Monthly Archives: February 2010

Team 51 – a poetical look at Andava life!

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by Steve Richards

They would come to be known as Team 51,

Once the next expedition had truly begun,

Only Kathryn had been there and done it before,

For the rest there were lots of new things to explore.

Amanda would teach us to swim upside down,

Part diving, part yoga, with a touch of the clown.

Alyssia from Jersey, the coolest by far,

Sometimes lives in Hawaii, sometimes lives in her car.

Marketta who never wakes up till midday,

At breakfast she simply has nothing to say

But Manga Lodge coffee would make her convert

To a pole-dancing vixen and outrageous flirt.

Daniella the architect, like, loves to enthuse

About all forms of sea life and wooden canoes

She purchased a turtle to, like, keep it alive,

And only stops talking in order to dive.

Anne who came here to try diving again,

And who, thanks to Samantha, discovered her Zen,

Who sees underwater like Mr Magoo,

But BV will make sure she has something to do.

And Steve who designed a ridiculous chair

Which is more like a throne but he doesn’t care,

He thinks he’s the Big Man they call Papa Steve,

But that chair will be firewood as soon as he leaves.

And let’s not forget Goffe, our child of the sea,

Who makes us feel tired with his sheer energy.

And guiding them all through their days in the sun,

Are the staff, like Chiara, exposing her bum,

As they finally let her get back in the boat,

After making to leave and just letting her float,

And Pete who is sweet and is missing his cat,

And fiancée too, of course, don’t forget about that,

And Sam who was born to live by the sea,

Who takes Nudibranch pictures and loves herbal tea.

Bic is the diver we all want to be,

We suspect he has gills but they’re too hard to see,

Georgie looks after sea cucumber beds

And ties sea weed to bottles with long nylon threads,

Sophie the Queen of the science we do,

Who loves noodles and chocolate drinks thicker than glue.

Capitain Nick, the Napoleon Wrasse,

Who the Malagasy staff seem to love to harass

By filling their laptops with bugs he can kill,

“It won’t happen again Nick!” but you know that it will,

And finally Shawn who looks over it all,

Thin as a rake and terrifically tall,

Who is dreaming of broadband and Tacos to eat,

And who wanders around with no shoes on his feet.

When the NTZ opens it will signal the end,

Except for Kathryn, Alyssia and newcomer Ben,

They will get a bit longer in Andavadoaka,

While the rest of us hope that the camion is broke

So we set off to Tulear in a nice 4×4,

Though hopefully a bit better planned than before,

And we say our farewells to the people we’ve met,

But we’ve all had a time we will never forget.

What is Andavadoaka about?

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By Daniella Sachs. As I sit on the porch writing this, the almost full moon casts it light on the waves crashing gently on the shore in front of the hut. In the background I can hear the vibrant Gasy music playing at the epibar1 as I search for the words to describe my experience in Andavadoaka.

Many blogs have spoken about a typical day here which involves waking up to a sea so blue that you think your imagination must be playing tricks on you. Typically after a breakfast of coffee and sometimes not-so-stale bread it’s off to dive the reefs and practice the skills we have been learning which involve benthic PITs2 and fish belts. Absolutely starving we rush off to lunch and to well-deserved hammock time, followed by introductory lectures to science, the reefs, ecology and Vezo culture. The day ends with the hot sun meeting the sea in yet another legendary Madagascan sunset and a fresh fish grill.

This typical day in the life of a BV volunteer however does not nearly convey the experience of being here. The feelings, the meanings, the taste, the smell is lost in the description of a schedule. What is Andavadoaka about?  Andavadoaka is the sea and the sun. A warm, perfect sea of blue that no camera seems able to capture. A sea that leaves a salty algae taste on your lips, and a brush of sand on your hips. And a sun so hot you feel like you are melting away at times.

Andavadoaka is its people, the Vezo. A people connected to the sea like a tree to its roots. The Vezo are sculpted by the sea and the sand. They are the fish that dance, the fish who hunt, the fish who survive. They are filled with colour and pride like the butterflyfish, angelfish, parrotfish and wrasse. The Vezo are the laughter of a wave breaking on the shore, living for the moment without worry of the next.

