Hurrican IDA update

Hi guys,

Just wanted to give you a quick update on Hurricane IDA out here. I am please to report that in the end, all our preparations and monitoring was for nothing! IDA came and left without much notice. In fact, the days prior to IDA's arrival were very windy and stormy, but last night and today, we have had a pretty quiet time.
The center of the hurricane is now over the Peninsula, but we are still monitoring the situation in case we get the rear end of the depression. And of course, we keep in touch with local authorities to find out the latest updates and recommendations.
Both bases suffered no damage, but it will take a few days for the sea to calm down before we can head out the reef to see if the hurricane did any noticeable damage to the reef ecosystem.
Here's a satelite image of IDA at 1430 our time. As you can see the center of IDA went past Cozumel, Playa del Carmen and Cancun!

Hurrican IDA update

Chose your restaurant...and your fish wisely

For some time we have been reporting on this blog different ways to make a difference once you are home, or before you are coming out to Mexico.
As you know, fish stocks are being depleted at an alarming rate and we are not doing much to help this disturbing fact. If you remember, a while back we published a link to the Monterey Bay aquarium where you could see if a specific fish was at risk, moderate risk or ok to eat.
Today we would like to share with you this new website that not only provide similar info to the one mentioned above, but takes it one step further and will inform you on restaurants that follow good practices, chefs who use sustainably fished products and allows to send back info and review

We hope you like this initiative and that you use it to choose dinning options. For the moment it's only available for the UK and US market, but hopefully other countries will join in...I know we could use with this info in Mexico...

Chose your restaurant...and your fish wisely

ILCP visit GVI Mexico: Nat Geo and BBC wildlife photographers on base!

For the past 3 weeks, we have had the pleasure of being visited by two world reknown photographers: Pete Oxford and Thomas Peschak.
Both are members of the ILCP (International League of Conservation Photographers), an organization of some of the best photographers. The ILCP is a project-driven organization.

"Our mission is to translate conservation science into compelling visual messages targeted to specific audiences. We work with leading scientists, policy makers, government leaders and conservation groups to produce the highest-quality documentary images of both the beauty and wonder of the natural world and the challenges facing it.
The unique set of skills, talent and years of field experience spent documenting delicate and complex environmental subjects as well as a real commitment to conserve the landscapes, people and wildlife in the places where they work, is what sets the photographers of the ILCP apart. From poaching to global warming, from habitat loss to cultural erosion, from sustainability to biological corridors, the work of conservation photographers covers the entire range of threats to biodiversity and is indeed a critical component in the conservation toolbox."

In July 2009, the International League of Conservation Photographers (iLCP) began their 7th Rapid Assessment Visual Expedition (RAVE) to the Yucatan Peninsula

The Yucatan RAVE will focus on documenting the threats posed by deforestation, tourism, and forest fires on existing protected areas, important unprotected areas (i.e. corridors) and specific flagship species (i.e. Jaguar) throughout the Yucatan. The themes and threats of the RAVE include: Underground Wilderness, Impact of Tourism & Tourism Infrastructure Development, Coastal Environment, Freshwater, Mesoamerican Tropical Forests, Mayan Sites, Saltwater Intrusion, Ecological Impacts from Hurricanes, Habitat Fragmentation, Tourism Development, Mangrove Destruction, Coastal Island Development, and Biodiversity loss. To address those themes and threats the following geographic areas and species will be the primary focus of the Yucatan RAVE: Cenotes, Caves, Mangroves, Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve, Calakmul-Sian Ka’an Corridor, Rio Lagunas, Holbox, Celestun, Chetumal, Sierra Caral, Amphibians, Jaguar, Manatees, Flamingos, Monkeys, Crocodiles, Whale Sharks, and Bats.

We are very happy to have both Pete and Thomas on Pez Maya and Pta Gruesa, and an amazing experience to share some time, and some shots, with them!

ILCP visit GVI Mexico: Nat Geo and BBC wildlife photographers on base!

Week 4 at Pez Maya: incredible underwater spots, manatee glimpse and some weather problems!

Week 4 at Pez Maya started off really, really well but then kind of ground to a halt due to bad weather and a whole host of other problems.

