Recent and upcoming changes in the village:
-With the arrival of the new water tanks and all the rain lately the village should be in good shape during the upcoming dry season as they now have an additional 60,000L of rainwater to use
-The new village health clinic officially begins business on May 1st. By that day the government supported nurse, medicines. equipment and furniture (e.g. exam table, bed, etc.) will have arrived. The government has also provided a new boat that will be used to transport sick people from close-by villages to the clinic. And I've been told that the boat is 'very fast' and that the village has been given permission to use it as a taxi when not transporting sick people, so the ride to and from the turtle project just got that much faster.
-A couple of people have already left the village for New Zealand on a fruit picking scheme and another farmer is in Vanuatu right now specifically to recruit people from the village (one of the chiefs is now the agent for that farmer so Tasiriki gets first dibs on the positions). So it looks like a large portion of the younger guys will be heading to NZ in the very near future. Will have to wait and see how this impacts the turtle project.
Other planned changes for the upcoming year:
-The project will start one month earlier this year with the first group of volunteers helping with all the initial project set-up (e.g. clearing the path to the beach, helping to build the dining hall, marking the beach sectors, etc.)
-Dining hall to be completed
-Cement floors to be put into the bungalows
-A monthly schedule set in place for optional planned activities everyday to help keep the volunteers occupied
-More volunteer involvement with the school
Other wish list changes for the upcoming year
-Electrify the dining hall (solar) to provide a better space for the volunteers on rainy nights, and a place to do data entry (see below)
-Try to source a used laptop so that the data entry for the project can be done on-site. If data was entered the day after it was recorded it should help cut down on the number of mistakes that were made on data sheets this year (much easier to correct the mistakes the next day rather than several months later)
Friday, April 18, 2008
Monday, April 14, 2008
Results of the 2007-2008 Nesting Season
The volunteers have finished and the community turtle monitors have just spent the last few days on the beach collecting data from the last of the hatched nests. So the quick summary of the data from the last two seasons is as follows:
*2006*
142 potential nests marked
80 (56%) were true nests
62 (44%) were false nests or the nests were not located again (e.g. nest not marked precisely, markers lost during cyclones, etc.)
from those 80 true nests we had a total estimate of 10,950 eggs
10,089 (92%) of those eggs successfully hatched
861 (8%) did not survive
*2007*
90 potential nests were marked
69 (77%) were true nests
17 (19%) were false nests or the nests were not located again (e.g. nest not marked precisely, markers lost during cyclones, nest taken, etc.)
4 (4%) have not hatched yet
from the 69 nests we had a total estimate of 8,060 eggs
8034 (91%) of those eggs successfully hatched
762 (9%) did not survive
*Possible explanations on number variations between the two years*
1. Numbers of nesting turtles just plain old vary from year to year.
2. The weather conditions were much worse this year resulting in fewer nights spent surveying the nesting beach.
3. There seems to have been some taking of nests this year that didn't occur last year.
4. While fewer nests were located this year the percentage of true nests increased. This suggests that the community turtle monitors are getting better at identifying true nests.
We plan to make a couple of changes to the survey system next year that I am hoping will have some positive impacts. The first change is that we are going to try out more of a beach ranger type system for monitoring the beach. Essentially the volunteers will be split into 3 groups and paired with a community turtle monitor. Those 3 groups will then work in about 5 hour shifts so that there is always a group patrolling the beach from dusk until dawn (weather permitting). We are also going to use a different system to mark the nests so that the nest marker is not directly over the nest (e.g. the marker is 2 metres to the let of the nest). The marking will be different for each nest but will be recorded on the data sheets so that the people working on the turtle project are able to relocate the nest but potential poachers are not able to.
*Possible impacts of the planned change to the 'ranger' beach survey system next year and cryptic nest marking system*
1. Having a presence of people on the beach from dusk until dawn should help deter people from stealing nests.
2. The marking system should make it difficult for others to find the nests. The key to this working will be proper documentation of how each nest has been marked.
3. More time on the beach should mean that fewer nesting turtles are missed. Many have been missed the last couple of years due to the fact we are not on the beach all night.
*2006*
142 potential nests marked
80 (56%) were true nests
62 (44%) were false nests or the nests were not located again (e.g. nest not marked precisely, markers lost during cyclones, etc.)
from those 80 true nests we had a total estimate of 10,950 eggs
10,089 (92%) of those eggs successfully hatched
861 (8%) did not survive
*2007*
90 potential nests were marked
69 (77%) were true nests
17 (19%) were false nests or the nests were not located again (e.g. nest not marked precisely, markers lost during cyclones, nest taken, etc.)
4 (4%) have not hatched yet
from the 69 nests we had a total estimate of 8,060 eggs
8034 (91%) of those eggs successfully hatched
762 (9%) did not survive
*Possible explanations on number variations between the two years*
1. Numbers of nesting turtles just plain old vary from year to year.
2. The weather conditions were much worse this year resulting in fewer nights spent surveying the nesting beach.
3. There seems to have been some taking of nests this year that didn't occur last year.
4. While fewer nests were located this year the percentage of true nests increased. This suggests that the community turtle monitors are getting better at identifying true nests.
We plan to make a couple of changes to the survey system next year that I am hoping will have some positive impacts. The first change is that we are going to try out more of a beach ranger type system for monitoring the beach. Essentially the volunteers will be split into 3 groups and paired with a community turtle monitor. Those 3 groups will then work in about 5 hour shifts so that there is always a group patrolling the beach from dusk until dawn (weather permitting). We are also going to use a different system to mark the nests so that the nest marker is not directly over the nest (e.g. the marker is 2 metres to the let of the nest). The marking will be different for each nest but will be recorded on the data sheets so that the people working on the turtle project are able to relocate the nest but potential poachers are not able to.
*Possible impacts of the planned change to the 'ranger' beach survey system next year and cryptic nest marking system*
1. Having a presence of people on the beach from dusk until dawn should help deter people from stealing nests.
2. The marking system should make it difficult for others to find the nests. The key to this working will be proper documentation of how each nest has been marked.
3. More time on the beach should mean that fewer nesting turtles are missed. Many have been missed the last couple of years due to the fact we are not on the beach all night.
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