Monthly Archives: May 2009

Madagascar, Expedition 46, Greetings from Andavadoaka!

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By Liz Griffiths

The Blue Ventures expeditions to Madagascar are back in operation, thankfully, after several months of disruption.  We are a small bunch in comparison to the usual number of volunteers from around the world who descend on site every six weeks. The recent civil unrest which followed the political changes in Madagascar in January caused a dramatic decrease in the number of tourists visiting and general NGO activity.  However, things have returned to their normal calmness which is great news.

Our expedition arrived on site at the small village of Andavadoake, south west Madagascar, on the evening of the 17th of May after an incredible 4 day overland tour to Tulear from ‘Tana. It has been non-stop ever since. We became familiar with the area pretty quickly. The BV site sits on a very small peninsula, with stunning views across the Mozambique Channel. Andavoadake Village is a two minute walk away and home to approximately 1200 people, who welcomed with an exciting, noisy and packed reception one evening.

The days immediately took their routine and structure.  Breakfast at 7:30 or 8am. Dive at 8 or 9am. For the beginners in the group this has involved performing 3 or 4 exercises underwater where we practise our buoyancy, navigation etc as part of our PADI Open Water Diver certification. Learning to dive was one of my main reasons for joining a BV expedition and it has been more fun than I expected. The one-on-one instruction from Axelle, the expedition manager and dive instructor has been brilliant.  She hovers inches above the sea bed, demonstrating one of the skills we need to master. She looks like a serene yogo guru, floating easily in the lotus position and controlling her bouancy by just using her lungs. I, on the other hand, do my best to not look like a complete incompetent moron. Fins and arms flail in all directions as I slowly tilt backwards,  my head slowing heading towards the soft sandy seabed and my legs pointing.  skyward.  She made it look simple. It is not. I am yet to find my grace in water. However, reassured by her that it would all come with practice, we perservered. And, she was right.  We have now finished all our qualification dives and have just began our Open Water Advanced training.  This is great news, as it gives us all another sets of underwater skill tests in which to demonstrate how to look like an upside down turtle.

After the dive, and once we have de-kitted and showered, there’s usually a pretty fast stampede to lunch. After lunch, its snooze time or a chance to lie on hammocks and catch-up on the study – and htere is plenty to study. For the 2 of us learning the dive for the first time, we usually spend the afternoons reading the various textbooks and preparing for knowledge reviews, quizzes and exams. In addition, we all studied and passed our benthic test at the end of the first week, which means we are all pretty capable of spotting and identififying a myriad of soft and hard corals and other invertebrates.

Around 230-pm, the classes start again. Last we focssed on coral. Today we started our fish classes. If we thought the coral was hard, the fish study is a whole new world. But, its all interesting and necessary if we’re going to be of any help to the science teams who need us to help collect data from the sea bed.  We all attend the lectures, including our younger members. Olivia, who turns 14 in a few months, and her 11 year old brother Vinnie who are having a holiday they’ll never forget and keep us all on our toes. They know more about fish and coral than the rest of us put together. In between their homework sessions (not their idea of fun), they can be found swimming around our heads as they snorkel alongside their parents Craig and Liz and the rest of the dive teams. Australians – they’re built with gills.

Lectures are usually followed by chores (cleaning the various bits of kit and storage areas) and then it’s back to free time before Vao Vao at 7pm. Malagasy for “what’s news?”, Vao Vao is the time when we divulge any major or minor events of the day, and usually involves a tale or two from Vinne about his adventures on his new pirogue, or recent spots from the dive or community programme teams. Then its lights out at 9pm, by which time I’m usually curled up in bed snoring my head off.

Blue Ventures Malaysia take part in reef clean up

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This weekend the Blue Ventures Malaysia (BVM) team, along with 4 university students from Kuala Lumpur, have been taking part in a reef clean-up event organised by the Department of Marine Park Malaysia (DMPM). One of the main aims of the clean-up was the removal of Crown of Thorns – venomous sea stars which eat the hard coral. Triton shells, their main natural predator, have been removed by human influence which has lead to a sharp rise in their numbers. Removing them from the reefs helps to restore the balance and prevent further destruction to the coral.

As well as participating in the clean-up itself, BVM also produced a video explaining why the clean-up was necessary, and how to remove the Crown of Thorns without causing further damage to the coral. The video can be viewed on youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPboe-5D3OA.

