A Case for Enlarging the Marine Protected Area?

Following an initial two days of training; learning how the marine research is conducted, what species we need to be able to recognise, and our roles on and off the boat, we were thrown in at the deep end... (sorry, couldn’t resist!). The typical daily routine involves heading out to sea shortly after dawn, undertaking dedicated searches for cetaceans (dolphins), and snorkelling transect surveys until around midday, then returning back to base for data entry and analysis in the afternoon.

Yesterday morning we spotted a group of Indo-Pacific Bottlenose Dolphins in an area where they have very rarely been seen before. It was a significant distance to the north-west of the Kisite-Mpunguti Marine Protected Area (MPA) and could provide important data in support of a case for it to be enlarged.

The current Kisite-Mpunguti MPA comprises an area of 39km² to the south and south-east of GVI’s marine base on Wasini Island. Whilst Bottlenose Dolphins have been seen outside of the MPA to the south-west, to see some to the west of Wasini almost as far as Sii Island is an exciting sighting. Watching them for almost an hour, their foraging and feeding behaviour indicates that this location may be an important area that also needs to become protected.

Despite having been working with GVI for almost 2 years now, this is the first time I have joined a project purely as a volunteer. So being the one to make this important sighting from the GVI research boat, it is extremely satisfying to think that I am making a valuable contribution to the expedition’s objectives to help conserve this key biodiversity hotspot. Next week I will be leading the marine survey team for a day and we will be going back to the area of this sighting to see if we can reinforce our data further.