Welcome to the Marine Mammal and wildlife Research and Community Development Expedition blog where you can keep up to date with all the happenings and information from Kenya

Monday, June 7, 2010

Expedition 102... how time flies.

On marine it feels that this expedition is running fast, too fast. Full of wonderful moments and interesting discoveries, the past 8 weeks in Mkwiro seems like only 8 days. Many enthusiastic volunteers have passed through this programme and each one contributing to the research work that GVI doing developing in the Marine Protected Area of Kisite/Mpunguti and broadening their own knowledge.

--Some of the marine volunteer team--
An example of our final work and an important achievement this expedition, are the reef fish laminated sheets we have designed for the tourist boats. The purpose of these sheets is to provide tour guides a tool to display what kind of fish species can be found in the MPA. The sheets are dived into families of fish, with a lot of our best underwater photos and some information about them given. The aim is for this to provide the tourists with new interesting information and improve their overall experience of the day; and with this additional knowledge tourist will know what they have seen and can go back to their countries having learnt something.
--Reef fish sheet to be used on the tourist boats--

The reef fish catalogue, together with the dive slates can permit a study about the diversity and abundance of reef fish in this area, and a comparison between the Marine Park and Marine Reserve; to study the health of the reef with the indicators species; the populations trends of fish species, the impacts of tourism and fishing pressure and a lot more.

--Two of our dedicated staff members during a marine research day--
There have been so many positive things that we can tell about during the time we have spent in Mkwiro paradise. All this couldn’t be possible without the dedication and passion of the volunteers, that have given up their time and energy to do something amazing, without the staff that organise and manage all activities, without the local community that give the support and the final smiles, and of course this beautiful place that allowed all this magic to happen.

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