Andavadoaka is its wind that blows relief to hot skin, and carries the salty smells of baking sand and braziers of frying fish, sakay samosas and bok bok. A wind that kisses a perfect sky and clears away the promise of clouds to reveal the breathtaking milkyway which floods the sky each night.

Andovadoaka is its hope, for a people so poor who battle to survive off a sea no longer able to provide what it once gave. A place that would not be without its people and a people which would not be without their place. My heart cries to see their hold on their land slipping as rich French and Italian foreigners buy up all the beautiful beaches and islands slowly pulling out the roots of the Vezo and pushing them into the spiny forests to flap aimlessly like fish out of water.

1 The local Epiciery or grocery store that is also a bar.

2 Point Intercept Transect, a method used to estimate benthic species cover on a coral reef.

King of the Barbie!

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By Steve Richards.  Thursday brings us to another blog day and to the end of the fourth of the strange 6 day weeks we operate on here (5 days diving, then party night for the more frivolous, one extra beer for the more sober, and then a no-dive day to recover from any nitrogen absorption – and the party night hangover). By the end of week four the novices are advanced divers, at least as far as PADI is concerned, and everyone is pretty familiar with their fish and their benthics (those attractive rockish structures, which were once collectively known as coral to me, now distinguished by an array of complicated names and three letter acronyms that I am supposed to memorise and regurgitate underwater so I can write them down – hopefully without knocking the tops off any of them).

With everyone thus prepared after training on the nearer reefs, the next three truncated weeks can be spent collecting the scientific data for real, and risking precious fuel on visiting some of the more remote sites. Given the quality of the more accessible reefs I can only wonder how marvellous the deeper ones will be.  My wife Anne was reflecting yesterday that this is a rare opportunity to dive such pristine reefs while still being the only dive boat on the horizon.  I wonder how much longer the relative isolation of Andavadoaka will preserve this experience.  Still, if the Marine Protected Area is in place and BV and others can expand the tourism in a responsible way here, then more people may be able to enjoy this beauty for years to come and bring much needed income to the gentle Vezo people, who are so dependent on their fishing for their survival and identity. Lots of work left to do, but I am King of the Barbie at party time tonight and I am meeting Mr Roger from the Velondriake Committee soon to help him drive his new computer, so time to sign off for now.

A white girl fisherman!

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By Daniella Sachs.  One of the most incredible experiences I have had so far was my trip south with Thomas, a former Malagasy shark fisherman who now runs the Turtle and Shark Research Project for BV. I had joined Thomas merely to catch a ride south in order to research the  building techniques used in the various villages and to survey the proposed campsite which BV plan to build as part of the Eco-lodge project in Tampolove.

The two day pirogue journey however peeled open my expectations and revealed to me a realm of experience, sight and understanding I had not in my wildest dreams anticipated. The journey began with the rising sun, and a lesson on how to lift the diagonal mast of the pirogue sail, and off we gently floated with the early morning wind over the still asleep sea to our first stop in Lamboara.

How does one describe a journey by pirogue? The pirogue seems as part of this earth as the sand and the sun. The pirogues are carved from trees in the forest with great skill – as I was to learn in Ampasilava the next day, a village renowned for its pirogue makers. With only an axe as a tool the various different woods are carved into something of great beauty and dexterity that flies over the sea as if it too were a wave. Although a pirogue appears quite a simple thing, the skill needed to sail one is matched only by the skill needed to make one.

Lamboara was our first stop where Thomas met with his first sous–collector1. Thomas’ dream is to start an education project, whose first step would entail teaching people not to catch baby shark and turtle. But how do you teach a people who live a subsistence existence to put back something they have caught? Surely the challenge would be too great? The sous-collector in Lamboara however, convinced me that Thomas’ dream is not so farfetched. She shone with pride when she brought her book of data out to show him and had a bucket of Kasioke shark (a small species of shark I have yet to identify in a book) ready to measure and document in order to show how methodical she was at her job2.