The weekend kicked off with registration and opening ceremony at the Tioman Marine Park Centre. The event attracted over a hundred volunteers comprised of local dive shops and external dive clubs. The dive sites were then split amongst the groups, and we headed out to start collecting. Over the two days BVM collected 93 Crown of Thorns, and more than a thousand Crown of Thorns were collected from around Tioman in total.

Another part of the weekend was a beach litter pick in conjunction with the local school in Tekek. The university students gave a presentation on rubbish, and how it can be avoided by the “3 R’s – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle”. We then hit the beach, sorting the collected rubbish into material groups as we went. Then back at the school the school children discussed how the 3 R’s could be applied to the collected rubbish. Finally the day was rounded off by making bottle rockets out of the collected litter.

When you’re bringing your work to the dinner table…

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Island life changes you. Slowly and gradually Swiss cottages and the expedition becomes your normal life.  The best signs of this was felt by all us volunteers yesterday when we got back from our four day trip to Juara, which is on the other side of the island.

We all wanted to come home.  Come back to our rooms, beach, studies ( they are fun, I’m not only writing this because Katie wants me to) and diving. It was not that the trip wasn’t good. We went mountain trekking for 2 days, made a couple of survey dives and stayed at a relaxed, off-season surfers resort. The mountain trekking was an adventure in itself. We calculated that we had been walking in the jungle for a total of 20 hours, 11 in one day.
Another good sign of the change the expedition has had on us could be seen in the dive shop yesterday. We were preparing a barbaque for Matt, one of our instructors, who left us and went to Kuala Lumpur today. One of the things that needed to be prepared was a fish. Normally, anyone of us would have simply gutted it and cooked it. After a couple of weeks of fish studies however, no cooking could take place before the fish spices had been identified. So the whole expedition gathered around and started arguing. It was quickly established that we were dealing with a grouper (note to any future volunteers reading this: You should know what a grouper is. Pick up your identification book after reading this post.) The species was harder though. If you had been here you would have seen one computer nerd (that’s me), one former city executive, an accountant, a number of students and some graduates along with the staff of Blueventures Malaysia standing around a dead, frozen fish with books in their hands trying to id their dinner. For the record, it was concluded that it had to be a honeycomb grouper

[Shameless advertisement]

I decided to maintain a blog of my own during this trip. As you might have guessed from my choice of words, English is not my mother tongue. The blog, in Swedish, can be viewed here http://multiventure.blogspot.com/ and even if you don’t understand swedish, you might enjoy some of the photos I have posted there.

[end of Shameless advertisement]

To end this post, I will do the same thing that I do on my own blog and that is to show a photo or two. This is a picture of a fairly normal sunset, taken during the first week of my stay here. Since then, I have taken very few pictures of the sunset. It looks like this almost every night

tioman-sunset

The reason why I don’t take so many sunset pictures nowadays is probably because I got used to the beauty of this place. The sunset is always there and so is the beach and the coral reef, staff and the other volunteers.

It feels like I am already starting to miss Tioman, and there is more the two weeks left of the expedition.

Rare launches first conservation campaign in Madagascar with Blue Ventures

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Andavadoaka, Madagascar. Blue Ventures’ conservation scientist Gildas Andriamalala recently returned to Madagascar to establish the country’s first Rare Pride Campaign, after receiving nine weeks of intensive training in the use of social marketing and communication in conservation,

Rare is the global leader in social marketing for biodiversity conservation, training and supporting leaders from the world’s top environmental organizations in over 50 countries in social marketing, a method for changing attitudes and behaviours.

Gildas will be running Rare’s first campaign in Madagascar beginning in spring 2009, with the aim of building public support for the sustainable management of threatened coral reefs and marine resources in southwest Madagascar.

The first three-month phase of the campaign was held in Washington DC, with eight other new Pride campaign managers from Monogolia, Thailand, Laos, Fiji, Chuuck, Guam and the Bahamas. Intensive training at Georgetown University focused on developing leadership skills for communication with stakeholders about key conservation issues. Gildas received hands-on tuition in new methodologies, tools and computer software, all aimed at increasing the success of the Madagascar campaign.

