Seychelles - The Return. An MCSS adventure into the Jaws of Whalesharks

---

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 previous trip and it seemed like an exciting opportunity to learn about these majestic creatures. The prospect of spending more time here doing diving and flying in a microlight was also appealing.

During the first week we have been practicising a mix of water and office based skills which we will be using once the whaleshark season begins properly. For the office based skills we have been learning how to record the data we need and where to input it, as well as using the IRIS software which ID’s whalesharks from the placement of their spot which act a a kind of fingerprint for them. We have also learnt about downloading the GPS data from the aerial monitoring flights and inputing the observations of the pilot.

We have also gone into the water most days and practiced our duck diving and swimming at the speed we can expect whalesharks to travel. On Friday and Saturday the microlight we have was able to launch around the island and our pilot David spotted a whaleshark for us which we were able to locate and photograph confirming it as one that was seen last year.

All in all its been an exciting week. Yesterday I got an opportunity to go up in the microlight with the pilot to survey for whalesharks. We managed to see 6 hammerhead sharks, numerous turtles and shoals of fish. I look forward to the coming weeks but tonight I drink beer!

17th Sept: The last month has been good and we've been out quite a few times on the boat with different groups and photographing lots of whalesharks. This morning I was up in the air on the microlight a second time with our pilot David and spotted a whaleshark (well he did, I saw a glimpse of grey before we sped past). We've had some fun social nights out as well. I few weeks a go I went to the local Hindu temple that was having a big party on anniversary of Ginesh. I went in, looked around and blended in perfectly! (photo available on facebook), been to Tequila Boom - yah and got a ride home in a policevan with the girls - they're so considerate here! MET police take notes!

---