Sleepless at Dawn - with Green Turtles

This morning was one of my favourites. I crept out of bed, unclipped my pelican case quietly (which is near impossible) and crept down the veranda – between our sleeping habits on this expedition, which are far off in zombie land and the crashing of the waves against the champignons below the veranda my tip-toeing probably made no difference. It was before dawn and the beach belonged to me… and the nesting green turtles.


The tide was still high and I was hoping to photograph the late turtles, those that had not yet returned to the ocean after laying their eggs in the darkness of the early morning. Half way down the beach I spotted a turtle in the throws of completing her egg burying routine and managed to get some images of her returning to the ocean. The night had not yet relinquished its star embellished sky to the sun when I headed out camera and tripod in hand but by the time this turtle was on her way down to the water for a photo shoot it was harsh daylight, and she was in hurry to return to the safety of her wet world.


Further down at the very end of this particular beach the first clues of the last late turtle were the sand grains flying skywards in every direction. She was frantically covering her egg chamber and over an hour later was finally ready to shuffle down to the water’s edge. Her eyes were focused on the waves rolling up the beach and once they brushed against her scaly flippers she was gone – part of the sea in seconds.




Sadly, the rest of the day was not as eventful or inspiring. We were all exhausted and pre-occupied with our least favourite task - packing. It always takes longer than you think – especially with multiple strobes, camera housings, cameras, flashes and all the nuts and bolts in between that hold it all together. By midnight we were loading the boat with the final waterproofed bags – ready for an early start the next morning on our “Water World” back over the waves to the island of Assumption.

The Crabs Went Down to the Beach Today

We pulled up both bait stations out of the water today, and with them our hopes to find and photograph large shark species off Aldabra also dried. Inshore, however, we did enjoy a last dive at high tide with the black tip reef sharks, photographing them silhouetted between the champignons. Conditions were not great - a pumping current, which was dragging us and the sharks with it, combined with a rocking bottom surge made it very difficult free diving.


No sooner did we get out of our wetsuits were we rushing down the beach again with cameras in hand. On his way to get his dive equipment from the boat Dan spotted several crabs coming down to the water’s edge together – clutching a bundle of black eggs. For a split second in the flurry to grab cameras and flashes I thought perhaps we were in for the biggest crab treat of all – to see the coconut crabs spawning. They were not coconut crabs but cardiosoma crabs, a terrestrial crab that lives inland and in the mangroves. Still, witnessing these crabs crawl down to the beach en mass at this new phase of the moon specifically to release their eggs into the ocean was a memorable Aldabra surprise.

Turtle Power

Life was back in our warm blood this morning and we headed out at first light to see if we could find some life with cold blood. Aldabra is a haven for green turtles and we hoped to catch some on film making use of the morning’s hide tide and returning to the water after a long and tiresome night digging nests in the sand and laying eggs. Dan arrived just in time to film one green heaving herself down the beach and into the water. They are incredibly graceful creatures in the water – one flick of a flipper and they are off in a different direction or swimming tens of meters down below. Underwater, good photos are almost impossible unless the particular character is feeling photogenic. After the monumental effort they make to nest on beaches it must be such an incredible feeling of freedom for them to sink back into weightlessness.

Later in the day the team split. Dan went out to film on the reef while James kept a look out for sharks at the baiting station. As I have said before, it is the smaller ones you have to watch out for… and on this dive it was one of the balky potato bass that tried to swallow Rainer’s arm. He succeeded as far as his wrist and even dragged Rainer, with his SCUBA gear, along the reef a little. He wasn’t a small potato bass, but the point is he was not a shark!!

While that was going on I was working with Tom, photographing the black tip and lemon sharks inshore in the high water against the champignons. Black tips and lemon sharks swirled around us in a flurry of fins and inquisitive eyes until it was too dark to see any more and we hurried back for Pascal’s (the station’s chef) supper.