Although Thomas is from Andavodoaka, he was treated with great respect in each village we went to. The idea of kinship is very important to the Vezo, but the people’s reaction to Thomas was more than this, it was the reaction of people to a leader, they really listened to him, and sought to speak with him when we arrived.

From Ankintambagna we set off to Antsepoky, where I encountered a village that seemed to rise out of the reflected heat of the snow white sand. A village of mall wood huts set in white sand dunes and filled with people who once again welcomed a Vazaha (white foreigner) and invited me to take pictures. Since it is impossible to post pictures as yet to accompany the blog I will have to attempt instead to describe the image of a reed shelter of white sand floor with wooden benches on either side. A woman with a yellow painted face and multi-coloured sarong bursts into a smile on seeing me and poses for a photo, framed by the azure blue sea.

From Antsepoky we travelled to Tampolove through the Baie des Assassins, a bay of crystal blue water edged with mangroves and punctuated by egrets and flying fish. A place so quiet that you can hear the coral crackling underwater while sitting in the pirogue. The most amazing thing about travelling by pirogue is that time takes on a new dimension. Your travel becomes zen-like as it’s governed by the elements and as such the idea of being in a rush is non-existent, impossible, a non-entity. Some would say that being here is like being in a bubble yet I find that time here seems more real tied as it is to the sea and the wind.

Tampolove is a village of the sea, for the tide shapes its very soil, creating islands of village when it comes in and uniting the village when it goes out. For a village shaped by water I was fascinated by the attention paid to the built form and the pride that was apparent in the way that the people decorated their houses, and gardens. Sitting at the epibar, watching two piglets and a troop of ducks waddle past, while listening to the laughing musical voices of the people around me while they sorted the catch of the day, I was struck by how at peace Vezo life is. Sailing off into the sun setting over the mangroves while Thomas told me stories of his people I was silenced by the incredible sight before me of a sky fighting for glory over a perfect sea, painting and repainting its colours continuously as a last show of glory before the hush of evening fell.

Waking up with the sunrise in Lamboara, I took a walk along the still quiet beach watching the first of the fishermen slip their pirogues into the orange-tinged sea. After a breakfast of bok bok (fried bread) and sweet Vezo tea we too slipped into the water for our journey to Ampasilava. Arriving in the village after a leisurely pirogue ride with a wind still half-asleep I was greeted by the whisper, scrape and sliding of axes, the smell of freshly sawn wood, and the flashing of colourful clothes drying on fences. Ampasilava is legendary in the Velondriake region for its pirogue builders and as an architect all I could do was stand in awe at their handiwork which they showed off to me with great pride. As I hoisted the diagonal mast of the pirogue for our sail home and tightrope walked across to the ballast to take up my position of holding onto the sail to correct our balancing in the waves, their laughing voices were carried over to us in the wind- apela vezo foty they cried with delight (a white girl fisherman)!

1 The aim of each sous-collector in each village is to record any sharks or turtles that are caught, to write down their species and measurements and then to take a photograph for the records. The project at this stage is merely a survey to monitor what is being caught and to research what effect this is having on the shark and turtle populations.

2 The sous-collectors do not earn a lot of money for their work, it is a job they agree to do because they want to help. The idea of helping your village and helping your community is an important concept to the Vezo people. This is something I saw again and again throughout this trip.

An Adventure-Filled Journey to Andavadoaka

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By Daniella Sachs.  Writing in retrospect is not advisable on trips such as these as each day is filled with an overwhelming amount of new sights, sounds and experiences. As such the following is merely a snapshot of memories imprinted in the photo-book of my mind.

The trip from Tana to Tulear is punctuated with stills of stepped rice paddies with flowing irrigation channels, double storey colonnaded brick houses and ambling zebu1 topped with wobbling fat pouches and curved horns. Green hills and flowing rivers gently give way to a landscape of granite and sandstone interspersed with forests and dotted with villages of sand-coloured houses and burial cairns built of rock.

