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

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!

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...