Honduras Update
Added to website: 19 July 2003
Project Scientist Jacqui Taylor looks back over the last few months in Honduras.
Project Launch
On an island renowned for its Caribbean attitude to life, the CCC team in Sandy Bay has been doing quite the opposite over the past few months. At the beginning of April, Coral Cay President Professor David Bellamy visited the expedition site for the re-launch of our community projects and scholarship scheme. Project partners and representatives from local businesses and community groups attended the event. Despite the destruction caused by the storm that hit the island just 42 hours before the re-launch, the day went smoothly and a good time was had by all. The aim of the re-launch was to promote the community projects and scholarship scheme that CCC are developing on the island of Roatan. Since April, the CCC expedition team have been working hard to deliver a wide range of training programs for various groups of local people.
Working with the local community
Just in case Beach House wasn’t busy enough with Volunteers, we decided to invite a group of 15, 3rd grade pupils from a local bi-lingual school for a day of snorkeling, trips on the boat, games and lessons on reef biology and the threats to the reefs of Roatan. I’m not sure who enjoyed the day more - the Volunteers or the pupils! Over the past two months we have invited 5 other groups to our site to take part in our community days.
Training courses for locals
In order to keep our SCUBA instructors busy after SCUBA week, we have developed a training program for local people from NABIPLA (Native Bay Island People and Laborers Association). Our aim is to ultimately provide training through to dive master certification. Working with NABIPLA, the science team is also developing training workshops for local tour guides, creating a direct route to the many tourists who arrive on the island from the cruise ships each week. Providing training for local people is an important part of CCC’s presence on the island, and we have organised a number of community meetings giving our science team a chance to work directly with local people and provide education surrounding coral reef awareness.
Clean-ups
Keeping open our links with local dive shops, CCC Volunteers have joined in with a number of dive site clean ups. Armed with plastic bags we have removed trash of all shapes and sizes (including plastic garden furniture) from some of the more heavily dived sites around the island. Keeping in with the community spirit, our Volunteers have formed the ‘invincible’ Beach House football team and play against local teams on a weekly basis - we are getting better and home goals are now a thing of the past!!!
Surveying continue…
On a survey front, the Volunteers are enjoying the amazing underwater sights at the West end of the island. The area is extremely productive with a great diversity of species found throughout the reef. Megafauna sightings over the past few months include hammerhead and nurse sharks, moray eels, spotted eagle rays, green and hawksbill turtles and many wild dolphins. Perhaps one of the most spectacular sightings has been 8 Killer whales spotted just off the coast during late May. Eight Volunteers were lucky enough to be out on the boat when they were spotted and spent an hour snorkelling and watching them surface! Killer whales have been spotted around this area during late May for the past few years. We are all keeping our eyes peeled for the Whale sharks on their migration route!
Awareness of our work is rapidly increasing and we have a number of projects planned for the coming months. From internships with students from the local bi-lingual school and universities on the mainland, to workshops with local dive masters, you can be assured that for the expedition team on Roatan, ‘manana will definitely be a busy day’!