Our first stop after a long day of driving is Fianarantsoa, a jam-packed town filled with street vendors and the mess that is human life. Through the window one’s nose is immediately filled with the dusty, sweet, salty, oily smell of frying food, and sweat overlaid with that of rotting produce. The streets hum and dance with the cries and shouts of vendors proudly showing off their wares: sticky mangoes, tiny fish long dead, piles of grated carrots, string beans, ripe tomatoes and slabs of meat hanging on hooks vie with curtains of mismatched shoes and brightly coloured clothing.

Down a colonnaded ivy-covered grand staircase we are greeted by the mattress sellers and the beginnings of a fairground. A sweaty back pushes a merry-go-round full of squealing children; shouts and the clink of dice abound around crowded tables of roulette. Rum and beers flow around packed streets while the DJ’s call out from their boxes at the four strange white women walking past.

Hot croissants melting with butter await us in the morning in preparation of our first hike in the sweltering hot sun. We travel to the community run lemur reserve in Ambalavao and meet our first grunting family of the famous ring-tailed lemurs lounging in the forest trees. Satiated with photographs and surrounded by mosquitoes we escape to explore the lemur caves, and our first Bara cave burial site. Up the rocks we crawl to stand in awe at the beauty of Madagascar, and then onwards we march to marvel at chameleons both big and small.

New Years Eve finds us at a bungalow resort at the foot of the Isalo National Park, the second biggest nature reserve in Madagascar. Struggling to stay awake we sleepily toast the New Year with THB (Three Horses Beer) and home-made flavoured rum diluted with Sprite, carried all the way for us on running feet from the store in the village.

Bright and early we greet 2010 with a 7 hour hike in the national park. Sandstone ledges and steppes2 of brush with grasshoppers dancing before us give way to ravines of forest and the grunting and leaping of lemurs. A pristine film-like blue rock pool appears as if by magic before us. And thoroughly refreshed for the moment we head off round crags of sandstone gleaming in the beating sun to a grotto waterfall and icy black pool. Brown lemurs show off their cuddling cuteness in an attempt to edge even closer to our shady lunch of French baguettes and grated carrots. Thoroughly exhausted, and with cameras filled with the ‘perfect-lemur-shot’ we toast to what promises already to be an incredible new year.

The next day sees a marathon hooting run over dry planes interspersed with small villages of wood and grass huts to Toliara. Walking down streets pelted by dust storms, struggling to move limbs through the pervading heat in search of the promised shopping we encounter the jocks/machas/macho men on their motorcycles and the push-push runners sprawled out in the shade. Soaking away the grime in the pool/bathtub we await the arrival of Blue Ventures in anticipation.

Minus cell-phone and sunglasses, the next day presents a hunt for functioning and reliable transport to site. After much haggling and stubbornness Bic succeeds in securing us a slow, bumpy, neck-jarring 9 hour ride past villages of reed and wood huts set on white beaches capped off with the never-ending blue of the Indian Ocean. Finally we reach our much anticipated destination, albeit minus luggage temporarily, and are shown round our new home for the next 6 weeks by Nick and Chiara.

Sitting here, perched on my hammock strung up outside our wooden hut I am surrounded by the roar of the crashing waves on the half-moon beach below. As the multitude of stars come out I marvel at the exquisite beauty of Andavadoaka and I feel the need to pinch myself really hard just to make sure it is real.

1 A type of domestic cattle originating in South Asia, characterised by a fatty hump on their shoulders.

2 A grassland plain without trees.

Blue Ventures Malaysia, an exciting first year!

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by Katie Yewdall.  2009 saw the first year of Blue Ventures Malaysia (BVM). The first volunteers showed up on the 17th of April to be greeted by an excited BVM team. They were quickly set to work with their open water and advanced open water courses, quickly followed by fish and benthic ID training. As well as their science training, BVM volunteers began work on the first of the Responsible Diving series of short videos. Their subject was how to conduct a responsible Crown of Thorns starfish clean-up. The video was later shown during the briefing of the Tioman annual COT clean-up, arranged by the Marine Parks of Malaysia. As soon as they were trained up, Fish belts, PITs and Invertebrate belts were quickly collected. Photos of the fish taken by keen volunteers began to reveal species that had yet to be recorded on Tioman and the fish species list began to grow. Four Malaysian students from the University of Kebansaan Malaysia, who would stay with us for three months, then joined the team and outreach programs began with a school session on recycling in both Tekek and Mukut schools.

