The start of the new year is still a very busy time on Cousin island.

At the moment we are still busy with turtles emerging to nest but we also have our hands full with hatchlings emerging and monitoring the nests that were laid earlier in the season. At the moment we also have a number of seabird species arriving on the island for nesting. Fairy terns and White tailed tropic birds both nest in their greatest numbers during the current season on the island. As soon as most of the birds appear to have laid their eggs the wardens will attempt to conduct the seabird census to determine just how many pairs of seabirds are using the island to nest.

At the moment most of the fairy terns seem to have eggs although many more are arriving each day. The fairy tern doesn’t actually build a nest but lays its eggs right on the branch or any slightly flat area. The parents take it in turns to incubate and guard the egg. Eggs that are left unguarded can easily be pushed off the branch by hungry skinks. Once the chicks hatch they have to hang on to the branch but they have very large feet to help them with this while they wait patiently for their parents to return from sea with a mouthful of fish.

The other birds arriving on the island at the moment include white tailed tropic birds and brown noddies. This time of year is not the busiest or most crowded on Cousin as far as seabirds go. During June and July the lesser noddies also breed and pairs can be seen building nests on almost every branch and things get very crowded.

While a lot of the work I do is involved with looking after the monitoring on Cousin, I also work on some projects on the main island of Mahe. I first came to Seychelles to study the tiny endemic frogs that are found on Mahe and Silhouette. These are the only 2 islands in the world that these frogs call home. Recently the Zoological Society of London launched its EDGE amphibians web site which is a follow up to its EDGE mammals site.

Almost half of the worlds known amphibian species are declining. In an attempt to highlight and help the worlds endangered amphibians the ZSL has compiled a list of the worlds 100 most threatened and evolutionarily distinct amphibians. Seychelles is home to 13 species of amphibians, including an endemic family of frogs, the Sooglossidae, and 6 species of caecilians. Like many of the amphibians on the list the Sooglossids, along with the caecilians in Seychelles, receive only limited conservation attention. A lack of resources and support means that monitoring of these animals relies on project funding.

For the Sooglossid species much information about their basic biology and ecology remains unknown as money and resources to study these animals can be scarse and their tiny size makes studying them even harder. The small metamorphs of Gardiner’s frog does not need water and it goes through the tadpole stage inside the egg, hatching out as a tiny frog the size of a grain of rice.

Nature Seychelles is continuing to monitor the distribution and abundance of this species as well as the other amphibians found on Mahe. Hopefully detailed monitoring will mean that any change in abundance and distribution can be detected and ensure the continued survival of this tiny beast and its close relatives.

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Once again as I write this I have to apologize for how quiet things have been on the Cousin Island Blog over the last month or so. I guess the only good thing about that is it means things have been very busy on the turtle side of things on Cousin and at Nature Seychelles. Actually just before I started writing this installment to the blog I spoke to Eric, the Conservation Officer on Cousin, who was sitting on the beach watching a female Hawksbill turtle dig a nesting chamber to lay what will be the islands 486th nest for the season. Because at the moment she is still digging Eric has not been able to check the numbers on the tags we use to individually mark each turtle but he was able to tell me the numbers from the turtle that laid nest number 485. That particular individual has already visited Cousin island once this nesting season and she laid a clutch of eggs then as well, nest number 253. She may have visited the island between these 2 nests and the wardens do their best to detect each turtle that emerges onto the beach but that can be hard and it often depends slightly on the time they emerge from the water.

The wardens are quite lucky with the Hawksbill turtles on Cousin as they all emerge to lay their eggs during day light with over 90% of the turtles nesting between 6:00 am and 7:00 pm. In most other turtle nesting areas in the world the turtles only emerge to lay their eggs under the cover of darkness.

The turtle that laid nest number 485 has visited Cousin a number of times before. Infact this nesting season is the fourth nesting season she has been seen and identified on Cousin. The only way to know that is because each nesting turtle that is seen is individually tagged with numbers that identify her. Without the tags we would not know where or when the turtle last nested. From the other information we collect from each turtle we can also see that when she nests on Cousin she always nests on Anse Vacoa - the most popular beach for turtles nesting on Cousin, or very close to it on the nearest beach - Main Beach.

