Nikkita's Trip to Madagascar

Wednesday, 10th June 2009

Earlier in the year the OQA offered to sponsor Nikkita to work as a Field Scientist in southwest Madagascar, below is Nikkita's fascinating report on the experience.

"For the last six months, I have been working as a Field Scientist for Blue Ventures in southwest Madagascar. Blue Ventures started in 2003, concentrating primarily on marine conservation and research, and improving the socioeconomic infrastructure of the Velondriake region. Blue Ventures organizes expeditions for volunteers, offering the chance to get involved in many aspects of their work.

Velondriake is an area stretching over 800 square kilometres, effecting 10,000 people. The local people are known as the ‘Vezo’, or ‘people of the sea’. The village of Andavadoaka, where I lived, is the largest in the region, with roughly 1,200 inhabitants. The Vezo’s livelihood is very much dependent on the sea, which feeds them, offers them transport (in the form of pirogues – a dug out sailing canoe) and supplies which are brought in by large sailing boutres. Running water is yet to arrive in the village, and there is no postal service, no mobile phone reception and electricity is limited to a handful of people: those who can afford a generator.

The local men spend all day every day fishing from their pirogues, and the women wait for the return of their husbands, looking after their children and fetching water from the well, whilst trying to boost their income by selling small fried fish and fruit, or fishing for octopus on the low spring tides. Poverty is widespread in Madagascar; women have up to sixteen children and £1.50 is perceived as a high daily wage for a man to support his entire family.

Madagascar is one of the twentyfive world hotspots for biodiversity, but like many of these unique hotspots it is under threat. Hot conservation topics in Madagascar include: deforestation, over fishing, and rapid population growth. Blue Ventures are helping to address many of these issues in Velondriake. They have established the first community-run octopus marine reserves, which were so successful at increasing the average octopus size that the model has been used by the Madagascan government to set up reserves elsewhere. They also have launched a sea cucumber farming project for the local women to provide a sustainable form of income, as well as a children’s environmental club. I was involved in a project to decrease the amount of deforestation; I visited nearby villages by pirogue to sell solar stoves heavily subsidized by Blue Ventures. Blue Ventures have been rewarded for their work; they received the UN Equator Prize in 2007 and more recently, the President of the Velondriake Committee, Roger Samba, who works closely with Blue Ventures, received the Getty Award for conservation leadership.

Blue Ventures also launched a family planning and STI awareness project. The expedition medic runs a family planning clinic every week and is hoping to set up satellite clinics in other villages. Shockingly, condoms are being used to knock birds out of trees and to take torches underwater to hunt lobsters. Blue Ventures has been working hard to rectify this. We organized pirogue races for the village, which featured family planning demonstrations before the start. Volunteers painted a pirogue sail featuring our mascot Captain Kapoty (condom) that the medical students used to visit neighbouring villages to raise STI and condom awareness.

A major part of my role was to develop and schedule the volunteer training programme; teaching the scientific methodologies required N e w s l e t t e r S u m m e r 2 0 0 9 5 for our reef surveying. A usual day started at 5:00am when I rose to lead the first dive of the day. I spent the majority of my mornings underwater pointing out and testing volunteers on their 152 species of fish, and their knowledge of benthic organisms. Highlights of my mornings included a humpback whale surfacing less than 200m from my boat, listening to whale song, blue spotted rays, the odd turtle, and on a couple of occasions – reef sharks. I was even fortunate to see an electric ray give birth, which was pretty astonishing! I have now led over 200 research survey dives and qualified as a PADI Dive Master.

During the afternoon, I delivered lectures and ran workshops or led expeditions to the nearby baobabs, mangroves and seagrass beds. In addition to this, I was responsible for directing and overseeing marine and terrestrial research projects; this included re-establishing the seagrass monitoring, and starting ornithological surveys as well as organizing the English teaching for the local children and their Malagasy English teacher.

My major research interest is hard coral; fortunately, I was able to identify hard coral to genus due to my previous marine research experience in the Seychelles sponsored by the Old Queenians’ Association. I led all the hard coral monitoring from bleaching to diversity surveys, and produced training documents for other scientists. My greatest achievement whilst in Madagascar was discovering the date of the annual coral spawning event by monitoring the reproductive maturity of the coral. This is a first for science as previous studies had only been able to narrow the date to the nearest two weeks. Leading projects with very little resources was challenging but also very rewarding.

In addition to benefiting from the marine research field experience, I learnt a lot about the culture of the Vezo. Vazaha (foreigners) have to become accustomed to local traditions and taboos known as fady. Touching another person’s head or standing under a specific tree could cause disgrace and the villagers thought that this would upset the ancestors. Ceremonies including exorcisms were regularly performed in the village to prevent the ancestors becoming upset. I had to ensure I was aware of anything perceived as ‘fady’ as I interacted with local staff on a daily basis and worked closely with the village.

The expeditions provide something for everyone; no matter what age or background, Blue Ventures will find a way for you to contribute and make a difference in Andavadoaka, whilst enjoying the experience and absorbing a new culture. Blue Ventures’ volunteers and staff have the opportunity to meet the Nahudas (village elders), travel via pirogue, try bok bok in the village ‘coffee shop’, visit the baobabs and totally immerse themselves in the Vezo way of life by opting to spend a weekend with a local family. I have learnt a lot from my time in Andavadoaka and am proud to have contributed my time and energy to helping Blue Ventures achieve their goals.

I would like to thank the Old Queenians’ Association for their continued support with my marine research. From April, I will be on the Greek Island of Samos working for Archipelagos Marine Research Institute.

For more information about Blue Ventures and their expeditions, which now also include Fiji and Malaysia, please visit www.blueventures.org or email me at nikkita@dunelm.org.uk"

Nikkita Lawton, OQ
1998-2005

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