During a public launch in Washington to inaugurate the start of the new campaigns, Gildas spoke about some of the issues facing marine conservation in Madagascar, introducing plans for the new campaign partnership between Rare and Blue Ventures..

Over the next two years, the Madagascar campaign will focus on working with local Vezo communities to reduce destructive and unsustainable fishing techniques. Throughout the campaign Gildas will receive ongoing training as part of masters degree at Georgetown University and his work will form a key component of Rare’s broader ongoing effort to develop strategies for reducing dependency on marine resources.

For further information on Rare please visit: www.rareconservation.org

Space and time: The Leleuvia hypothesis.

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You may be wondering why this blog for a six week expedition is being posted during the fifth week….. Well the thing is, Leleuvia is what we like to call a worm hole (a most beautiful one at that).  Secondly, none of us came to this tiny pearl of a south-pacific desert island to sit and type, the only reason we are doing so now is that Howard has withdrawn food and water privileges until we do (secret message: get us out of here!!!).  But seriously, the time has gone by in what I fondly refer to as a completely ridiculous manner, quick but not quick. It feels like we have been here forever but time is marching on, maybe that’s just island time.  Although the day we floated to shore seems like just yesterday, we now know each other pretty damn well (sometimes in ways that might have been better kept secret).  For example, Tristan never takes off his wife beater, Lele (chef extraordinaire) can work a pole like a madwoman, and Katie is deathly afraid of worms and Howard doesn’t have night vision quite like Tom does, especially when it comes to trees…. [Ed – I removed the more salacious/unsavoury ones. Keep it clean].

The island staff, our local family, are incredible.  Always happy and bright they do a great job of keeping things running smoothly despite our constant need for tea, absurd displays of “dancing” on Saturday nights, and general wild neediness – can I get a loofah and a strawberry daiquiri over here please?  They all seem to deal with us in a different way, whether it be Buna and Vika’s breathtaking smiles, Dav’s throwing coconuts on the cinema roof when we’re watching a scary movie, or Jone our Boat Driver mocking our feeble attempts at Fijian.

Writing this short blog entry is no real way to convey just how great a time everyone is having. In the last ten minutes we have come to 2 conclusions; 1) We wish we could be here for the next trip and 2) Its time for a swim.

Peace. Leah & Duncan

Kicking off the Qio club

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Today we headed over to Uluibau Primary school on Moturiki to start up a conservation club for the kiddos. We started off the hour by doing a phenomenal rendition of the Harry Potter Puppet Pals (you tube it if you haven’t seen it), Blue Ventures style. We were dancing and chanting and wiggling around while shouting out things like ‘recycle!’ and ‘ecotourism!’ Immediately after our chant a few of us got the kids pumped up by performing a rap we had written. While the kids enjoyed it, I can assure you that our rap careers both started and ended in that one performance. J We then split into small groups to chat and really get to know the kids. Conversations ranged from things the kids like to do (swim, fish, play sports) to family life to favourite animals to things they’ve learned about conservation already. It appears as though they’ve been taught about re-using and are attempting to put recycling into practice. We’re hoping to teach them about endangered species, recycling, ecotourism, energy, rainforests, water, and other things related to the environment and conservation through games, activities, field trips and crafts. One of our other objectives of the day was to come up with a club name. Peter and I were with two boys who were adamant about being named the ‘shark killers.’ Hm… It seems as though this club is coming together at exactly the right time! We ended up dropping ‘killers’ and Club Qio was born. After we had voted on the club name, we headed out of the classroom for a relay race. Each person had to wear fins, a mask and a snorkel and run (I use that term loosely… ‘Flop’ may be more accurate) across the school yard and back. It was great fun and got the kids really excited to come back for more Club Qio fun!  Katie

The Rap:

Hey kids, what’s the deal?

Do you know what’s up with your favourite meal?

Do you know where it’s from; do you know what it eats?

Well then listen up to our awesome beats!

We’re gonna play some games and we’re gonna have some fun

Maybe even learn about the reefs and the sun

Together we can snorkel and swim in the sea

Check out all the fish and where they like to be

We’ll walk on your trail and take trash that we find

Use it to make something one of a kind

We’re here to learn and teach some too

Come join our club and we’ll kick it with you!

