Claire and Isla, 5 week Marine Professional Development Program

It’s been a busy week here in Mozambique!

On Monday, we had a very early start so we could go and watch the boat launch of the fishing competition in order to get the size of each fishing boat. The sunrise was especially nice this morning. We then spent the rest of the day at fisheries, measuring what fish the local fishermen brought in. Interestingly, most fishermen were working for the South African fishermen, instead of fishing themselves. We also went to the competition weigh in to get the size of each fish caught. It was definitely a unique experience, seeing all the game fish close up.

On Tuesday, we conducted our coral reef biodiversity surveys! On our surface interval we had a surprise of a pod of bottlenose dolphins that we were able to snorkel with! There was at least one calf with them! Claire and I are definitely getting a lot quicker logging all our data.

Wednesday, we headed to Paindane fisheries. We’ve been playing a lot of a card game called cambio too.

On Thursday, we dived again, this time with the BEAM team!! Unfortunately for me I forgot to take my seasickness tablets… which I won’t be doing again in a hurry! During one of the dives we laid the transect right next to an octopus, which Claire and Imran both saw but I was too focused on the transect that somehow I completely missed it!

Friday was a chill day catching up on some work for an exciting coral project that is running next week! On the weekend, Claire and I completed our drift dive for our Advanced Open Water Course, which was an insane dive sight! Whenever we are on the boat we keep our eyes peeled for humpbacks. There was a funny moment where we were pointing at a sailfish jumping out the water and half the team thought it was a whale!

Looking forward to next week!