I am from the Seychelles Maritime Academy and I am currently doing my internship on Cousin Island Special Reserve, taking advantage of new possibilities and helping to conserve what we have. Since Monday the 8th February I have been working with Nature Seychelles. I have been taking part in several conservation tasks that the staff regularly carry out on the island, such as turtle patrols, turtle nest excavations, bird monitoring, just to name a few. The island is also open to the public for visits every week day from 10.00 am to 12.00 pm, allowing everyone the opportunity to see and photograph the different flaura and fauna.
Living on Cousin Island is the best you can wish for! Having such wonderful fauna and flora around you makes it the best place to relax and enjoy nature!! However above all, the focus is to work and conserve what we have. Cousin is a granitic island with 400 meters of offshore Marine Park and 27 hectares of land.
Being part of such a unique island with its diversity is an amazing experience. The island has various types of birds and living with them is like living with angels in heaven. if you live on cousin you definitely don’t need an alarm to wake you up in the morning as the birds take care of that. Birds on Cousins live in harmony with no predators to harm them.
One of my favourite birds is the wedge tail shearwater, even if they are more active at night. All around the island you will see guano which looks similar to rocks but it isn’t, it is just bird poo mixed with sand, mud and leaves which overtime becomes a hard and solid substrate. Back in the old days settlers used it as fertiliser.
Cousins staff and volunteers are responsible for the maintainance of the island and sustainable develepment is one important key role. Volunteers from all round the world come to Cousin to give a helping hand with birds, sea turtles and so forth, by collecting scientific data. They even have short classes in order to familiarize themselves with corals, plants and other animals.
I find volunteering to be a really a nice thing to do, as you are making the world a better place and helping to make a difference. I feel very grateful towards Nature Seychelles for giving me this opportunity to immerse myself more into conservation and to be an ambasador for my country.
Oneal Tambou