Le Meridien Fisherman's Cove Project

A Crown-of-Thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci) The crown-of-thorns ( Acanthaster planci ), is a large, thorned starfish which lives along the shallow reefs of the tropical band of the globe. It has all the fundamental components of any other starfish - a central disk, perimeter by radiating arms - but unlike most, this starfish can have up to 23, regenerative arms (all of which can be replaced in the case of lost limbs) covered with long poisonous spines. Usually found ranging between 25 cm – 35 cm in its adult stage, some individuals can be as large as 80 cm. The crown-of-thorns is a carnivorous predator, feeding on live coral tissue by everting its stomach over their surfaces. As well as hard corals, they can also feed on soft corals, sponges and encrusting organisms. Their presence on a reef give slower growing coral communities (e.g. Favites ) an opportunity to flourish by preferring feeding on branching and plate fast growing corals (e.g. Acropora ) However, the large size o...

The 26th September was the celebration of MCSS' 20 years of work from whale sharks, sea turtles, beach erosion, marine mammals, wetlands and terrapins to coral reefs ! David and the five current project leaders (Inga Petelski, Savinien Leblond, Alessia Bacchi, Vanessa Didon and Chloé Pozas-Schacre)  gave a talk remembering all the various projects undertaken by the NGO since and presenting the on-going work.  This anniversary was celebrated at Le Méridien Fisherman's cove as this special day was also the opening of the first ex-situ coral nurseries in Seychelles.  David going through 20 years of work by MCSS Inauguration of the coral growing tanks in the presence of the Minister of the Environment, Energy and Climate change All the MCSS current project leaders, interns and volunteers Two coral growing tanks have been set-up next to the snorkeling kiosk. They are filled with filtered seawater and wil...

Jack, Lucie, Nick and Lonne, our four new interns Recently, the project has welcomed four interns from different corners of Europe who have been doing a great job so far, especially with the construction of the two coral growing tanks ( which are going to be ready soon ....) Here they are!  Lonne, Aishah and Carolyn working on one of the two coral growing tanks Hello, my name is Lonne! I am 19 years old and am interning with MCSS for 20 weeks as apart of my University’s course content.  I study in The Netherlands in a University of Applied Science called Avans, and am currently in my third year of the ‘Environmental Science for Sustainable Energy and Technology’ program. During my internship with MCSS I will get the chance to work on various really exciting projects that are currently up and running. A few of these include the Coral Nurseries at Fisherman’s Cove, Terrapin Monitoring down at Anse Forbans, Wetland Research Project, among others. I have so fa...

The Fisherman's Cove  project has been ruled by a girl team lately, meet Carolyn and Lois our two new volunteers !  Frankie, the Hawksbill turtle  Hello, my name is Carolyn and I am ecologist who has been stuck on the land for too long. I have travelled from wet and windy Scotland to the tropical shores of the Seychelles to complete my Divemaster training, volunteer with marine conservation projects and, most importantly, spend some time in the oceans again! I recently completed ten weeks with Dive Seychelles Underwater Centre to do my Divemaster internship. The highlight of that was undoubtedly seeing a WHALE SHARK!!! during a dive just round the corner from Fisherman’s Cove.   So far during my time at Fisherman’s Cove I’ve built confidence with freediving – I still aim to be able to clean a whole row of the nursery on one breath…just now I can do almost half-way along a row. I have wrestled with marine life while cleaning the snorkel trail (the spiny se...

It’s been a busy month here at the Fisherman's cove! We have welcomed five new volunteers from all different parts of the world. Each of us had his own nationality: Seychellois, British, Italian, American, Russian, Portuguese and French. Our everyday activities include maintaining the snorkeling trail for the hotel guests and taking them  out on excursions, as well as cleaning our coral nurseries and monitoring the fragments condition, which has taught our volunteers some valuable new skills. We’ve also been training them by taking them out on the reef to spot different coral and fish genera, to improve their knowledge of the array of marine life in the Seychelles. With their help, we constructed a fifth coral nursery and put the new underwater mailbox in place. The in-situ coral nurseries The brand new underwater postbox   “Hello, I’m Rafaela, I’m 24 years and I’m from Portugal! I’m currently doing my masters in Marine Biology in the University of Al...

