Category: Expedition Blogs

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Maldives: Stable recovery

Update from our Maldives coral reef and whale shark expedition

Group 1 has checked all the reefs on its schedule, well done!

All were repeat surveys to track reef health and development over the years, one of the great advantages of citizen-scientist-funded expeditions, which can fund projects sustainably and reliably for many years (since 2011 in the case of the Maldives), generating long-term datasets that result in many insights and scientific publications.

None of this would happen without the many, many citizen scientists over the years who come to fund and help with this research and conservation work. Thank you!

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Maldives: Mantas and corals

Update from our Maldives coral reef and whale shark expedition

We’re in the groove now and checking those reefs like clockwork – well done team 1.

We moved to Alifu Dhaalu (South Ari) atoll and studied a couple of sites there, as per our schedule. They were outer sites and coral cover was unchanged from when we visited them last in 2023 (still few fish, as has been the case for more than a decade now – they are just being overfished). The good coral cover, however, is positive news, showing some resilience.

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Maldives: Half checked

Update from our Maldives coral reef and whale shark expedition

Team 1 is delivering and so is the weather – and the reefs.

After two days of intensive training, we’ve checked our first reef, well half of it, were it not for our very own two Daft Punks reeling in the survey line whilst people were still busy with the survey :))

But that’s exactly what the very first survey is for – after 48 hours of crash coursing – to get familiar with how it all comes together underwater. So no sweat and same again this morning, as per ze schedule, ja!

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Maldives: On board

Update from our Maldives coral reef and whale shark expedition

Liveaboards in the harbour

Expedition scientist Simon and I have arrived on our liveaboard base in the Maldives and are setting up as we speak.

The liveaboard harbour is – against expectations – still here and has not been filled in for housing. We have a quiet corner amongst other liveaboards although there is some hammering and shouting going on as I type this as last minute repairs are done.

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Malawi: Expedition achievements

Update from our Malawi expedition volunteering with elephants, hippo, cats, pangolins and African biodiversity

The 2025 Malawi Expedition has now finished and I am happy to reflect on another successful expedition, with a great group of expeditioners, some memorable highlights and a lot of good research data collected.

This is an expedition with multiple research projects: elephant herd observations, hippo transects, elephant dung analysis, camera trap survey, night transects, bird transects and an iNaturalist project, which gives a record of all interesting species spotted opportunistically.

We have done well on all of these and uploaded a large set of data for the expedition scientist to analyse and write up.

A provisional summary of some of what the 2025 expedition has achieved:

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Malawi: Leopard and more

Update from our Malawi expedition volunteering with elephants, hippo, cats, pangolins and African biodiversity

Vwaza continues to deliver amazing flora and fauna, with some great results on our second round of camera trap checks.

We have now finished collecting data and we are working through the collation of our bird and hippo transects, elephant spotting, elephant ID and dung analysis.

This year we have updated a number of our elephant profiles and added a few new ones.

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Malawi: Camera trapping

Update from our Malawi expedition volunteering with elephants, hippo, cats, pangolins and African biodiversity

Camera traps are a vital tool in our data collection efforts. Vwaza has many species that we see during the day and we can record from our own visual observations. But at night the forest and lakeside are teeming with life that we would not necessarily pick up. 

The expedition team set up 25 camera traps and serviced them halfway through the expedition. Some were unsuccessful – a stray  branch can trigger the motion sensor and we had one knocked off by a passing elephant. The others provided some exciting photos of porcupine, cape hare, civet and serval appear. No big cats yet.

This is an update from our Malawi volunteer expedition. You can find an overview of all our current expeditions here.

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Malawi: Buffalos and soccer balls

Update from our Malawi expedition volunteering with elephants, hippo, cats, pangolins and African biodiversity

We’ve been here in Vwaza for 10 days and on our travels we’ve observed buffalo tracks on a daily basis, but not seen one. Until yesterday when we had two teams out servicing our camera traps (more on those once we’ve processed the photos). Both encountered buffalo, with one team estimating the herd size at over 160. A great find.

Vwaza also has a number of antelope species, the most common being impala and kudu. There are also spotted bush bucks and puku. This morning we added roan to our list, a rare and exciting addition.

Our hippo transects continue to provide large amounts of sightings, with yesterday’s count exceeding 100 animals. We haven’t seen our elephant herd today, but we are working hard on updating our elephant identification sheets.

On Saturday – our day off – we went to the local town and were invited to Kizuni Primary School, where gifts from our expeditioners went down a treat, especially footballs brought by Louise sponsored by her local Canadian soccer team. We declined the offer of a game 😉

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Malawi: Mammals, birds, amphibians

Update from our Malawi expedition volunteering with elephants, hippo, cats, pangolins and African biodiversity

Our expedition continues to exceed expectations. We are into our daily citizen science programme. Early morning data recording drives and bird transects, followed by hippo transects and elephant surveys before lunch. The afternoons are then spent sorting and collating data and, the suprisingly popular task of sifting through elephant dung for seed analysis. In the evening we run night transects and share stories of the day.

Highlights from the last couple of days include spectacular bird shots, numerous elephant sightings and finding lion prints (which is exciting as they are rare here). We’ll put up a few extra camera traps and see whether we can catch the track-maker.

Tomorrow’s our rest day and we’re scheduled to visit the nearby school (we always get an invitation). One of our expeditioners has brought lots of footballs, so time for Malawi to win on penalties 😉

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Malawi: Elephants

Update from our Malawi expedition volunteering with elephants, hippo, cats, pangolins and African biodiversity

Having spotted a herd of 56 elephants mid-afternoon, the herd returned in the evening. This time their chosen route took them straight through our camp. For the next 90 minutes these gentle giants proceeded to eat their way between our tents, causing some damage to the trees, but none to camp itself. Having these animals pass close by us (we were all but one on our communal platform) rightly caused a few nervous moments and lots of excitement, but if you know how to behave around them and just let them get on with their browsing, while we get on with our admiring, then it is and was fine. After they moved on, we swept the camp, collecting some really fresh dung for study.

Lake and adjacent camp from the air
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