Seychelles News

Reef manta rays (Mobula alfredi) are homebodies at heart, keen to keep closer than we’d previously imagined to D’Arros Island and the neighbouring St Joseph Atoll. This finding, part of a new study that details the movements of reef mantas in the Amirante Islands of Seychelles using acoustic telemetry, places…

A tiny, candy-striped fish gaping goggle-eyed from its hiding place below the overhang on a coral reef is easily overlooked. “Once one knows what to look for and where to look, it is relatively easy to find them”, explains Dr Ryan Daly, former Research Director of the SOSF D’Arros Research…

A new paper published by the Save Our Seas Foundation D’Arros Research Centre Directors, Ryan Daly and Clare Keating Daly, and Manta Trust Founder, Guy Stevens suggests that marine areas of the Amirantes Island group in the Republic of Seychelles may be underestimated in terms of species diversity. To shed…

The remote country of Seychelles is an archipelago of 115 islands off the east coast of Africa. Towards the outermost edges of this country lies the Amirantes, a group of coral islands and atolls. One of these locations, D’Arros Island and St Joseph Atoll, hosts the SOSF D’Arros Research Centre.…

Situated along the outermost islands of the African country of Seychelles lies the remote D’Arros Island and St Joseph Atoll, an area highly abundant with various species of fish. Habitat wise, D’Arros and St Joseph are home to 15 of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red Listed species,…

As busy a month October was for research at the D’Arros Research Centre, it was as active a month for vagrant and annual avian visitors to D’Arros and St Joseph. The first D’Arros record of both a Eurasian Bittern and a Caspian Sand Plover occurred this month. These birds are…

October was an intriguing month for new marine creatures found around D’Arros and St Joseph. Three new species were added to the species list at SOSF-DRC, all of them cryptic by nature. While changing receivers in St Joseph Atoll, SOSF-DRC Research Assistant Luke Gordon spotted three tiny bumble bee shrimp…

Arriving on D’Arros Island to start my time as research assistant I was aware of the general outline to the specific research projects I would be involved in, Manta Rays, was one of those. Since 2012, D’Arros Research Centre has used photo identification to build a database of individual reef…

The Franklin’s Gull, a small, black-headed bird with a breeding range stretching across the northwestern United States and Canada is commonly sighted throughout interior prairie habitats during the summer months. While knowledge of this species’ long term winter migrations to the coasts of Peru, Chile, and other areas of the…

A Great Migration   When someone mentions the word migration, your mind might race to the great wildebeest migration through East Africa, of sea turtles covering multiple oceans in order to nest in their region of birth, or of one of the many bird species that cover vast areas to…

Parents erNest attempt at giving chicks a great start in life! Being on a tropical island, one would imagine spending every moment snorkelling or diving to look at fish and marine animals. But as a birder, I found that it was the opportunity to learn about seabirds, a group of…

Due to the high quality of the natural environment and the resulting abundance of many types of animals on D’Arros Island, interactions between species are often observed and even photographed.  Recently, several predation events have been captured that highlight some of the interesting food webs present in these dynamic terrestrial…

The Save Our Seas Foundation recently announced the winners and partners of the 2017 grant funding cycle. The Save Our Seas Foundation – D’Arros Research Centre is excited to host six researchers that are recipients of continuation grants and Keystone grant winners. SOSF-DRC looks forward to welcoming Terence Vel, winner…

What comes after the fun in the field? SOSF-DRC Project Leader Chantel Elston sheds light on the transition from her atoll attire to a lab coat. Her extensive research on stingrays in St Joseph Atoll requires a lot of lab work. Here she provides a glimpse of the other side of fieldwork. There will…

One of the benefits of living on a small island with few passerine birds means that it is easy to quickly learn to identify all the common species. Thus when vagrant shows up, they’re hard to miss. Case and point was the arrival of a Common Redstart, Phoenicurus phoenicurus, spotted hawking…