, they are prepared to try any food on offer – but can struggle a bit with grated carrot – they like to drink Seychelles tea and are particularly partial to Khong Guan’s butter creams!

Just after 3 weeks life with skinks seems quite normal – and if they help keep the cockroaches at bay I wouldn’t want to be without them.

Our Crate has arrived!

2007-12-20T05:42:00.000-08:00

Well after spending 5 weeks on the ocean waves, a week in customs and several days travelling across the Seychelles, our crate finally made the last part of it’s journey and arrived on the island yesterday. Not quite intact, but nothing missing (the storage yard had had a break in – but fortunately they weren’t looking for a ukulele or a years supply of razors), the rangers loving brought our possessions across from Praslin in the Aride boat. In true ranger style – no messing, they carried the much awaited crate up the beach and smiled as Melv & I took trips down memory lane as we unpacked it.

Both looking forward to slightly different things – for me, the hammocks, art materials and a speaker to play our music, for Melv the hammocks and of course - his fishing gear – all those shinny lures and sharp hooks – must admit I have been secretly looking forward to eating whatever they enable us to catch though. We were pleased to see the stronger sun cream, and insect bite repellant, not to mention and probably most of all, our new pillows and bedding! Just these few small items will make life a little easier – just wish we’d packed some cheese – still good old multi-vits will help with the lack of calcium.

Today I gave a hermit crab a home!

2007-12-15T01:46:00.000-08:00

A rare site passed by our house today – a hermit crab without a shell, looking very vulnerable and like a juicy morsel for the many predators here on Aride, like skinks, birds, not to mention other crabs. However we were able to rescue the situation from our small collection of newly acquired shells. Not that well blessed with large specimens, all we could offer was a medium sized turban shell – but within a flash the little shell less hermit made it its new home!! After a quick inspection the manoeuvre was done and hermit was safe inside.

The hermit crabs were not something I had thought much about before coming over to Aride – but they are everywhere and are real characters - the island is home to a 3 types.
Purple, Orange and Pale hermits – the first 2 largely nocturnal and the Pale, active day and night - the beach becomes a live early evening as hermits off all sizes roam around. They do vary in their size, but the Purple can be at least 10 times the size of the ones we used to find back home as kids – about the size of a large grapefruit! Luckily as the name suggests, the Seychelles has a ready supply of homes all different sizes and types and Aride’s beach washes up a good assortment.

Although they are not tempted inside the house - which is quite an exception, everything else is – they do scavenge outside and will readily compete with all the other wildlife for any scraps and biodegradable material. It was quite amusing to watch a purple hermit wrestle with a coconut shell – we made our own coconut milk from fresh coconuts yesterday – the funny thing was the coconut shell turned poor hermit over – not the brightest of creatures, but great entertainment – beats television!!

Week 1 on the island

2007-12-10T06:02:00.000-08:00

And what a week it’s been!

After a days frantic induction from a brilliant, inspiring, eccentric, American turtle professor, who through her enthusiasm we nearly missed the flight here – we were thrown in the deep end with live turtle specimens! It has been beyond our wildest dreams and certainly exceeded all expectations – as this week the turtles have been a bit like buses – they knew the freshers were due in town!

It all started Monday morning, Sal and the existing wardens just boarding the boat to attend a meeting on one of the main islands and turtle tracks were spotted on the beach – Melv was left on the case, with Sal having to depart – green with envy, (but compensated with a few flying fish on the boat journey). After practising his school boy French on 5 poor unsuspecting French visitors, Melv returned to the nest site, but unfortunately our lady turtle had finished laying and he was unable to count the eggs.

Since then turtle monitoring life has been a little more timely, surveys of the beach for evidence are done 5 times a day, looking for tracks and turtle activity. If either is found then tracks are measured and details of nesting recorded. In one week alone we have managed to witness and record 3 nesting successes – with an average of 180 eggs laid per nest.

All turtles need to be tagged for scientific purposes – (much like rare birds are ringed), their shell measured and condition recorded – what a job eh – somebody has got to do it! Fortunately all our individuals have so far been tagged – otherwise we were going to need Melv’s cattle tagging skills, but unlike with cows there isn’t a crush, and once on route to the sea they are like bulldozers -extremely difficult to stop!

There are two types here on Aride, the Hawksbill, which is the one we are currently monitoring and the Green – no where near as common and more of a night time visitor. Both are critically endangered – so what a privilege it is to be able to be part of this work. Once egg laying has taken place we mark the nest and then follow its progress, looking to see if we can get an idea about how many youngsters hatch, this will be over the next month or so – taking up to 70 days – so watch out for a follow up blog entry.

To date on the beach there are 34 turtle nests on the go, (which is more than the total recorded for last season) we are only half way through as they continue to lay until the end of Feb –so we are going to be busy – any volunteers!!

We've Arrived!!

2007-12-07T06:54:00.000-08:00

As I sit and write this, we will have been on the island for exactly 2 days, it is now 9.30pm and still in the high 20’s. I am sitting outside our hut, just on the edge of the beach and around my bare feet are skinks, hermit crabs and and numerous insects. The sound of the sea is fantastic, is as it crashes on to the beach, almost drowning out the noise of the shearwaters. The whole island is alive and almost impossible to describe – it’s fantastic.