On Friday we all did two dives. One lucky group had a totally amazing dive and spotted all sorts of exciting creatures. On the boat on the way to the dive site they saw a green turtle and a hawksbill turtle surfacing to breathe. They were doing a coral spot, practicing coral ID, and during the dive saw two southern stingrays, a golden tailed moray eel and a 2m nurse shark!!! It was just chilling out under a ledge and everyone got a really good look at it. It was amazing! Another group saw a nurse shark that day too (at the same site, so possibly the same one) and another group saw a lion fish. Lionfish are beautiful animals with big frilly fins but they are bad news. They are not native to the Caribbean and have no natural predators here so their numbers are growing unchecked. Apparently they started appearing after a hurricane destroyed an aquarium a few years ago. They are extremely venomous so there isn’t a great deal we can do about them but we record sightings and pass the information on to one of our local partners to monitor their spread.

On Saturday we did our usual beach clean and kitchen clean on base and also participated in a beach clean further down the coast. The beach at Pez Maya is generally fairly clean because we clean and survey it each week, but this new beach doesn’t get cleaned regularly and was an absolute tip. There was a vast amount of rubbish and it was quite possibly the longest beach in the world (well it seemed that way at the time), but we got there in the end. It’s so sad to see such a beautiful beach in such a sorry state. It was a beautiful sunny day and the sand and sea and palm trees were looking perfect and then there was all this rubbish all over the place. Anyway, we cleaned it and surveyed the rubbish that we found and then returned to base for our Saturday fun dives. The aim here is to dive Monday to Friday doing one or two dives each day for either dive training, coral or fish training or actual surveys and then each Saturday we do a dive purely for fun. It was quite exciting to be let loose on the reef unsupervised to explore!

Sunday is our day off so we took full advantage and went adventuring. A group of us (Peter, Jessie, Jenny, Faried, Deepak, Erin & Laura) went to Dos Ojos, a cenote near Tulum. In this part of Mexico there are huge river systems underground. Occasionally parts of these systems break the surface in the form of cenotes. These vary hugely in appearance from ponds surrounded by mangroves right through to breathtaking cave systems like those at Dos Ojos. The water there was so clear that it looked like there was nothing there at all. You could see for miles and the caverns were full of amazing rock formations. It was so pretty!

Meanwhile Jo, Tia and Katie went out “deep sea fishing” with folk from Boca Paila, the fishing lodge up the road. That was the plan anyway. What actually happened was that they spent the day fishing and not catching very much in the lagoon. They weren’t impressed but they did catch a brief glimpse of a manatee so it wasn’t all bad!

From here the week took a bit of a dive. On Monday we suffered from some key-related car troubles so we could only do one dive each. We couldn’t dive on Tuesday either because the sea was too rough to push the boats out. On Wednesday things were looking up. We pushed the boats out and the first wave set off to do their dives, but by the time they returned the wind had picked up so the rest of the day’s diving was canceled. On Wednesday we couldn’t dive due to the fact that the boat key broke off in the ignition (not had much luck with keys this week really) and by the time that was fixed the wind had picked up anyway. Thursday was too windy for diving too so all in all it hasn’t been a great week for diving, but fingers crossed the weather will improve for the week ahead.

Despite the lack of diving we have been kept busy. Chris, Faried, Aaron and Jenny planned and taught the first English lesson in Punta Allen on Thursday. There were about 30 kids and they learned how to introduce themselves, how to say what time it is and learned a wee bit about verbs to. Once their brains were all tired out they had a game of football and sang some songs after which the kids all launched themselves at Aaron and climbed on him! Another group paid a visit to the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve Visitor Centre this week to learn more about the reserve in which the base is situated. They saw some of the animals native to the area and managed to fit in a kayaking session too.

Back on base everyone has now passed their fish and coral tests and we’re working our way through the extra information we need to carry out the surveys. Those who are interested are working their way through the rescue diver theory and a few folk went to a cenote on Thursday to carry out some of the Rescue Diver practical skills.

It certainly hasn’t been an ideal weather week but hopefully we’ll spend a bit more time in the water next week. Still, plenty of things to do on base! Fingers crossed!