We spent the night and early morning hours looking for nesting green turtles on the beach. Each day on our travels to the dive sites we have counted dozens of turtle tracks along the beach and vowed many times to stay up to watch them lay. As expected, we found many tracks but they all had a parallel set along side, return tracks, which meant the turtle had been and gone. Near the far end of the research station beach we hit gold – a single track. Quietly following it up the beach and letting our eyes adjust to the natural light without torches we heard the shuffle and scrunching of sand mingled with heavy puffs of air. She was busy digging a pit large enough to fit her whole body in, flicking sand backwards with her fore-flippers. We watched for half an hour as she dug and shifted sand, until she hit a root and decided the position she had chosen was not suitable for her eggs and shuffled herself further up the beach only to start the process all over again. The top of the beach looks like the surface of the moon there are so many craters and pits lining it from the turtles that come up each night and sometimes dig multiple pits before actually digging the egg chamber and laying.

Moving further down the beach we found another turtle starting the same process and sat watching her for hours, until she gave up, turned around and headed down the beach back towards the water. We left her in peace and moved back to the first turtle just in time to watch her dig her egg chamber and drop her eggs neatly inside it. The precision with which they dig the chamber is amazing – one back flipper at a time they scoop a spoon sized portion of sand and earth and deposit it on the side. By one in the morning she had finally finished laying and proceeded to cover the eggs and compact the sand around it. We didn’t stay to watch her finish, but when we left the eggs were well and truly hidden and she was still busy spraying sand in all directions. By then the tide was at its lowest and I did pity the journey she would have to make across the reef before reaching the water, but at least another generation of this endangered animal was safely buried and waiting to hatch on Aldabran sand – the same sand that is now engrained in our camera lenses!

“No Holiday Camp”

Breakfast each morning in the station’s dining room, a veranda of sort that looks out over the reef flat and onto blue yonder, is usually full of banter with plans for the day being finalized according to the weather and the tides over several cups of Seychelles’ vanilla tea. This morning, there was silence and many cups of coffee. The whole team was feeling rather bleary-eyed after our mid-night unloading escapades and many days on the go in succession, on and in the water. My Dad often says to me with a smile on his face “Do you think this is a holiday camp” when referring to serious situations, and believe me our expedition is not a holiday camp. Photographers and cameramen are not afforded the luxury of going out when the conditions are perfect… to get the shots you have to try try try and try again, which means never ever giving up and going out again and again and again. No complaints though, I don’t think any of us would have it any other way.


After catching our breaths and catching up with important housework, writing, downloading, backing up etc etc. we headed back to the lagoon channel (where Dan floated around with his camera on the lilo) next to the research station and then went up one of the mangrove channels as far as the little tin boat could go. The tide was high and because the mangrove trees were submerged up to their leaves we could photograph right inside the heart of the underwater forest. Hoping that we would get some lemon sharks in the mangroves we pushed on until the sun had disappeared and we were left with little natural light. No sharks arrived, but it gave us a chance to photograph the mangroves themselves and use the light to decorate the water around them.

Back to Base

The morning sunrise over the channel was spectacular – and what a relief to have clear sky and sunshine for the day. We photographed the frigatebirds soaring over the island and the channel, waiting for the wind to die down and for the birds to drop closer to our level before catching the strong gusts and cruising to higher altitudes. In the mid-day heat, when the tide was low, we walked across the lagoon with cameras on our backs in an attempt to photograph the mangroves and the colony from the topside (not underwater). We took the wrong route at first and rather nervously held our cameras aloft as we waded through water waste deep, but soon spotted the shallow ridge and avoided almost certain disaster!


The area is vast – a shallow lagoon fringed with mangrove forest and covered in rippling layers of sand and water. Two hours later we hurried back across the lagoon before the tide turned – too late, we discovered, the strong current was already pushing against our strides. Luckily it was still only at calf level.

After packing up (what seems to be our favourite past time), beaching the tin boat and lining our equipment along the beach we waited for the boat. I sat on my pelican case photographing the frigates again – they are masters of the air and perform great aerial displays from their dizzy heights, mainly to steal something from another bird. The frigatebirds intercept boobies, the Western Indian Ocean version of the gannet, on their way back to land after the seabirds have been fishing at sea and steal their catch by chasing them relentlessly until they regurgitate all their hard earned fish. They also pick on each other, squabbling in the air for pieces of nesting material or simply for what looked like just the fun of it!