From the tags I can also tell you that the first time this turtle was seen was on Cousin. That does not mean she does not lay on other islands nearby. In fact a number of the turtles tagged on Cousin use the beaches on the neighboring island of Cousine to lay eggs and some of the turtles originally tagged on Cousine also visit the beaches of Cousin. The wardens on Cousin have been able to identify turtles originally tagged on the islands of Cousine, Aride and Curieuse as using the beaches on Cousin. All of this information can only be obtained thanks to the 7 patrols a day conducted by the wardens and volunteers and the intensive monitoring program that they are a very important part of. This kind of information can then be used to ensure the future conservation of Hawksbill turtles in Seychelles waters.

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Things are getting busy on Cousin Island at the moment with more turtles arriving every day. And its not just nesting hawksbill turtles either, this week 3 new volunteers arrive on Cousin to assist with the turtle monitoring. At the busiest time of the nesting season there are patrols around all the beaches on Cousin every 2 hours and most of the time that means a new patrol starts before the previous one finishes. This keeps the Nature Seychelles’ wardens and the Conservation Officer, Eric Blais very busy. This year we are starting an extensive volunteer programme to help out at this important time of the year and this week we have a volunteer from Australia and 2 from the UK to help out. The three volunteers will join Oliver, our current volunteer who has been on Cousin for nearly three months now.

Oliver heads back to the UK in a couple of weeks after helping out with all the day to day activities on Cousin as well as the turtle monitoring. That includes lending a hand pushing boats and conducting guided tours for the many visitors that arrive on Cousin every morning during the week. At the moment on Cousin they are busy with 5 turtle patrols each day but this may increase to 6 as the island approaches its busiest time for nesting turtles.

Each patrol involves 2 people and a complete circuit of the island. When a turtle is encountered it is closely monitored to determine what stage of nesting it is at. The nesting turtle is measured and if it has identifying tags the numbers are recorded. If the turtle does not have tags one is applied to each of the front flippers so that when the turtle returns to nest it can be identified again. The nest site is marked so that the staff and volunteers can keep a close eye on the hatchlings when they are due to emerge from the nest.

Last year on Cousin it took on average 65 days for the nests to hatch after being laid. At the moment most of the focus of the monitoring is on detecting and identifying all of the adult turtles that emerge to nest. In the future we hope to concentrate more on the hatchlings and the nest success but at the moment it is a full time job keeping up with the emerging females. Last season 220 individual turtles were identified during the season and of these 70 were newly tagged. Hawksbill turtles nest multiple times in a season, usually it is about 2 weeks between each nesting attempt, and on average the turtles that use the beaches on Cousin nest 2.6 times each season. However, 4 turtles nested 6 times within the 2005-2006 nesting season.

The intensive monitoring of the turtles on Cousin means the work load of the wardens increases significantly during turtle season but with the help of the volunteers things are made a little easier and this means valuable information on the population of nesting females and the success of the new hatclings can be recorded and used to aid the conservation of these turtles and the species.

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Cousin Island is a granitic island covering 27 hectares. It became the world’s first internationally owned-reserve in 1968 and it was afforded further protection when it was designated a Special Reserve in 1974. The reserve is managed by Nature Seychelles, a local conservation organization that employs local staff and brings benefits local communities through eco-tourism. Conservation activities include monitoring of the island’s biodiversity, research, re-introduction of endangered species such as the Seychelles Magpie Robin, ecotourism and education

I am the Science coordinator for Nature Seychelles and together with Eric Blais who is our new Conservation Officer on Cousin Island Special Reserve I undertake the supervision of all the monitoring and research we undertake. Eric and I decided to do this to tell you about the spectacular biodiversity here, and what we are doing to protect it.

There’s lots happening. The turtle nesting season has just started and this is special - today three of the seven existing species of marine turtles are critically endangered, three are endangered and the status of the seventh remains unknown. Cousin Island Special Reserve is the largest nesting site for the endangered Hawksbill turtle, Eretmochelys imbricata, in the Western Indian Ocean. We will tell you all about the breeding activities as well as topics of a wider context touching on other activities - when the turtles are not nesting on Cousin.

The island is really special. It supports populations of endangered land birds and large colonies of breeding seabirds, while the surrounding Marine Protected Area holds over 250 species of fish. I hope this blog encourages you to participate in conservation here on Cousin Island.

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