Week 4 at Pez Maya: incredible underwater spots, manatee glimpse and some weather problems!

Week 3 at Pez Maya - Turtle festival, beach cleans and Open water completed

Week three has been a busy week at Pez Maya! We left base on Friday afternoon after diving in the morning and arrived in Tulum ready for Turtle festival. Turtlefest has been running for seven years now and is a celebration of the end of the turtle nesting season. The aim is to promote environmental awareness and educate the public in all things turtle-related. On the Friday we had lots of games and activities for people to join in with. We had colouring in, quizzes, face-painting, games and Trashy Turtle showed the kids how to recycle their rubbish!

On the Saturday we went to Pescadores to do a beach clean and take part in a sand sculpture competition. One of our teams even won second prize for a sculpture showing how people can help to try and protect baby turtles by helping them to find their way safely to the sea. In the afternoon we made our way to Xcacel to help out at the performance that evening. There were some beautiful costumes and lots of dancing to tell the story of how the four elements, earth, wind, fire and water, help to ensure the turtles safety in the face of dangers such as poachers, dogs and seabirds. It was an impressive performance including an appearance by a HUGE brightly coloured illuminated turtle sculpture who laid some eggs and it very fittingly culminated in the release of some baby turtles.

After that most of the group spent their day off in Tulum but a few volunteers went on to Akumal to help out on the final day of Turtlefest. All went well. They saw lots of turtles (quite big ones too and very close up), ate some tasty food and Jo was even lucky enough to see a spotted eagle ray!

After a successful weekend the week did not start off terribly well back on base as strong wind and waves prevented us from diving on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday. Rubbish! On the plus side it did keep the mosquitoes at bay for a while. We didn’t get much of a chance to relax though as we got straight into our Emergency First Response training. A few people went to see the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve Visitor Centre to learn more about the reserve in which the base is situated. We had our introduction to TEFL lecture so those who are interested will start to plan lessons soon for the kids in Punta Allen, a local fishing village, and for the staff on the army base too. On top of all that the people who run Cave Heaven came one evening to tell us about the amazing underground rivers and cave systems in the area. The plan is to do a cenote dive sometime in the next couple of weeks so we’re all pretty excited about that.

As far as animal sightings go this week has been reasonably quiet because we only went diving on Friday morning and Thursday due to Turtlefest and the poor weather. We did manage to spot a 1.5m boa constrictor right beside our huts though and Nelson saw a crocodile from the bridge overlooking the lagoon.

And finally, congratulations to Vicky for passing her PADI open water. That is now the whole group open water qualified. Hooray!

Week 3 at Pez Maya - Turtle festival, beach cleans and Open water completed

STARBUCKS AND AMIGOS DE SIAN KAA’AN JOIN FORCES!

Amigos de Sian Ka’an, our local partners in Mexico, joined forces with Starbucks Coffee Company in order to raise funds for the environmental conservation programs that they are running in Quintana Roo.

From October and during 2months in all Starbucks Coffees in the Yucatan Peninsula you will be able to participate in this campaign in which if you donate 10 USD you get a bookmark from this designer http://www.flickr.com/photos/14094904@N04/

It is a really nice bookmark and a very clever Fund raise campaign as it involves a private company interested in helping the environment conservation reinforcing the donation, artistic and reading culture which is not raised frequently.

As our local partners we know how important it is this Campaign in order to continue with the programs they are carrying on. As such we will for sure participate in this campaign and we invite everybody to partipate in it too!

STARBUCKS AND AMIGOS DE SIAN KAA’AN JOIN FORCES!

GVI ex volunteers in 101 best travel & adventure pages

Do you remember Cheryl and Lisa, the American girls that participated with us last year in Pez Maya as part of their World tour named “What bounderies” and who wrote a book about their experiencies? Well now they have been selected by this webpage http://abroadening.com/161 as one of the 101 Most Awesome Adventure & Travel Twitterers You Should Be Following. To ease your search in the web page it is number 56. Congratulations Cheryl and Lisa and keep going with this dream!

You can follow them and read all abour their experience in Pez Maya and all other adventures here http://twitter.com/What_Boundaries!