Our captain did arrive, albeit late enough to make us wish we hadn’t given the tortoise the remains of our rice or emptied the juice cartons, and we motored back to Picard, narrowly avoiding another thunderstorm, and the luxury of the research station. We arrived at high tide; we are now back in Spring Tides so the tides are at their maximum range, and there was a swell pushing onto the beach that made unloading tricky. Rather than risk the equipment Gilbert moored the boat and we piled into the small tin boat for a ride ashore – piling out on the beach before being dumped by the waves. It was the IUCN team’s last evening and after a hearty supper with a glass of wine, the last thing any of us felt like doing was unloading the boat – but at 23h30 the tide was low and we trundled across the sand flat one pelican case after another.

Black Tip Reef Sharks in the Roots

After an early morning lull the rain clouds returned and we were battered by strong winds and rain until the afternoon. The dark light made photography in the mangroves impossible and we were left at camp with the tortoise and the rail. (more on these characters later)

In the afternoon’s high incoming tide we ventured back into the mangroves. A party of black tip sharks pre-occupied Tom and I as we tried to capture images of them swimming through the roots, while Dan filmed the enchanting network of channels and overhanging branches. When the current was flowing fast and furious I hugged the roots of one tree and toyed with images of the fish flying around the corner of the channel into the main stream. Once the current subsided we finned down the main channel into an area with a cavity along the floor that forms a pool of water at low tide where fish get trapped. Even on the tail end of a high tide the pool was teaming with numerous fish species in great numbers, turtles swimming in all directions, rays cruising past and one extremely large brindle bass lurked in the shadows of a large coral outcrop.

I think our hut could have been pelted by hail and coconut crabs could have been dancing with the egrets on our roof all night and I would have slept through it all.

The Mangroves at Middle Camp

Our journey to Middle camp took longer than I expected. The southeast monsoon wind has stirred the ocean and our 30ft boat feels very small on its surface, especially riding against the swell of the waves. Our departure was delayed an hour due to last minute technical difficulties – hard drives full with thousands of expedition images crashing and frantic efforts to ensure all images were backed up twice on working devices, and we left sometime after 14h00. Two and a half hours later we, together with all our gear, were deposited on the shores of Malabar and Gilbert, our new and most accommodating captain, promised to return in two days at 16h00 to pick us up.

A small wooden hut with a corrugated tin roof, a few bunk beds and a view over the Pass Houareau channel on one side and the lagoon on the other was our new home. Large Dracula shaped shadows zigzagged across the shore cast down from the soaring frigate birds ahead and the thick mangrove forests that edge the inner lagoon beckoned us to explore – we took to the place immediately; it felt wilder – more Aldabra somehow than anywhere else we had stayed on the Atoll.

Arriving on a high incoming tide gave us the opportunity for an afternoon and evening venture into the mangrove channels across the lagoon. For the first time I was seriously torn between donning fins or balancing on the boat to photograph the raucous of the frigate bird colony in the tall (Rhizpophora) mangrove canopy, which was already speckled with the white of nesting boobies. The different hues of the blue lagoon and the emerald green of the mangrove foliage glowed under that beautiful golden light that only appears in the hour before dusk. The lure of the drowned forest and the multitude of fish sheltering amongst its labyrinth of buttress and knee roots was too strong and I joined Tom and Dan underwater.

Mangroves are essential for the health of the ocean, provide a source of income for coastal people, and protect coastlines from erosion, surge storms, and tsunamis. They support a unique ecosystem and provide a habitat for a wide spectrum of animals, from adult and juvenile fish to sponges, crabs and shrimps. Shrimps use the muddy bottom as their home, and sadly mangrove forests all over the world have been totally destroyed, cleared for intensive prawn farms. (So think again when you see prawns on the menu.) Mangroves desperately need protection – in recent times over half of the world’s mangroves have been lost. Thankfully the mangrove forests here on Aldabra are protected and snorkeling in them with the sun percolating through the leaves and between the roots is a magical experience.

We motored back as darkness started to fall, pushing and pulling the boat over the sand flats in low water. Luckily sleep wasn’t a priority as the coconut crabs, which scratched their claws across the corrugated tin roof, screeching like nails down a chalkboard, all night was followed by a cracking tropical rain storm, and just as silence fell, dimorphic egrets catching insects started banging on the guttering during the early morning hours.

