GVI Kenya

Hello everyone!

I guess to start with we should mention that today is Wednesday… Weetabix day! Yeah!
Small things that help remind us what day it is as time flies when your having fun! So, after our weetabix and powdered milk we were ready for a full day out in the bay.

We had originally set our course for the South East Section of the Kisite-Mpunguti MPA where we had plans to do some research and turtle snorkelling on transect 9. To get there Shafi took us out into Funzi Bay, beyond Nyuli Reef where the water starts to get very deep, 200m and in some parts deeper.

 Spotted dolphin

This is the perfect place to see Spinner dolphins we all thought. After exiting the channel and the shallower reefs without seeing any bottlenose dolphins, hopes were high for the Spinners. There were a couple of close calls that led to nothing and then randomly, Shafii found a strange red thing floating in the water. As we approached it, we found out that it was a survival suit that must have been thrown overboard off a Chinese cargo ship a few months ago. Things like that you don’t usually expect to see while surveying dolphins, let alone the one pant leg that looks mysteriously ripped off!

After concluding that it must have been caused by an engine propeller, we were off again… and soon after this, the real magic happened…

We continued towards our South East direction when we first spotted them (no pun intended!) At about 100m from the port side at 20 degrees was the first of 3 sightings of dolphins today. Although you never get tired of seeing them, this may not have seemed significant, however…

Today was a very special day for the crew onboard Bardan, for GVI and for dolphin research in Kenya as we had the privilege of seeing the first documented sighting of the Pantropical Spotted Dolphin in GVI history and possibly in Kenya also. A great experience to be apart of, we tracked them for about an hour and noticed that a mother had a new born calf. Always a great sign of a healthy population.

This species is well documented in the Eastern Tropical Pacific but is not studied anywhere else. It is a medium to large dolphin that in some respects looks similar to the bottlenose but with the key distinguishing feature of spots and mottling along its body and its extremely falcate dorsal fin.

 Group of spotted dolphins

After we left them, I felt really privileged as it was one of those treats that make you really glad to be here. A real sense of pride and accomplishment that you have contributed to the cause that is aimed at protecting these very animals and their habitat.

Thanks to everyone for making it possible!

By: Tristen Murchie

Neil joined us as a volunteer here in Kenya and below gives us his thoughts on the experience:

Having travelled for three days – including a wonderful overnight stay at the Reef Hotel in Nyali, Mombasa – it was good to arrive at Shimoni, cross to Mkwiro, and start the settling in process. Meeting lots of people for the first time, getting to grips with living very simply in a constantly changing community, and starting a steep learning curve for the activities of the next five weeks is no easy matter! It is however, interesting, exciting and challenging.

This is certainly not a holiday; long working days in intense heat – and I haven’t got into the forest yet – are hard work. So, too, is the fact that the base is on an island with no mains power or running water. Everything has to get to this island and the last part of its journey is usually a matter of carrying it from the boat by the staff and volunteers: at high tide, that means up the steps from the sea and at low tide, there’s an additional journey along the beach before reaching the steps!

All this effort is to enable GVI to work with and serve its partner organisations here in Kenya, principally Kenya Wildlife Service and, of course, the wider community, both in Kenya and throughout the world. Conservation and living in more sustainable ways is not just a concern for local populations but for us all. This wider perspective is very important. This last week, I’ve been on the boat for three days: on the first two, we saw spinner, bottlenose, and humpback dolphins and it was very exciting and rewarding; on the third, we saw just one humpback dolphin and spent hours hoping for more that didn’t appear. But that’s one of the differences between being a tourist and contributing to scientific research; the experience of my third day may be telling just as important a part of the story of dolphins here in Kenya, as the one of my first two.

Ross Hellings has recently joined us as a volunteer to assist in our research and community work, and gives us his first impressions of life with GVI Kenya:

I arrived on base in Mkwiro on Saturday afternoon after an adventurous trip from Mombasa, and from that point on it’s been a hard, fast and fun learning experience…

Day 1: camp training with exciting items like fire extinguisher training, oxygen tank checking, radio training, safety lectures and practice scenarios, and the list goes on!

Day 2: the real fun began… we started the day with lectures and tutorials regarding the on-going marine research, and then into identification of different marine mammals and turtles, and methodology of the research.  A swim test was also thrown in for good measure before lunch, under threat of otherwise needing to wear highly fashionable fluorescent orange life vests for 2 weeks.

Day 3: our first day on the water, and what a day!  Early on we found Bottlenose dolphins, and then the highlight, a pod of almost 100 spinner dolphins!  These fantastic mammals stayed with us for around 30 minutes, playing, socializing, jumping, surfing the waves, and bow riding!  It was an amazing experience to watch.  We ended the day with an ‘exam’ to test our identification skills as well as our knowledge of the methodology and practice of the research.

