December Achievement report

Report Title
End of year data analysis

Objective
GVI Science officers collated all the monitoring data from the finished survey sites
and began writing the annual report. All staff visited the GVI Curieuse base with
the aim of experiencing the lemon shark and turtle nesting surveys.

Summary
This month GVI Cap Ternay volunteers and staff finished the coral, fish and
invertebrate surveys at all the required sites, and even some additional sites.
During the Christmas period the Cap Ternay expedition has a period of four weeks
without volunteers, during which time the GVI staff became busy cleaning,
improving base and analyzing the collated data. Once analysed, Cap Ternay data
indicated that the bleaching event that occurred at the beginning of the year
(January April) had detrimental effects on the live hard coral density and
diversity, recruits, fish density and diversity and invertebrates. Similar to last year,
it was decided that the Cap Ternay staff would expand their knowledge of local
conservation work by spending some time at the Curieuse base, learning the turtle
and lemon shark survey techniques. With our help, four shark pups were tagged
and recorded and three Hawksbill turtles were spotted nesting.

Report

Our last volunteers of the 2016 left with heavy hearts on the 10 th December and
base did not feel the same without them. The dorms were orderly and empty and
base was eerily quiet. One day of rest however and the staff were back hard at
work; cleaning, painting, repairing and building - improving base and the
expedition experience. We had decided to head over to the GVI Curieuse base for
Christmas, to familiarize ourselves with their data collection methods and expand
our conservation knowledge. Before heading over to Curieuse, the Cap Ternay
science team began collating, organizing and analyzing all the data from the
surveyed sites from the year and got some very interesting results!

The aim of our continuous survey activities is to monitor hard coral cover,
recruitment and diversity, fish density and diversity as well as the density of
invertebrates. Surveys are conducted at carbonate and granitic reefs, in protected
areas and unprotected and at all sites, deep and shallow surveys are completed

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A volunteer surveying the density of coral recruits in a 1m quadrat

Unfortunately, the results from this year are not looking good for coral or fish
species. The bleaching event that took place from January to April 2016 seems to
have had a detrimental impact on our reefs. All coral genera have decreased from
2015 to 2016, many falling to levels lower than in 2005. Interestingly, when the
coral data (which is assessed based on the percentage of live hard coral cover) was
divided into pre-April and post-April we were able to see the intensity of the
reduction of corals post-April (after the bleaching occurred and coral mortality
increased!)

Graph of live hard coral density from 2005 to 2016

The invertebrate results indicated an increase in density across all sites when
compared with the results from the surveys in 2005 (with the exception of
Platyhelminthes and long and short spine (black spine) sea urchins. January to
June 2016 showed a decrease for all surveyed invertebrate species, with the

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exception of Platyhelminthes and black spine sea urchins, which increased.
Interestingly, this pattern is the reverse of the January to June 2015 data, which
showed Platyhelminthes and black spine sea urchins to have decreased from 2014.

The shallow coastal mangrove areas of Curieuse Island are key nursery areas for
Indo-pacific sickle-fin lemon sharks, Negaprion acutidens. Therefore, these species
are a significant focus for the work conducted by GVI at their Curieuse base and
the tagging project has been ongoing for several years here. At Cap Ternay we are
familiar with the lemon shark pups, swimming around our bay from October to
January - it always brings a shout of excitement when they are spotted in the
shallows as we wade to the boat before a dive or during a snorkel. Cap Ternay
science officers Josie, Fanny and Ben took part just before Christmas, arriving on
the island with GVI Curieuses trusty RIB, Dexter Crabtree, after a whistle-stop
tour of the island from Curieuses science officer, Pete. Dive officer Dave and base
manager Mariliana arrived just after Christmas for their work experience. During
the lemon shark pup season (October to January), the expedition runs 3-4 surveys
a week, taking volunteers out early in the morning or just before sunset to catch
and record details of the sharks. We also participated in the turtle surveys, walking
through the mangroves, palms and up the granitic rocks to access the nesting
beaches (Curieuse staff need strong legs!). These surveys are carried out everyday
and the staff and volunteers walk all around the island throughout the day
surveying all the beaches over the course of the week, looking for turtle tracks,
nests and eggs. As a team we found 4 Hawksbill turtles nesting on the beaches
surrounding the island! Its really amazing to see the turtles in HD nesting in the
daytime; Seychelles is the only place in the world that turtles dont nest at night
and it was such a thrill to be able to see them clearly in their nesting habits.

Curieuse and Cap Ternay staff on a turtle survey on Christmas eve

Our Curieuse experience was extremely exciting and informative, and also at times
highly exhausting its physically demanding walking up and down the islands hills
to get to the beaches before you even begin surveying! But we all took a lot from

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it and all expressed after how rewarding it had been, the skills learnt will stay with
us and hopefully they will come in useful again in the future. With the data
analysis all finished, and the report and results analysis almost complete we are
looking forward to the arrival of the new volunteers and the new year to begin.

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