Lemon Sharks Night and Day

Morning...still there


Eighteen hours of lemon sharks! Eighteen hours! … We collected R2 this afternoon and as soon as we were back James downloaded the data and sat watching R2’s recordings. A mix of characters swam past R2’s eyes: plenty of squid, a few green turtles, one swam straight into the camera and eyed it out suspiciously – giving us a full close up, but it was the sicklefin lemon sharks that stole the show, appearing on camera for most of the night and morning. Alas, not one tiger shark or any other large shark was recorded. It really does look like all the large sharks off Aldabra are no more.

On a happier note, our drift dive up the main channel this afternoon on the incoming tide yielded some good images of a couple of grey reef sharks and more lemon sharks. Dropping in on the left side of the channel I looked down and was taken by surprise to see the undulating ripples of the sand on the floor of the channel. The water was the pure royal blue that only comes with excellent visibility and filled with dancing light rays. The current didn’t leave me with time to investigate the deeper part of the channel there and we had to fin hard to get to the side of the coral reef, where it slopes down in a dramatic wall of colour. It was one of my favourite free dives, mainly because the grey reefs were extremely inquisitive, and each time I dived down below them one would turn and swim straight up to me –just to check out what I was and what I was doing there. The good visibility enabled a bird’s eye view of the channel, from the decadent coral wall to the sand and rubble floor. On the surface, however, visibility for part of the dive was down to almost nil as a thick black cloud battered the water’s surface with such heavy droplets of rain that we lost sight of the boat. Not wanting to end up separated and being swept into different parts of the inner lagoon Tom and I stuck close to James, who was dragging the bait drum attached to a very obvious red buoy, while Rainer and Dan were watching the turbulent surface from below on SCUBA.

Tomorrow we shift gears again from diving in the main channel and reef dives on our baiting stations and return to the magical mangrove forests in Pass Houareau, in between Malabar and Grande Terre islands. We will be camping in the little research hut known as Middle Camp, which will give us the opportunity to work that part of Aldabra for three days… and two nights. Mangroves are one of my favourite ecosystems and crucial for the health of oceans. There is no internet connection there so I will be left talking to the frigate birds, but look forward to sharing with you what we find, film and photograph upon our return.

R2 is Out There and the Coral is Talking

We are still in neap tides. Yesterday, like today, the low water prevented us from crossing over the reef until after lunch, but this is Aldabra and a gateway to another world. I never get bored of photographing the shore birds, such as the endemic dimorphic egret or the more common white egret. The harsh middle of the day sunlight makes good exposures almost impossible, especially when the dimorphic, which is dark brown in colour, is in the same frame as the dazzling white feathers of its cousin, but afternoon dives make morning topside photography in beautifully soft light possible.

A team of prestigious IUCN scientists arrived on the island a few days ago. They are here to do coral reef surveys and it is very exciting to be here at the same time to bounce ideas back and forth and catch up on the latest in coral reef research work across the Western Indian Ocean. After-supper discussions last long after our Creole meal and are followed by the sounds of fingers tapping on keyboards, which continue past midnight. We joined the IUCN team on a reef dive yesterday afternoon, located west of Malabar Island near Pass Gionnet (in between Polymnie and Malabar), a new site to us. Dan filmed them as they hovered over the coral, clutching plastic slates and noting factors such as coral cover, fish diversity and coral disease along each line transect. I look forward to learning more about exactly what they are doing this evening, as tonight it is their turn to give a presentation.

After leaving them we headed back towards our bait station 2 and James deployed R2D2 (the remote camera). Yes, after much consternation and determination on James’ part it is working, and as I write R2 is sitting on the reef recording anything that swims within its view. We are all very much looking forward to seeing what R2’s lights flashed in the dark last night.

By 17h30 we were skimming back over the top of the reef but the tide was already too low and we had to push the boat when it got stuck on sea grass beds in the shallows. Back on land Tom and I photographed the coral fossils in the champignons against a cloud-bellowing sunset. The distinct fossil corals decorate the limestone like a patchwork quilt, and sitting in the maze of champignon caves I feel as if I am in a true Jurassic Park. The rocks are alive, speaking of another, more prehistoric time they gurgle and crackle with water and air bubbles and shuffling crabs. These fossil corals, upon which Aldabra is built, reach down well over 1000metres.