Category: Madagascar
Visit from northern fishers and women’s association lunch- a busy weekend
By Kame Westerman, Project Coordinator. From Friday to Sunday a group of fishers from Diego (in northern Madagascar) visited to learn about Velondriake’s creation, evolution, and activities. The group of 13 visited sea cucumber and algae farmers , a permanent...
Local University Students visit Blue Ventures
By Kame Westerman. Each year, university students from Tulear travel for two weeks along the southwest coast of Madagascar to visit conservation programs and see what is working well on the ground. This last weekend, twenty students (including four from...
Exploring the sea floor
by Kame Westerman, Project Coordinator, Andavadoaka. Standing on Split Rock, with the high-tide watermark well above my head, I’m astonished at how much the tide changes throughout the day; only five hours ago, these rocks that I’m now surrounded by...
Being Creative
By Kame Westerman, Project Coordinator, Andavadoaka. Thanks to a generous donation by a former Blue Ventures volunteer, members of the women’s association in Andavadoaka are currently receiving training in embroidery and tailoring. For four weeks, the women are spending several...
A sustainable slaughter
By Kame Westerman, Project Coordinator, Andavadoaka. For the Velondriake equivalent of the glorious 12th, the opening of the Nosy Hao Octopus reserve is something of a reserved affair… The procession has snaked its way down the beach with spears, masks...
The festival of Vezo Aho was the culmination of a year long social marketing project …
By Jessie Scurfield. The festival of Vezo Aho was the culmination of a year long social marketing project which uses marketing principles to communicate the conservation/ ecological problems associated with some of the fishing methods used by Vezo. The use...
The Unpredictable Sea
By Jon Lange . The livelihood of the local Vezo people is completely dependent on the sea. This is, after all, why we are here: we are providing the science to help the Vezo understand how make the most of...
The sun came up just as we did
By Anna Westland. 4am. I manage to grab my alarm before it goes off – my hut mate gets cranky enough when I’m up at 7 – and stumble around a bit, looking for rash vests and bits of my...
Thoughts from shore
By Laurenne Schiller. From this angle, I can observe at least seven distinguishable shades of aquamarine in the ocean below me, and there’s not a cloud in the sky...
Football – the universal language
by Ben Darwent. Placed neatly between Coco Beach (staff quarters/restaurant/tourist huts etc) and Half Moon Beach (the wonderful volunteer hub/dive center) is the Blue Ventures football ‘stadium'...
A 1,293 mile hike, 54 consecutive days, 2 sore feet, 1 determined woman and a very worthy cause..
Tess would walk 500 miles and she would walk 500 more (...plus an additional 293)
Boiled egg ping pong with the Goddess of the Deep
by Tracy Ware. Today was the final dive of my Advanced Open Water course, the deep dive. We dove at a fantastic site called 007 within the permanent no-fishing marine reserve. Just to start off the diving day, two dolphins...
Team 51 – a poetical look at Andava life!
By Steve Richards. They would come to be known as Team 51, Once the next expedition had truly begun...
What is Andavadoaka about?
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...
King of the Barbie!
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...