SEALife Seychelles’ 4th edition out |29 November 2013

The 4th edition of SEALife Seychelles is out and what a great edition it is. The promoters of the magazine continue to deliver on their promise to cover as wide a range of subjects as possible.

This time around, the magazine focuses on activities which are popular during the south east monsoon. Sailing is prominently featured in two articles; in the first one, Evangeline Goulding, the pioneer and long time trainer of the Sail Training Scheme, shares with us the history of the scheme from its early days (1976). The second article by Alain Alcindor covers the current day activities and reminds of the successes of our sailors in international tournaments.

The fish featured this time around is the shark. This resource and its usefulness is expertly analysed by Joel Nageon de Lestang, a prominent Seychellois fisheries biologist. The review comes at an appropriate moment as Seychellois continue the heated debate on shark fishing and culling.

Lovers of conservation efforts and programmes will no doubt enjoy reading some interesting facts shared with us by the authors of three articles. Aurélie Duhec exposes the behaviour of sea turtles when they are hatching during the observation and monitoring of the programme by the Island Conservation Society on Alphonse while Tove Jorgensen goes underwater exploring fish aggregation habits. We discover that it is important to protect such sites.

Sooty birds are an important part of our ecosystem and the editor, Arnold Chetty explains that beyond the annual birds eggs season, there is a lot going on to ensure that this species is not threatened with extinction.

No issue of SEALife Seychelles will be complete without content on fishing and the tournaments. Four tournaments complete with colourful photos are covered, with the most special of these, the La Digue Offshore tournament, given in-depth attention.

Henry Riggs-Miller continues his stories on the fantastic fishing that awaits anglers off Denis Island. Henry managed to lure the legendary Capt. Brad Philipps to fish with him at Denis Island and Capt. Philipps shares his impression with SEALife Seychelles.

The new fishing season is now open at Desroches Island and furthermore the action has now returned to Cosmoledo and Astove, after years of being closed on account of piracy. The first expeditions have returned with stories of how good and world class the fishing is at these south islands. The stories and amazing photos of the fishes being caught as we write are beautifully covered in this edition.

We have just celebrated the Subios weekend festival and SEALife Seychelles reminds us why this event is now firmly fixed in the Seychelles Tourist Board calendar of events. Two of the anchor persons of this festival, Elizabeth Fideria and Glynis Rowat, invite us to dive with them to their favourite spots.

Onshore, Jean-Paul Lebon who took part in the August 2013 Academy by the Sea clearly enjoyed his time (away from electronic games) in this programme, judging by the account of his report in the magazine.

News Notes is a new section which brings us all up to date on some of the news worthy events which we may have missed. This is really useful and shows how much is going on in our marine environment without us realising.

It is also refreshing to see SEALife keeping a close eye on important commercial events as depicted by Kate Carolus on the new directions of Oceana Fisheries or reminding us through the watchful eyes of Dr Nirmal Shah that oil and whales do not mix.

The look, feel and contents of the magazine now matches international publications but with one exception. The contents are unique and are true revelations of the special efforts which are put in by people from all walks of life in taking care of our pristine marine environment and which are often not given adequate publicity.

We need to share this to the rest of the world and we are thankful for the team at SEALife and all the contributors for their great work. We shall look forward with eagerness to each new edition.

Contributed