Steve Evans, 30, is a map-maker – a specialist in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and 3D computer modeling - with a bachelor’s degree in geography from Exeter University and an MSc from Plymouth. Currently a research fellow at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) at University College, London (UCL), he spent two years as a cartographer for the British Antarctic Survey (BAAS).
Steve, who is from Essex in England, seems to be a down to earth character. Asked why he became a map maker he says “I didn’t do all this studying just to drop it all and become a marketing manager for Marks and Spencer”. In addition to his work at CASA, he has a small company, Plannet Visualisations (www.plannet.co.uk), which provides 3D modeling services to architectural and commercial ventures, plus charities and education. Steve is an experienced amateur diver, and is in reasonable shape for someone who spends most of his time in front of a computer.
Roman Obrist, 34, is a merchant captain and engineer. A Swiss national, he holds a captain’s license and chief engineer’s license four years at the maritime university in Hamburg. “Everything which swim, I can fix and can drive”. For a few years he worked on bulk carriers between Latin America and Europe. He and a friend also found the time to sail a small boat all round Latin America, fulfilling a dream since they were young kids high in the Swiss Alps.
“I wanted to sail since I could think. I heard many stories about Cape Horn”. For the last two years he has been working on sail cruises for tourists to the Amazon and Antarctica. Lanky, strong and clean-cut, Roman has a gentle manner which immediately inspires confidence. He is also Divemaster “It’s just a hobby: I know how to go down and how to come up again”. For him Saya is a challenge between jobs. “To work so far off shore is something new in which I have no experience. A way of seeing a new part of the marine world”.
Caroline Mekie is a 32 year old marine biologist from Edinburgh, Scotland. She has a cheerful, no-nonsense disposition and doesn’t seem to be at all phased to be the only female in the team. She is the only member of this expedition to have been to Saya with Tom and Wolf on their first trip in 1997. She had spent nine months sailing round the world with an outfit called the Planetary Coral Reef Alliance, had jumped ship in the Seychelles, and was volunteering at the Marine Park on St Anne’s when they met.
“I went along to Saya because I thought why not, at least it’ll be interesting. But only four days after we put the structure in the water I was amazed. You could see that it [Mineral Accretion Technology] really worked. The coral fragments we had attached were doing very well”. Since ’97 Caroline has done a masters degree in conservation biology. She is currently doing another masters degree in multi-media technology, and hopes to combine the two areas.
One opportunity would be to go through hundreds of hours of film that Tom has made over many years on transects of reefs across the world (including the Seychelles and Saya). Vast amounts of detailed quantitative data can be extracted using computerized techniques, but no one has had time to do it.
Steve has brought a copy of the Field Report of the Shoals of Capricorn Project (1998 – 2001). Shoals of Capricorn was a full bells and whistles “science, training and education in the western Indian Ocean” number organized by The Royal Society and The Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers. It hosted over 200 scientists from 21 countries, investigating different aspects of the marine environments of Seychelles, Mauritius and Rodrigues island.
Studies included the generation a new bathymetric chart of the Mascarene Ridge, completed with the assistance of HMS Scott and HMS Beagle. Saya de Malha (the main southern bank and the northern bank which is sometimes called the Ritchie Bank) does not seem to be mapped in great detail in these studies.
The Shoals Report also includes a summary of a paper on Benthic [seafloor] Habitats of the Saya de Malha Bank by Annelise Hagan, of the Coastal Research Unit at Cambridge University and Jan Robinson of the Shoals Programme. In May 2001 Hagan and Robinson undertook ecological observations using a prototype SPYFISH ®, a small mobile video camera system. “This allowed semi-quantitative data to be collected where SCUBA [diving] was not permitted for safety reasons” [gulp].
“Benthic habitats are composed of Thalassodendron sp. seagrass communities, Acropora-dominated reef communities, or a combination of the two...Towards Poydenot Shoal [on the northeast edge of the southern bank], Acropora-dominated reef communities were prevalent... At both sites sampled [on the northern and southern banks], the reef communities displayed a low topographic profile and 3D complexity, dominated by finely branching Acropora sp.
“Large [coral] colonies are likely to pre-date the 1997-98 warming even, suggesting that cool-water upwelling along the eastern flank of the submarine Mascarene Ridge may have protected corals from bleaching related mortality. Massive slow growing corals were notable by their absence, suggesting frequent decimation by storms at this exposed, open-ocean location is retaining the community at an early successional stage.
Hagan and Robinson conclude: “the presence of a healthy reef ecosystem, potentially covering hundreds of square kilometers…poses important questions for future investigation”. They suggest:
Hagan and Robinson’s study looks perfectly respectable, but does not appear to add substantially to knowledge already gathered by Tom and Wolf in '97.
Caspar Henderson
© GrainOfSand Ltd 2002 | To see the world in a grain of sand, And heaven in a wild flower,
|