This is it! All four of our coral nurseries are finally in the water! It took us less than a month to build the nurseries and place them in the water, it was a mission but we did it.  Aishah swimming with cement block attach to a buoy Leo and Chloe setting a nursery underwater The happy happy happy team after the work done! The nurseries hold mainly branching Acropora coral fragments but also some Porites and Pavona for a total of 128 fragments. The nurseries need intense cleaning to ensure the health and growth of the coral fragments. The design of the nurseries called line nurseries enables quick cleaning and reduces sedimentation on the fragments. We’ve been cleaning the nurseries every week by snorkeling/freediving to avoid the overgrowth of competitive algae on the cable ties and to maintain the nurseries structures clean (pipes, ropes).  The four line nurseries holding 128 coral fragments A Porites fragment A Pavona fragment A Acrop...

Deep-sea corals Dear faithful (or new) reader, Relax and seat comfortably, it’s time to chill for a while. Imagine one minute, you are in a nice lagoon, you just finished to drink your fresh coconut cocktail and you decide to go for a swim in the warm water. The sun is hot, you can hear the tropical birds from the island singing in the jungle far away.  You have your mask, your snorkel and you start to nicely swim until you get to the reef. You calmly put your head underwater and the magic happens. Structure of incredible architecture and complexity appear, with colour you never suspected the existence, and graceful living forms flying around them. The wonderful ballet of colours stuns you for a while and you have to take back your respiration at the surface, but more by the emotion caused by the surprisingly beauty of this underwater world than from the real need of breathing. Now will you believe me if I tell you similar paradise exists in the deep water of the oce...

This photo has nothing to do with the topic but it attracts your curiosity “Niark Niark” (evil laugh). Hello curious reader, Hope you are doing good and ready to dive again in the incredible world of corals. Last time we spoke about polyps and zooxanthellae, remember? If not check rapidly the 1 st story about corals! Don’t be lazy, it’s worth it! We are far to understand all the mysteries that hide corals and we’ll probably never know them, like every nature forms. However, let’s try to discuss about the things we know for the moment. We’ve seen that corals are true builders. But they are not only simple builders: they are colourful builders! Red, pink, brown, green, yellow… they are colours for everybody! And guess where come from all these rainbows of colours? Yes, exactly my attentive reader! They came from the tiny algae who live inside the polyps: the zooxanthellae (most of the tropical hard corals possess this symbiont). The algae give colours to the cor...

Hey, Aishah in the snorkeling kiosk My name is Aishah Fanchette, I’m 19 years old from Seychelles and I work on Le Méridien Fisherman’s Cove project. I’m not new in the MCSS team, I worked one month at the Banyan Tree in 2015 with the turtle and terrapin project and worked two months on Cerf Island in 2016 with the CICP (Cerf Island Conservation Project) while I was still in school doing my work base attachments. Now that I have finished school at the Seychelles Maritime  Academy and obtained my Advance Certificate in Fisheries Science, MCSS was my first door to knock up. It was the best place to start and I also got experience in the job. So I got the position here at the Fisherman’s cove working as a Research Assistant. I have started to work here about 3 months ago and everything so far is going great. I get to learn different facts about turtles, fishes and mostly corals every day. Our main tasks are to handle the snorkeling kiosk, guide the clients on the snorkeling t...

Bonzour everyone, My name is Léopold and I’m the new intern in the Coral nurseries project at Le Méridien Fisherman’s Cove. I’m 22 years old and I’m doing my internship with the Marine Conservation Society in Seychelles (MCSS) for my master of “Marine Biodiversity and Conservation”. I first worked on the terrapins trapping in the South of Mahé and I joined the coral project last week.  I have to say that it’s really nice to be in Seychelles and to participate in this project. I used to be a scientific mediator in the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco during the Summer period. I remembered that it’s there, I really start to be fascinated by corals. The corals occupy less than 1% of the Ocean and they are still the host of approximately 25% of the marine worldwide biodiversity.  In a simple word, coral reefs are the underwater equivalent of the tropical rainforests. A true hotspot of biodiversity ! At first sight for most of the people they just look like a strange colo...