GVI ex volunteers in 101 best travel & adventure pages

Pez Maya, Weeks1 & 2

Weeks 1 & 2

Welcome to Pez Maya’s October 2009 phase. We’re coming to the end of our first two action-packed weeks so it’s time for an update.

We met each other for the first time at the Hotel Colorado in Playa del Carmen and from there ventured down the bumpy track into the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve. The base itself is quite basic but I think we’ve made ourselves at home quite nicely. It’s an early start each morning. Up at 6am (!) to do our duties around base then it’s “BOAT PUSH!” and then we’re ready for the day ahead!

There are 20 expedition members this phase. Some were already qualified divers whereas some had never dived before. It’s been an incredibly busy fortnight with people working through their PADI open water and advanced open water SCUBA diving qualifications.

The ultimate aim of the 10 weeks is to collect data on the fish and coral species present in the reserve to pass on to GVI’s partner organisations, so on top of all the dive training we’ve had to learn how to identify all the species of fish and coral found in the area. A tricky task! This week we have also been working with some researchers from CICY who have been collecting water samples in the area to analyse isotopes. This gives an idea of where all the fresh water originates from.

It’s not all hard work though. We’ve found plenty of time for swimming and snorkelling in the beautiful turquoise sea, lazing in hammocks under the palm trees and responsibly sipping (almost) ice cold beer in the evenings (jealous yet?). Last weekend we had our first party night which coincided rather nicely with Sarah’s birthday. We saw some fantastic costumes including one hut dressed as pirates, one hut dressed as the staff and the staff dressed as Snow White and the seven dwarves (I think Greg secretly quite enjoyed wearing a dress).

We’ve seen plenty of wildlife already. The base itself is home to geckos and loads of iguanas. On our very first night we helped some tiny green turtles out of their nest and watched them start their journey out to sea. We’ve spotted several hawksbill turtles, a loggerhead turtle, a dolphin, two nurse sharks, a crocodile, a boa constrictor, moray eels and lots of sting rays. I’ll perhaps refrain from mentioning the other, less welcome wildlife that bites/stings/generally annoys everyone.

The past week we’ve been planning and organising games and activities for Turtlefest which takes place this weekend in Tulum. It’s a weekend to celebrate the end of the turtle nesting season and to raise awareness of turtle conservation. We’re all very excited about it because naturally we all LOVE turtles but I think it might also possibly have something to do with the thought of air con, showers and meat!

We’ll let you know how we get on with that next week…

Pez Maya, Weeks1 & 2

Our first week in Punta Gruesa……

Our first week in paradise has flown by, and despite the weather preventing us from diving, the spirits have been high here in Punta Gruesa and lots of learning has taken place. We’ve all been kept busy learning our fish and corals with 14 passing their tests so far – a big well done to them!! Training has begun in earnest with the whole group beginning their Emergency First Response certification. Advanced Open Water training has also started with everyone studying hard to achieve their certificate.

An Introduction to TEFL class took place as well as poster making to advertise our classes in the neighbouring fishing village of Mahahual. Our classes there will commence on the 22nd of October – we are all hoping to make great teachers and help the local community.

There has been a lot of time for snorkeling in the lagoon outside base, with lots of exciting incidental sightings including rays, barracudas, a baby turtle … and last but not least a juvenile lionfish! The lionfish was found by Kimberley and Nick, and was captured by our brave staff heroes Chris and Brian who then (humanely!) removed it from our ecosystem.

After five days of mingling with new faces and getting to know one another party night came and was a huge success. With a few sore heads in the morning most of us made our way to Mahahual for some ‘cheese and meat’ which has been greatly missed by a lot of us and hugely apreciated after a week of pasta, rice and a bit more rice.

With a storm rolling in on Saturday staff came up with the ingenious plan of taking us to Lagoon Azul to do our refresher dives – this involved more ‘cheese eating’ and hot showers for the few lucky ones that went, and a few wind blown faces left on camp who also encountered a sandstorm.

