This entry is one of love, romance and much more. I would like first to thank Jacqueline and Faith who made all this possible, you are both wonderful! Seychelles, this is a place of the wildest dreams. I've been waiting years to come here...right time, right place, right company. This is our first romantic holidays with Ma'ri...not that the one last month was not romantic...but this one is "us time"... The action place is a beach villa at the Banyan Tree...secluded place on Mahe Island. Our villa is amazing. We managed to go out the first day for a dream [View Full Entry]

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Eventful Wednesday! Well today dawned a glorious day with not a cloud in the sky. Which considering just how tropical it is here at Cap Ternay - was a bonus. I was doing the weekly 'plankton pull' so was really glad that the sun was out and the sea flat clam. The plankton pull is our weekly check to see how much of the stuff is hanging around the area. We drop a really fine net in to preset depths, which are timed, then pull it back in and wash the plankton into a bottle. The places we do this are [View Full Entry]

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Wow can't believe we have already been here 3 weeks. Time is starting to fly past! This week we had our coral and fish exams. The pass mark is 95%. On my first go I passed my coral exam with exactly 95%. Geoff got through on his fish exam (harder i think) second go with 99%. The reason the pass mark is so high is so that the data we collect for GVI is 'good' enough. This classes it as scientific level data. Life on base is the same as ever. The food is getting more monotonous - lentils, rice, pasta, [View Full Entry]

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We went diving at Rays Point after the last blog entry and we did see a huge Reef Ray! Water temp was 27deg - nice change from the murky green 14deg of the UK. The base is at the site of an ex youth training camp, all the buildings are derelict except ours! This is kind of spooky at night. We have one building with accommodation and training rooms in, one with the kitchen and big dining area and one for all the dive kit and hanging up laundry. When we arrived we were some of the first so there were [View Full Entry]

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Well we have arrived in the Seychelles and have just a few days to relax and get over the jet lag before the main expedition starts. The hotel we are staying at is ok. There are giant tortoises in the garden at the front. They don't do that much except eat and sleep. We are just about to go diving to a place called ray point. I will let you know if we actually see any rays! Temp is about 28-30 and humid. Not sure how i'm going to survive with no air con at the base. Next chance i get [View Full Entry]

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3 days to go! Not long to go. We think we've got everything, just got to start packing now before heading off to the airport on Sunday. Check back for more updates soon. [View Full Entry]

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Hi I’m James, I’m 30 years old and from London. I arrived on the MCSS monitoring program just over a week a go. I don’t have much of a marine science background but have always been interested in the sea and am quite a keen scuba diver. This is my second time in the Seychelles this year as I also came in April and completed a ten week marine life conservation project with Global Vision International which is an NGO which carries out research on fish and coral species diversity and population in the area. I heard about MCSS on that [View Full Entry]

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July 25 - July 31 SEYCHELLES Following our relatively painless 4 hour flight from Johannesburg we arrived late evening in the Seychelles, a group of tropical islands in the Indian Ocean south of Dubai and between India and Africa. This is a complicated and expensive place to get to if you are not in the area and are coming just for a holiday in Seychelles. This is a very small country of about 84,000 people total. We are booked into the Le Meridien Barbarons for the next six nights for some relaxing in the sun. Sun ??? What is that ??? [View Full Entry]

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8th June - 20th June: Oh dear! the quick trip to the Pirates Arms for a couple of drinks turned into to an all dayer with all of us downing jugs of the local Seychellois beer. It was a pretty lively evening and in the end most of our group were there. We also met up with our park ranger Phillipe and his two lovely daughters while we were there. After a day of continual eating and drinking we finally dragged ourselves home at about midnight with the hangover from hell. In fact even as I write this now my head [View Full Entry]

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8th June: Well where to start on what I've been up to? A couple of weeks a go I went over to curiese island which is off of Praslin, four of us and a few staff went and it has a high population of indigenous giant turtles, about 150 apparently although I didn't count them personally - the humans on the island number roughly 10 though so they are pretty outnumbered. We stayed in a lovely little cottage right on the beach with a large veranda which you could just laze about on and watch the sunset each day. It was [View Full Entry]

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