Award-winning, non-profit and ethical wildlife conservation volunteering. Advancing citizen science and conservation since 1999 – for nature, not profit.
Shaha Hashim is a pioneer in the conservation movement in the Maldives. Her passion started at a young age when she “was lucky enough to be selected for the school snorkelling club where I witnessed the vibrant beauty of the corals before the 1998 bleaching event devastated over 90% of them.”
Many corals have grown back since and Shaha never lost her dedication to them. In 2014 Shaha joined Biosphere Expeditions, an international non-profit citizen science organisation, which supercharged her conservation career.
‘I wanted to have an impact on protecting nature,’ says Angelika Krimmel from Germany, reflecting on what drew her to her first expedition with Biosphere Expeditions.
That first experience was in 2016, studying whales and dolphins in the Azores. It wasn’t long before Angelika found herself coming back again and again – to Slovakia in 2017 to monitor lynx, bear and wolf; to Kyrgyzstan in 2019 and 2024 for snow leopard research; and to Kenya in 2023 for African biodiversity conservation.
Whales, paw prints and camera traps
Each project offered something unforgettable. “After a week with the whales, you think nothing can top the first sight of one. But then a curious sperm whale swam alongside our boat, jumped three times and looked straight into our eyes. That look went directly to my heart.”
Angelika (yellow circle) with her 2016 Azores expedition team
We have found some hope in the gloom. The last reef we assessed, was – in the words of Simon, our expedition scientist – “what a reef should look like”. Great coral cover, quite a few fish, almost no bleaching and very little coral disease. So the expedition ended on a high, as well as some outstanding karaoke, especially from the crew, who had some impressive dance moves in store.
In between the weather tried to thwart us, but we are undeterred, dodging and weaving the squalls, laughing at the sheets of rain and delighting in the sunshine.
We checked lots of reefs like clockwork. And this is exactly what makes an expedition: a journey with a purpose. Our purpose was assessing reef health, revisiting sites and continuing to add to what is now an impressive 12-year database.
Thank you, expeditioners – none of this would exist without you. We hope we also brought some clarity to your own purpose and thinking during what was an all-round very successful expedition.
Group 2 is now also qualified – well done – and checking those reefs.
The stories are as mixed as has been the weather. There are some quite healthy reefs and some that are sick.
Fish are scarce, especially grouper, because there is immense fishing pressure due to (over)tourism and a very active grouper fishery that sells them off as food fish, mainly to Hong Kong as live fish for restaurant aquariums there.
Here we are back again with a smaller, but equally keen group 2.
The weather has turned and it’s more windy, greyer and rainy now. But underwater it’s wet anyway.
We’ve done our check-out dive and are well into our training sessions now. Lectures, pointy dives and fish test today. The proof will be in the pudding.
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!
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.
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!
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.
Peter Pilbeam from the UK is a long-time supporter of Biosphere Expeditions. He took part in every single expedition to the Altai mountains that Biosphere Expeditions ran from 2003 to 2012. ‘And then it just snowballed’, he remembers. Here’s his story.
‘Initially I was intrigued by the slogan ‘Where on earth is the Altai?’ and my interest in snow leopards’, Peter recalls ,‘and I liked my first expedition so much that I just kept coming back’.
Peter (yellow circle) and his Altai expedition team in 2011.
‘In the years after the Altai expeditions, I went to Kyrgyzstan to continue with snow leopard expeditions, then to Slovakia and Germany to study wolves, Sumatra to work on tigers, and Scotland and the Azores for cetaceans.’ All in all Peter has been on 17 expeditions since Biosphere Expeditions started in 1999, which makes him one of the most experienced expeditioners of the NGO.
‘All these expeditions have taught me how to travel independently, how to camp in the wild, and a good dose of self-reliance’, reflects Peter, ‘and once on the expeditions, I really appreciated all the great and varied experiences, some very hot and humid like Sumatra, some cold and snowy like the Altai and Kyrgyzstan, some wet and with rough seas, such as Scotland and the Azores.’
Altai 2011
Scotland 2013
Slovakia 2017
‘And I always take lots of memories home with me’, says Peter, ‘some of the most abiding ones are trekking over mountains through snow and across scree slopes in the Altai, tracking wolves in snow and mud in Slovakia, and watching and recording whales – those beautiful creatures of the sea – around the Azores archipelago’.
Back home in the UK, Peter has now given lots of talks on snow leopard. He is also active as a mammal surveyor and teaches small mammal ID courses regularly. He has also become a reserve warden in his home-county of Cambridgeshire.
‘I expected to learn something on the expeditions, but I never expected it to have such a profound impact on me!’ says Peter. ‘ To anyone out there thinking about going on an expedition, I would say do it! Choose with care, but just do it!’, he adds with a laugh.
Biosphere Expeditions: blogs from the frontline of wildlife conservation and the fight for a more sustainable planet 