We woke on Sunday to a perfect sunrise and flat seas, and to the delight of everyone meant we could finally get to dive on base. Whilst writing this blog an exciting news flash came in and dolphins have been seen on the dive site this morning by the early birds. Not long until our trip to Tulum for the turtle festival on Friday which we are all excited about participating in.

Our first week in Punta Gruesa……

Dolphintastic…..

Best dive ever for a couple of us this morning, and a few new entries in the incidental sightings book...

First dive of the day, so we were in the water by 8.20am and just as we were descending, a southern stingray of about 1m floated by just below us. We have seen quite a few stingrays in the lagoon by now, but the novelty definitely has not worn off yet. They are such graceful and beautiful creatures. Later in the dive Brian pointed out a Spotted Moray eel on the reef. I had never seen one swimming before so it was fantastic experience to watch. Then, right at the same moment, a pod of three bottlenose dolphins appeared and circled us for a few moments. It was an absolutely amazing experience - hearing their clicks and really seeing them in their own environment. We came back to the surface totally exhilarated. But the fun wasn't over yet.

On the way back to base in Punta Gruesa (Mahahual), we came upon the dolphins again. Tine, Nicole & Brian jumped in to snorkel with them - watching from the boat they looked close enough to touch, curious and playful, especially the small juvenile one. As we headed back to base, more dolphins joined them and escorted us back to base. Maybe five or six of them swimming under and in front of the boat, occasionally leaping out of the water. An amazing experience - hopefully just one of many more to come.

Dolphintastic…..

GVI in the Marine Turtle Festival 2009!..

This last weekend we had the Chance to participate as volunteers along with the CONANP, Flora, Fauna y Cultura de Mexico, CEA (Centro Ecologico de Akumal), UQRoo and others in The 7th Annual Marine Turtle Festival, Tulum 2009.

GVI came with around 60 volunteers from both bases to be part of this special event.

During these 3 days, we had the chance to get involved with the community teaching them about conservation and about the importance of taking care of the Turtles that are born on our beaches every single year..

Everyone enjoyed being part of the beach clean, sand castles and kite contests in Playa Pescadores and helping with the symbolic dance and turtle release in Xcacel. GVI members got really involved in this Festival. Playing games with the kids all day long, looking at their happy faces while they learnt that helping the turtles is better than killing them or eating their eggs!!

We also went to Akumal Beach to do another turtle release and keep playing with the little kids. And of course, some people went snorkeling with the turtles and got to see some cool stuff under the water!

t is great to live in the bases and go diving every day, but it sure feels great to get involved with this kind of events that happen often here in Quintana Roo.

The more we help and the more we get involved with the conservation, the longer our planet will live and will remain being the way it is, a stunning place to live!
GRACIAS to every one who was part of this event and who helped to make this possible! and we look forward to next´s year Turtle Festival, hoping we will have the same response from all of you..

GVI in the Marine Turtle Festival 2009!..

7th Marine Turtle Festival, Tulum 2009

Finally the day has arrived, what we've been waiting for..The 7th Marine Turtle Festival 2009, which is happening in Tulum from Friday 16th to Sunday 18th. This Festival was created to conmemorate the fact that 4 of the 7 world species of Turtles come to Quintana Roo, Mexico, to nest every year, which are the loggearhead, the hawskbill, green and sometimes the leatherback.

GVI, with their many volunteers and staff members from both bases (Pez Maya and Punta Gruesa) are participating in this Festival helping with all the organization and logistics...

So why are we so excited about this Festival? We are having a bunch of different activities throughout this weekend.. Some of them are beach cleans, paiting contest in Casa de la Cultura, sand castles contest, kite contest, performance and live music, fire spectacle, drums concert, and the most expected one: The Turtle Release!

But not only that!..We are going to be working with kids as well, teaching them about the conservation of our natural habitats not only in Quintana Roo or Mexico, but in the whole world.

Beside this activities, the volunteers are going to have the opportunity to go to Playa Pescadores, Turtle Camp Xcacel and Akumal beach, where these activities are taking place.Everyone is really excited and looking forward to this Festival.. So hopefully we will have a good response from all the people not only from Tulum but from all the Gulf of Mexico.

