Born Free

Category: Sea Sense | Date: Jul 14 2008 | By: bornfree

Hi, I’m John Mbugani, the Education Officer at Sea Sense.  Last week I got back from a 10 day trip to the Rufiji Delta, the last stronghold of the extremely rare and elusive dugong, or sea cow. The delta is amazing with small channels bordered by mangrove trees and so many birds! On the sea side, there are vast areas of seagrasses and long stretches of sandy beaches some of which are turtle nesting sites.

The reason we (me and a group of fishers and experts from other parts of Tanzania) were there was to try and make sure dugong protection and conservation is included in the management plans of recently initiated community “Beach Management Units”. These BMUs are basically groups of local fishers who want to start managing their own marine and coastal resources.

We visited 8 villages to help them think about what issues they have in their village and to draft up a management plan. Some of the problems they face are illegal fishing (dynamiting in particular), use of their fishing grounds by non-resident fishermen and destruction of the seagrasses and fishing grounds by industrial prawn trawlers.

It was a very interesting process and I’m happy to say that conservation of both dugongs and turtles were raised by 6 out of 8 villages and have been included in their plans for resource management.

In a few weeks time we will return to help them start to implement their plans.

Soon I am off to the coast south of Dar es Salaam to conduct some training with hotel staff and do an interview survey. I will be accompanied by the Sea Sense Administrator, Dot Ndunguru and 4 students from the University of Dar es Salaam.

Tags: dugong, illegal fishing, Rufiji Delta, Sea Sense

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Category: Sea Sense | Date: Jul 09 2008 | By: bornfree

I recently returned from a trip along the coast south of Tanzania’s capital Dar es Salaam. This stretch of coast is about 65km long and most is ideal turtle nesting habitat. We normally record about 100 green turtle here nests a year. Because it is so close to Dar es Salaam it is very disturbed and we are doing all that we can to minimize disturbance to nesting turtles and hatchlings from hotel development, fisher camps and illegal fishing activities, especially dynamiting. This is achieved mainly through education, public awareness and production of guidelines for tourism building (e.g. lights). While down there, we spent some time with the managers of two luxury hotels with whom we are promoting turtle tourism. We relocate some nests that are at risk from inundation to their beaches and in return we receive donations (modest unfortunately) from their guests. In this way, turtle protection in this area is becoming sustainable as these funds help pay for the community Conservation Officers as well as small nest incentives that are paid out when a turtle nest is reported.

Our main problem at the moment is nest predation by mongooses and red ants. The latter attack the young turtles as they come out of the eggs deep in the sand. We are minimizing the risk from mongooses by surrounding the nests with chicken wire and covering them with fishing net (this is removed a few days before hatching). For the red ants, we are trying a variety of things such as placing cold ash at the bottom and top of the nest.

Next week we are back off to the south coast to do some training with hotel staff. We have 4 University of Dar es Salaam undergraduates with Sea Sense for the next 2 months and they will be helping us with the training and with protecting turtle nests.

More next week!

Tags: illegal fishing, poaching, protection, Sea Sense, Tanzania, turtles

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