Day 4: again early on in the day we had our first encounter, this time humpback dolphins, followed shortly by bottlenose dolphins!

I could continue, but there is too much to say… My first week has been amazing, seeing the major species we would expect to see in the region, as well as spotting a few elusive turtles!  I can definitely say doing marine research is much much more fun than a normal working day;  I have a new saying, a bad day on the ocean is better than a good day in the office!

May the adventure continue!

Ross

It doesn’t happen as often as I’d like with so much else going on but yesterday I joined the marine research team, 6.30am departure aboard our research vessel ‘Lampard’, on calm waters with the rising sun to warm us…

I take the tiller, captaining the boat east out of the Wasini channel, the rest of the team assume positions for dedicated watch. Passing the coastal forest of Shimoni I spot a colobus in the canopy and an African Fish Eagle… but today is the marine research programme, and it’s dolphins and turtles that we search for.

Rounding the south-east corner of Shimoni peninsula we enter Funzi bay, hoping to spot Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins that favour these near-shore habitats. No sign of them today. We pass a green turtle, but sadly a recently dead one floating at the water’s surface. No obvious cause of death, but this time of the year, during the kaskazi winds (the NE monsoon winds), seems to bring a peak of turtle mortalities each year.  Much of Funzi bay is shallow and doesn’t leave us much room to manouvre so we turn the boat around and head south, towards the continental shelf and open water. A flock of terns dives persistently at the water’s surface but the fish shoal they target has gone unoticed by any dolphin.

A more distant splash and a suspected dolphin sigthing, something dark and rounded surfacing. Half-way there before it becomes evident it’s another dead turtle bobbing at the surface. A huge one this time, a hawksbill, it’s been dead for longer and given the size it reached, somehow a sadder loss as we circle around it and continue our route south.

Sergi, our marine research officer takes over from me at the stern as I join the rotation of observers up front, each with our 45 degree field of view to patrol. Tom calls out a potential dolphin far ahead, an apparent leap and splash, Sergi steers us toward the point on the horizon and we keep scanning the surface. We rotate positions, both Tom and I looking forward, he sees something again, but is disappointed when there’s no following dorsal fins or repeat splashes.

Still we head further south, further from the shore and are rewarded 15 minutes later by 4 dorsal fins breaking the water’s surface ahead. They approach the boat to ride the bow and a further 3 dorsal fins join them. We expect them to be Indian Ocean bottlenose dolphins out here, but the small triangular fins, the smaller torpedo-like bodies and the long narrow beaks all point to something different. Three tone body colouration as they surface confirms we have found a small group of spinner dolphins.

Sergi hands me the camera, I try to get photos of the dorsal fins of each one as they sruface to breathe. It’s not as easy as it seems it should be. Unpredicatable quite where and when they will surface as they dart across the bow just below the surface, the angle has to be right, the sun behind, sharp focus… and you have to be quick. Sergi uses the time to talk the team of observers through the dolphins’ behaviour. Close to the surface, regular slow shallow surfacing, no obvious directional travel; they were probably resting. We leave the small group and within minutes an apparent lone individual further away leaps from the water, an acrobatic spin that gives them their name. Then 10 dorsal fins surface to our right. We barely get through counting them when at least 20 fins appear on the right. Our group of 7 was actually part of a larger group, in the end we estimate 40 to 50 individuals.

Spinner dolphins are thought to be seasonal visitors to this part of the Kenyan coast, possibly crossing the channel from Pemba, following the food with the kaskazi. In previous years we have recorded them between mid-February to mid-March, in large active groups (up to and over 200) off the shelf, south of the MPA. This kaskazi we had one sighting in December, and then last week. We do not think that this season represents any ‘break from the routine’ but more likely that our new research vessel gives us a higher, clearer viewing platform, and survey routes take us further from shore so we simply see more. The real exctitement is that we are now understanding more about these seasonal visitors; their ’season’ is longer than we first thoguht, and they are using habitats east of the MPA for resting suggesting they may be here for more than just quick foraging forays. Ironically, the fact that they are consistenly recorded outside of the marine protected area is not of too great concern. They are free from disturbance by the dolphin-watching tourist boats and in the absence of commercial fishing activities are not threatened here by high levels of accidental deaths from by-catch that plague some of their open-ocean counter-parts through industries such as tuna fisheries which are yet to be quite as ‘dolphin-friendly’ as we might be lead to believe.

I’ll keep you posted throughout our ’spinner season’…