A week later we had the opportunity to go back to Moturiki and plant indigenous trees with Club Qio. We brought over three different kinds of trees donated by the Ministry of Fisheries and Forests and got to work. One of the highlights of the day had to be watching the guys gardening in skirts (okay, technically sulus, but still breezier than their average shorts). Of the three species we took, we planted the one that would end up being the smallest throughout the school yard and surrounding hill. We’re hoping to get back to the school to plant the remaining two bigger species along the students’ nature trail. Some of the volunteers experienced a bit of culture shock when the kids started hacking away at dead branches with machetes, but we all got the chance to talk some more with the students and learn about their lives. The kids who weren’t planting were in the school yard jump roping, playing volleyball and taking pictures with us. There was also a group of 7, 8 and 9 year old boys playing rugby nearby. It was especially exciting for me, as I had heard loads about rugby from all of the UK volunteers, but had yet to actually witness a real life game.  We all watched as the boys tackled each other and took each other down… they were tough! We ended the day with a trip to Eleanor’s house (she’s a staff member on Leleuvia, but lives on Moturiki during the week so her children can go to school), where she treated us to huge mugs of hot chocolate, cake, and fried Cassava sprinkled with sugar. Needless to say, we ended up having to roll ourselves back to the boat J \Katie

Researchers, Rocky and Riverdance…

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Team building takes on a new meaning…. It has only been about one week since Expedition Two got together so it was pretty important to have an intense bonding experience over our first Saturday night together on Leleuvia. Saturday night is ‘night off’ and with no diving on Sunday, the beer restrictions no longer apply J Howard organised us all into teams and progressed to make us do everything from building sandcastles to answering trivia questions (Rocky IV? Really??), to a bunch of stuff that it is better future volunteers experience for themselves rather than read on the blog!  A great time was had by all over a few civilised and well mannered beers. The lucky winning team got treated to a night dive the following week. Perhaps if I had known the prize in advance my rendition of ‘River dance’ could have been more convincing!

After more than a week on Leleuvia we were a bit excited to leave the island to visit a local community. Those of us who had passed our fish and benthic tests got to go with Howard to Daku village on Motoriki Island for a sevusevu. The purpose was to introduce Kalisi, a guest researcher from the University of Hawaii, to the village elders; she will be staying with them for a week to assess algae and herbivorous fish in the village Tambu (marine protected area).  We all dressed up in our bula dresses again and I think they appreciated it. (It’s hard to know when you don’t understand what they say about you but they smiled and what we had translated was that we looked nice.) The sevusevu itself was without Kava this time because the village has a banned kava drinking the last two weeks of each month. (Apparently the guys were more interested in drinking kava than in girls so the numbers of kids on the island were dropping.) Leaving the island we had to walk around to the next village; it started off as a nice walk along the beach but soon became more adventures as we waded through a flooded piece of the trail and carefully moved through the muddy and slippery reef flat. But we all got back safely and could wave to the cruise ship in the distance.

First impressions of Tioman

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After three jam packed days in KL, a four and a half hour bus journey with a crazy driver and a late ferry, we arrived on Tioman. I loved it immediately. The small island chilled out way of life hits you as soon as you arrive.
Our long house rooms sit about 20m off of the shore with great views of the horizon, surrounding islands and amazing sunsets.

We were given the next day to chill out then it was straight in to the diving and a big task of making a reef clean up video, which was entertaining to say the least, as many of the group hadn’t dived for a while. The purpose of the video is to instruct volunteer divers on the removal of Crown of Thorns, these are big starfish which destroy the coral and have no natural predators here so need to be removed. Luckily one of the other volunteers is a video editor so we have a pretty good final copy. The reef clean up weekend, is happening in May and should be fun.

We’ve been here for just over a week now and we’ve dived two to three dives a day, the dive sites are some of the best sites I’ve dived. I’ve seen so much already from sharks to turtles to massive moray eels, right down to the tiniest crabs and nudibranchs.
I’ve also learnt so much about corals and fish species in the lectures from Katie the expedition manager, she really knows her stuff.
The food here at Swiss Cottage is lovely, traditional Malaysian dishes, made with fresh ingredients. We have eaten out a couple of times, once at a chinese restaurant in the village and once at a beach front pizzeria both amazing.

We are planning a four day trek to Juara next weekend, which is over the other side of the island through the rain forest. We are going over there to check out some reefs for monitoring and to visit a turtle santuary. I’m really looking forward to it.