If you want to check out this event, you can see it online. Riviera Maya TV is going to broadcast it alive. So click here to watch it and be part of this event!

7th Marine Turtle Festival, Tulum 2009

Amigos de Sian Ka’an is Awarded as Green leader Association in Central America and Mexico!

This 21st of September during the ceremony of the 16th World Travel Awards, Amigos de Sian ka’an, our local partners, were awarded as winners in the category of Green Leader Association in Central America and Mexico! Many congratulations! As our official partners, here in GVI Mexico we know how hard they work to make a change and preserve the Natural Areas and feel very honored to have them as local partners on the Coral Reefs Conservation project.

Also, MARTI (Mesoamerican Reef Tourism Initiative), a joint initiative from Amigos de Sian ka’an, Riviera Maya Hotels Association, Conservation International and Coral Reef Alliance was chosen as one of the organizations to be granted by the Multilateral Investment Fund from the Inter-American Develompent bank in order to promote environmental innovations on small enterprises and marine operators in the Mesoamerican Reef System. Congratulations as well! We are sure many good things will come from this.

Amigos de Sian Ka’an is Awarded as Green leader Association in Central America and Mexico!

Mexico Staff training workshop!

Our second staff training workshop of the year took place in Pez Maya base from Thursday 24th to Tuesday the 28th of September. This time besides having some fun and insightful activities we spent 4 days immersed in our science techniques and methodology!

It was a very productive workshop as we succeed to standardize a our teaching and monitor techniques in both bases in order to improve the quality control for our reef monitoring data collection!

As you can imagine the days were long and we were very busy but at the end the product was great! We are still working on many points to improve but this was a good start thanks to all staff from Pez Maya, Punta Gruesa, Regional office and Amigos de Sian Ka'an.

The training involved some diving so we were very happy to be able to dive all together as we had never done it before.

Furthermore, we were lucky enough to clean a turtle nest and help releasing about 15 baby green turtles that hatch during the workshop!

Some of the extra activities consisted of visiting Muyil ruins and floating through the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve SKBR channels, which turned out to be a great relaxing, fun and bonding activity. We floated using some outrageous nappies through 1 kilometer of pristine water surrounded by red mangroves and who knows maybe by some hidden crocodiles too!


We also had a very insightful talk from CONANP (Comision Nacional de Areas Naturales Protegidas) people, who are in charge of managing all Mexican protected areas such as SKBR. Given that one of our expedtions in Mexico is in this Reserve and the other one is very close to it, it was very interesting hearing about its land uses, problems and challenges to protect such a big area consisting on 652,000 ha’s.

There was also an interesting talk about all the new GVI projects that have been launched, learnt about Mesoamerican Barrier Reef and how GVI Mexico was settled and analysed the dynamics of the expeditions. We finished this workshop with a well deserved and delicious pasta in Tulum beach!

Mexico Staff training workshop!

International Cleanup day in Mahahual

September 19th saw GVI Pta Gruesa head in to Mahahual to participate in the PADI Project Aware sponsored reef and beach clean.

It was a quiet time for GVI at the moment – it is the time between two phases – so only 3 staff members, Chris, Brian and Stu, were around to take part. However there was a great turn out from the Mahahual community. The organisers of the dive, Becky and Julie provided equipment and boats, and also organised the beach cleans that took place at the same time as the reef clean.

12 divers headed out to the shallow reefs in front of Mahahual armed with mesh bags. After a long dive each buddy pair didn’t have too much rubbish to report! Whilst this seemed disappointing for the divers (we wanted to come back like heroes, laden with trash!) it is encouraging for the reefs.

The beach clean, however was a different story. Bags and bags of trash were collected keeping the Mahahual community a lot busier.

Signs of encouragement were the presence of an environmental awareness company from Mexico City and a newly founded local NGO, MARISOL, who are looking to establish a recycling and beach cleaning programme for Mahahual. After the dive and beach clean everyone moved to a beach bar to mingle and discuss ideas for Mahahual. The company from Mexico City fell in love with Mahahual and have big plans for the area.

Encouraging signs!!

International Cleanup day in Mahahual

Make Everyclick your Home Page and help raising funds for GVI Charitable Trust!