After six weeks, the first group were waved off and expedition number two moved in. A smaller group this time, soon got stuck in to their science training and video making. This time, the video was focusing on responsible snorkelling, as this group of tourists can be particularly damaging to the reefs and many tourists to Tioman Island do not dive, but snorkel. BVM volunteers also joined Reef Check Malaysia for a school program supported by the corporate social responsibility team of a large business in Kuala Lumpur. Socio-economic monitoring was carried out by the UKM students to investigate the knowledge and perceptions of coral reef conservation of local people and tourists. Expedition number two also began the first BVM campaign, to raise awareness to visiting and local boats to use the mooring buoys instead of dropping anchor.

Arriving in July, expedition three was the biggest group yet. They took up the anchor campaign, developed various amusing slogans and made t-shirts to distribute. They also began a wider ‘responsible tourism’ campaign and made leaflets to distribute to tourists explaining the dos and don’ts of responsible tourism. Their video focused on how to be a responsible diver. After science training was completed, the group quickly collected the target number of PITs, fish belts and IBs. The visit to Mukut had volunteers playing games with the kids to practice their English.

Expedition number four arrived in August. The group of three brought a sudden calm after the frenzied activity of the previous group of twelve. After completing their Open Water and Advanced Open Water courses, the group began their science training as usual. Their video educated divers about how to achieve perfect buoyancy, very important for conserving air, avoiding damage to the reef and looking like a pro! They continued to collect Crown of Thorns and a huge net was released from the reef saving further damage to the precious coral there. They left leaving Tioman Dive Centre’s wooden boat looking much shinier than when they arrived!

The final group of the year, expedition five arrived in October. As three of them had previously been with Blue Ventures in Madagascar, science training was quicker than usual and surveys were started almost instantly. This group also began identifying fish species on a site-specific basis to allow a diversity index to be calculated per reef. The final video of the year was drawing divers’ attention to the less glamorous but highly important cleaners of the reef and encouraging divers to leave the marine life undisturbed.

Over the year, 567 Crown of Thorns were collected from reefs, 53 bags of rubbish were picked up from beaches, 7 school education sessions were run, large fishing nets were picked up from Bahara and Sepoy, 3 green turtles were seen laying nests, 435 turtle hatchlings were released, 6 pilot whales, 8 common dolphins, countless Green and Hawksbill turtles, numerous napoleon wrasse and several bumphead parrotfish were spotted, 29 new species of fish were added to existing fish species lists and 113 fish belts, 220 Point Intersect Transects and 220 Invertebrate Belts were completed by BVM volunteers.

But, it wasn’t all work for the group of budding conservationists. Taking part in Fasting (Ramadan), going to local weddings, drinking from water melons, learning to fire poi, sampling Malaysian food, wearing silly hats, painting boats, jungle trekking, cursing the expedition manager for the jungle trekking, jetty jumping, boat roof diving and visiting the island clinic made the experience even more rich and unforgettable. Many memories were made as well as photos and videos! All the videos in the responsible diver series, plus a few more, can be found on Youtube and the Tioman Dive Centre Facebook page. Photos can be found on the Tioman Dive Centre Facebook group page and on the Blue Ventures Malaysia website.

The final volunteers of 2009 left on the 12th of November, after a challenging, exciting and ultimately successful first year. Next year, BVM plans to continue this monitoring as well as introducing new research and outreach programs, work more closely with national and international universities and the Marine Parks of Malaysia and continue to work on the Green Fins program. The BVM team would like to thank all volunteers, staff and partners for all the help and support over the year, you all left your unique mark on the project. Don’t forget Tioman, it won’t forget you! Now, the team looks forwards to a new year, new volunteers and the further development of Blue Ventures Malaysia!