The GVI Routine—Week Five

Now that we’ve passed our fish and coral tests, the real work has begun—for us volunteers that is. The staff has been working all along getting us up to point where we can do the fish and coral monitoring on the 18 to 24 sites GVI oversees. We’ve been trained to follow several procedures for the fish or coral we’ve learned. Our equipment includes fifty metre measuring tapes--to be laid down on the ocean’s floor at certain angles to the shore, SMB’s to note our location when diving (as well as snorkelling), slates and pencils. Recognizing what we’re seeing, writing it down, reeling in the measuring tape, and reeling in the SMB means we have to be really good at multi-tasking. The GVI staff make sure we are.

It’s taken a lot to get to this point, and now it’s time for some of us to leave after doing just a few research dives. Hindsight speaks loudly that five weeks is not long enough if you’re really into the research. If you stay longer, you can learn about both --fish and coral, rather than just one subject.

For now, for me, it’s goodbye to the Seychelles. Who knows, I may be back.

A GVI Week on Curieuse with the Seychelles Marine Park Authority

GVI Volunteers are given the opportunity to work on Curieuse, another of Seychelles beautiful Islands. This first involves getting up at 5:00 a.m. to get the ferry from Mahe to Praslin, then the bus from the ferry dock to the Anse Volbert Village, where the group meets up with the Marine Park Authority (MPA) rangers who work on Curieuse and shuttle workers back and forth between the islands.

The work GVI volunteers do varies from day-to-day and week to week. Our tasks this week were:
• Plant mangrove seeds
• Paint a sign of Curieuse to be posted at the Doctor’s House
• Help re-install the Marine Park boundary markers, which had been freshly painted the week before from red to yellow. (There had been a problem since red is a colour for navigation buoys.)
• Create an Excel spreadsheet for recording daily rainfall
• Cross reference individual receipts of park fees with master list
• Pick up tortoise droppings

We lunched with the rangers, eating huge meals prepared by a woman the rangers affectionately call “mama”. (This is a key attraction for going to Curieuse!) She mothers about 10 rangers a week who stay on the island. They come and go from the Doctor’s house on Curieuse, from one island to another, acting guides and collecting park fees. Rangers are stationed on Curieuse from 5 to 24 days at a time, with their free time spent on Mahe or Praslin. Only about five people actually live on Curieuse fulltime—the head ranger, an assistant ranger, and mama and her family, who also work for the MPA.

My week on Curieuse started a little slow because I had stitches in my foot and wasn’t supposed to get it wet. Getting to and from the boat was a challenge, not so much for me, but for the others who had to carry me. A fellow GVI volunteer was gracious about this, as well as the Rangers, who upon meeting me, immediately tossed me over their shoulder. It drew attention for the first half of the week, but then when I got the stitches out, the jokes ran out, but not the fun. We’d already established that special bond! Now I could more easily walk the half hour to and from the Ranger’s station (when we couldn’t get a ride from the Rangers), get in and out of the boats on my own, and finally go snorkelling!!! I missed snorkelling at Coco Island because of my foot, but nothing after that. I even did a long walk through the jungle on the northern part of the island with an expert on black parrots, which are indigenous to Curieuse.

Being on Curieuse gave me more of the Creole feel of the Seychelles than back at Cap Ternay. All in all, the pace of life is a bit more relaxed and made me appreciate where I am.

The Halfway Point of the First Five Weeks

We’ve into our third week as GVI volunteers. We were told the first two weeks are busy, and that was no lie for those of us who just passed our Advanced Open Water course, passed our Emergency First Responder course. We’ve also been studying our fish (or corals) in our spare time for our “PowerPoint” and underwater exams this week. (And, of course, we can’t let up, because after we pass these exams, we have to do the same thing for “inverts”.)

The days have become more routine. We’re divided into work groups—boat, tanks, kitchen and grounds. You can probably figure out what those tasks might be. Some duties keep you on your feet all day. Others allow you to sit and study/read/relax (like when you’re on radio or filling tanks). Once or twice a week a group gets together to play a game of footie.

We dive four days a week. So far, much of this has been for our advanced open water course. Now we’re getting into fish spotting. Some fish look just like their pictures, others are a bit harder to identify. There’s no denying an Emperor Angelfish, a Humphead Wrasse or Bumphead Parrotfish, but some of those Emperors and Snappers can be difficult to decipher. Wednesdays are reserved for plankton collection and turtle snorkels. We take turns snorkelling in the morning or afternoon in different patterns to count turtles (and other mega-fauna that happens by). Sometimes we get treated with a fun dive on Saturday mornings, as always, with a 6:15 a.m. porridge brekkie.

There are other roles one can take on as well in our spare time. One is to get involved in community work. Three of the five Fridays we are here GVI volunteers host a workshop at Port Launay with kids from the International School in Victoria. This is to teach them anything about what we do. Themes have included: marine parks, marine ecosystems, food chains, and marine pollution.

While there’s always work to be done, life is good here. As we converse with each other about our day’s dive after a cool shower, we also enjoy the palm trees swaying in the breeze, bananas ripening just outside our windows, fruit bats flying overhead each night, and sometimes the music and antics of the several hundred school kids who periodically visit the camp just down the hill. We also enjoy that occasional game of cards, a few drinks at the end of a week, even a disco party in the transformed kitchen on the weekend thanks to the creativity of the volunteers!

Curieuse Island, Seychelles

Hello from the Ranger's Headquarters on Curieuse Island in the Seychelles. My job today was to create a spreadsheet to record rainfall here so I had access to a computer since I'm done. Thanks to a career of building spreadsheets and analyzing data.

A small group of volunteers comes to Curieuse every week. Others have been snorkeling and having a grand time, while I watch from the shore. I broke a pop bottle when restocking the frig last week and it exploded into my foot so I have 4 stitches and lots of memories of how I was carried to and from boats this week. We are on an island after all so much happens around the water.

We do all kinds of jobs here--computer work, planting mangrove seeds, painting signs to be posted around the island and fishing and coral monitoring. It's a nice place to be and the food is spectacular--creole barbeques each day. I'm off to one right now.

More after I visit LaDigue this weekend.