Everyclick is a webpage that enables everyone to access effective and engaging ways to give online to any UK charity. This can be done in different ways: by searching enabling it as your browser, shopping, donating directly through it or sponsoring. It is a private company created in 2005 that is backed by over 140 shareholders.

GVI Charitable trust is one of the charities that you can choose from and the money raised will go to the projects we support with direct funds in Latin America and Africa.

Just sign in, choose GVI charity and make it your home page and start surfing and raising funds! Every time you search you will be contributing to raise funds!

Make Everyclick your Home Page and help raising funds for GVI Charitable Trust!

Second phase of the PADI Dive master and Marine Conservation training starts!

Last Friday our current batch of PADI Dive master and Marine Conservation training Interns started the second phase of this interesting program. After spending 10 weeks in our Expedition in Punta Gruesa, Mahahual they will now taste the dive shop world!

They have been placed in different dive shops along the coast of Quintana Roo, XTC in Xcalak, Dreamtime in Mahahual and Diversity Diving in Playa del Carmen! Hence, after learning coral and fish reef species, improving their dive and rescue skills and monitoring different sites following the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System (MBRS) methodology in the expedition, they will now become Dive Master professionals, convey some environmental conservation information to the shop clients and learn the dynamics of a dive shop!

From this blog we wish a great start to Sam, Chris, Emily, Andy, Maura and Natalie. We will be very attentive on how you guys are doing.

Second phase of the PADI Dive master and Marine Conservation training starts!

Pez Maya June - September 2009 Chatty Report

And here's the one for Pez Maya, our base within Sian Ka'an. Again, thanks to all of you who made it possible!

EX66 093 Newsletter (June-September 2009)

Pez Maya June - September 2009 Chatty Report

Pta Gruesa 093 chatty report- June to September 2009

Here it is, the awaited Newsletter for Pta Gruesa - thanks to all of you who were part of this great phase!
EX67 Newsletter 093

Pta Gruesa 093 chatty report- June to September 2009

7th MARINE TURTLE FESTIVAL COMING SOON

Every year in October, since 2002, we celebrate the closing of the Marine Turtle season in this region with a Festival. As you may already know there are 7 Marine turtle species in the world and 6 of them arrive to the coasts of Mexico. Furthermore, 3 of the 6 species hatch in the Quintana Roo seashore. Hence, it has become a big honor and responsibility for the inhabitants of the State to contribute to its conservation and research.

Beside the programs that already exist for the Marine turtle conservation, seven years ago a couple of people and Institutions had the initiative to organize a Marine Turtle Festival in Tulum as a way to increase environmental awareness to protect them. This initiative has been growing year after year and more and more organizations are summing up to it.

The success of the Festival lays on its participants, donors and the Organizing Committee in which the needs and actions for the Festival are discussed. It is conformed by representatives of different governmental and non governmental organizations such as Amigos de Sian Ka’an, Casa de la Cultura from Tulum (Culture Centre), Centro Ecológico de Akumal (CEA), Centro Ecológico de Sian Ka’an (CESIAK), Chanel 30, CONANP, Flora Fauna y Cultura de Mexico (FFyCM), GVI, Ecobahía, Municipality of Tulum, Save the children through Ludoteca of Tulum, University of Quintana Roo (UQROO) and Xel-ha.

As you can imagine a Festival like this takes a lot of time and organization behind, hence the members of this committee have been gathering together every month since March in order to assure everything will be ready for the Festival in October!

This year the Festival will be held from the 16th to the 18th of October in three different places. Friday 16th October in Casa de la Cultura Tulum (Culture Centre in Tulum), Saturday 17th in Tulum beach in the morning and Xcacel (Marine Turtle Sanctuary) in the afternoon. For the first time in its history and due to its big success one more day has been added in order to do some more environmental activities and baby turtle releases in Akumal.

We will keep you posted through this blog on how the arrangements and previous activities to this festival go!!

Also all of you future volunteers coming in October will have the opportunity to participate in this unique Festival and have the opportunity to contribute to its conservation.
Already looking forward to it!!!

7th MARINE TURTLE FESTIVAL COMING SOON