Whale Sharks

Category: Community work | Date: Mar 06 2008 | By: admin

It’s back to earth with a bump and back to the real world for us here in Diani. We enjoyed the tagging so much but now it’s back to work!! Simon and David went into schools yesterday to give presentations and generally blow the East African Whale Shark’s trumpet after Expedition 2008!! (Can you really blame us?!!) Volker and I went to a community meeting down in Shimoni on the Year of the Dolphin sponsored by TUI/Pollmans and the Kenya Wildlife Service. It was a lengthy meeting but a productive one. There were various key parties there - school teachers, fishermen, boat operators, local chiefs and projects like ours. We all have the welfare of dolphins and other marine creatures in mind. Last year we adopted a code of conduct for dolphin interaction and this year we plan to build on that. There is a launch planned and other awareness raising campaigns, workshops and projects afoot. This grass roots work is really important and whilst of course we would rather be out there tagging and doing research, nothing can stand on its own hence the need for community meetings so that we can work together. We were glad to be there and Volker is going to run some workshops for the fishermen on how to use echo-sounders. We hope to encourage them to fish away from our precious coral reefs. Echo-sounders will help them find the fish out on the continental shelf and generally make their lives a lot easier. I am going to help start Year of the Dolphin related work in the local schools here in Diani.

Here we are at the meeting. Mr Abdulla Aziz is standing up, next to him is KWS Senior Warden Yusuf, the Assistant Director Philip Mwakio and Dan Schumacher from TUI. You can also see the really impressive wall display in the KWS information centre.

And here is Brent, who will have just about reached home after a monster 48 trip. He is off to tag seals today. We miss you Brent!!