The 15th January 2014 marked the second anniversary of the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between Four Seasons Resort Seychelles, WiseOceans, and the Seychelles Ministry of Energy and the Environment.
This collaboration has meant we have been monitoring, checking and assessing coral health and growth in Petite Anse where we have Marine Educators based. All the information is passed onto the Seychelles Ministry of Energy and the Environment and added to the Seychelles marine database. The partnership has allow us to make a greater contribution to marine conservation in the Seychelles.
Below: Resort Manager Mr Bob Suri and The Principle Secretary Mr. Wills Agricole signing the Memorandum of Understanding.
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Below: WiseOceans Marine educators surveying the reef and the beach at Petite Anse
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In the last two years we have in summary….
- found that Petite Anse has approximately 36% coral cover! (The majority of Seychelles is estimated to be just 10 – 20%)
- and 14 new coral recruits (baby corals) growing per square metre!
- established eight permanent, built-in markers along the back of the beach and conducting a survey from each of these markers every month
- recorded significant changes in the beach with the seasons
- doing a CoralWatch survey every month (and thankfully not finding significant bleaching)
- contributing data to a global data set – of those 69 records on the yellow dot, more than a third are ours!
- one nest in 2013 and one dig attempt in 2014. Here’s hoping for 2015!
- surveys done every day throughout the season, and a lot of beach trash collected along the way!