Our journey here has been intense and busy, flying into Mahe, the main island, where we spent the first two nights, dealing with all the paper work, getting residency cards, having a medical, and opening bank accounts. Then we flew to Praslin, our closest main island, (approximately 6,000 people), where we were greeted by the existing wardens and shown the ropes for dealing with money, shopping, getting supplies etc. It has been quite tortuous, and we have had to patiently wait for out first view of the island, we have been slowly getting closer and finally we made the 40 minute boat trip across to our new home last Saturday.

So what is the Seychelles like? Just a few first impressions:

Bloody hot! And humid most of the time.
Stunning – just like all the brochures
Everyone we’ve come across has been smiley and friendly
Great food, limited but fresh particularly fish & vegetables
Beautiful beaches and azure blue seas – just like the stereotypical images we all imagine
Layed back, as the tropical climate demands
And as for Aride island, it is better than we had ever imagined... it’s fantastic!

So where is Aride, and why is it so important?

2007-11-05T12:59:00.000-08:00

The Seychelles’ islands of which there are 115, were created many millennia ago, when India broke away from Africa somewhere close to Madagascar, and drifted across the Indian Ocean, leaving the granite fragments of the Seychelles in its wake.

Aride is the northernmost island of the granitic Seychelles, roughly 68 hectares in area, approximately 1.6km long by 0.6km wide. However despite its small size, it is home to one of the most important seabirds populations in the Indian Ocean. It is the finest nature reserve of the granitic Seychelles and a conservationists’ paradise. Eighteen species of native birds (including five only found in Seychelles) breed on Aride, this is far more than on any other granitic island.

The island is leased and managed as a nature reserve by the Island conservation Society (ICS) of Seychelles, but owned by the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, a UK based charity since 1973. The whole island is been protected by Seychelles law as a nature reserve. Nature is the top priority, and the only human inhabitants are the reserve’s staff, currently four Seychellois rangers and two island wardens.

The Wildlife
Over 1.25 million seabirds regularly breed on Aride, including the world’s largest colony of lesser noddies, the worlds only hilltop colony of sooty terns and the Indian Oceans largest colony of roseate terns. The island hosts the world’s largest colony of Audubon’s shearwaters and what is thought to be the world’s largest colony of white-tailed tropic birds. There are also very large breeding numbers of brown noddies, fairy terns, wedge-tailed shearwaters and a few pairs of red-tailed tropic birds.

There has been several successful translocations of endangered or restricted-range endemic bird species onto Aride, these include the Seychelles warbler, Seychelles Fody and the Seychelles magpie robin. The Seychelles blue pigeon and the Seychelles sunbird have re-colonised Aride naturally.

Aride has the world’s highest density of lizards, with other reptiles such as skinks, geckos and harmless snakes. Two species of marine turtles regularly nest on the beaches, the green and hawksbill turtles.

The reserve boundary includes 200m of surrounding seas, including a beautiful coral reef, with over 450 species of fish, from whale sharks to flying fish!!

A first time for everything!

2007-11-01T10:45:00.000-07:00

Well there is no doubt that preparing for this trip is opening up a heap of new experiences. This crossed our minds more than once as we collected all the possessions we may need for the next 2 years and packaged them up together in a crate. Melv, always one for never doing anything by halves, made a crate that we ourselves could've travelled in, but looking back it was a good job he did, especially with the amount of fishing gear and art materials we are taking along! As we produced the manifest for customs it made us smile: from 2 years supply of razors and tampons to a ukulele and enough fishing gear to provide food for the whole of Mahe (the main island), never mind the 6 people on Aride!

All packaged and labelled up, we took it to an industrial estate in Rainham, Essex, ready to make the long journey to the other side of the world. We left it in the yard all set to be loaded, neither of us too sure whether we would ever re-connect with it or not.

Well we've had a progress report the crate is on its way and will reach Mahe, on the 1st December, only slightly after our arrival, on the 27th November - so we've no need to worry, we won't go hungry and Melv won't have to grow a beard, as for the tampons and ukulele - well...

Godney - a great place to live

2007-10-14T00:52:00.000-07:00

Godney as a village is quite unique, certainly high up the list as one of the best places we have ever lived. The only necessity is that you are a little excentric, with a desire to socialise and a taste for alcohol - which can't be bad! We will be sad to leave at the end of Nov, but 2 years in the sun, on a tropical island (without running water and electricity - I knew the caravan was in preparation for something!) is an opportunity we can't refuse - but we will be back, the village doesn't get rid of us that easily!!

Our preparations continue - with our possessions going out next week, which will hopefully be waiting for us when we arrive - we may go hungry if not, with Melv's fishing gear one of the main items on the manifest!

Work on Preyway Cottage is progressing well and it will soon be water tight and safe - a little project we will return to complete.

Seychelles here we come!!

2007-10-07T11:23:00.000-07:00

Getting ready to make the most of our new way of life, has been quite entertaining. With the Seychelles as one of the best places to snorkel, we thought we had better get the right tools for job!!

Preparing for our new challenge in the Seychelles

2007-10-01T13:26:00.000-07:00

Well time is ticking away fast, Melv has already finished work and today was his first day a free man, providing time to finish projects at home before we depart. Sal has got just 4 weeks left at Ham Wall, so alot of time is now devoted to tying up all those loose ends.

However, there is still a bit of time to develop new ideas, we are looking to undertake a project with Meare Primary School, so that we can set up a link and communicate with the children about life on a small island in the Seychelles.This kind of project will help broaden the children's outlook and give them the opportunitiy to learn about a different culture and way of life. The aim will be to twin the class with a local school in Praslin, the nearest largest island to Aride. The wonder of technology.