Aldabra and Dugongs

Maria Brioche Outreach and Education officer for SIF came to talk to the Wildlife club for Protected Areas Day. SIF manages and protects the UNESCO World Heritage sites of Aldabra Atoll and the Vallee de Mai. She has visited Aldabra atoll herself with the Eco award winners and came to give a brief talk about Aldabra . Maria spoke knowledgeably about the special flora and fauna on the island and showed slides of the kind of activities that students would be involved in during a visit there. These include bird and turtle monitoring, shark spotting and nocturnal hunts for the coconut robber crabs. We all agreed that Aldabra looks like an amazing place. Many thanks to Maria for travelling over from Praslin to speak to and inspire our students. After the presentation the pupils were involved in a very creative art project using recycled bottle tops and produced a beautiful dugong – these marine mammals still live happily in the pristine Aldabra atolls. Let’s hope we can visit them one day!

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