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Update from our volunteer vacation / conservation holiday protecting whales, dolphins and turtles around the Azores archipelago (www.biosphere-expeditions.org/azores)

Wednesday we had good weather for our first full day at sea. The lookouts told us there were sperm whales to the north of Faial, and so that’s where we headed first thing. We stayed with 8 sperm whales at least half the day, cataloging at least 5 individual whales.

We then moved on to transect work, and were lucky enough to see a pod of striped dolphins doing their characteristic carousel thing. We got lucky and their course change brought them quite close to the Physeter, and we were able to see the wee ones flying through the air alongside the adults. Kasia got a great photo.

Thursday was a shore day; half the team went diving (brrrrr!) and saw octopus and moray eels for their pains, while the other half trekked around the rim of the caldeira, then free-wheeled down the mountain on bikes – great fun!

Today was an incredible day beginning with an hour-long encounter with a true leviathan – a blue whale! It graced us with its presence so close to the boat we could almost smell the blow. It was quite the surprise to have him surface only twenty meters away.

The afternoon was spent surrounded by sperm whales. Spaced quite far apart, we stayed with a set of whales until they showed us their flukes, and then race off to the next group. Cil captured a great double fluke. In all, seven obligingly showed us their flukes and we’ve got them in the North Atlantic sperm whale catalogue now. Lisa, our scientist, was very pleased!

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Update from our volunteer vacation / conservation holiday protecting whales, dolphins and turtles around the Azores archipelago (www.biosphere-expeditions.org/azores)

Team 1 has arrived, and yesterday was our first day at sea. We were quite successful even though the first day is only a half day. We caught and tagged two loggerhead turtles – a wee one and a larger one. Scientist Lisa obviously has had a great deal of practice netting these fellows, because they both were already diving before we could get close.

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We also saw a sperm whale, a fin whale, scores of common dolphins and met the resident troupe of bottlenose dolphins. The sea was relatively calm yesterday, yet the overcast light conditions made spotting blows and spotting floating sperm whales quite difficult. We knew where the sperm whales were, and even put the hydrophone in the water to confirm it, yet somehow they eluded us. We heard at least four of them clicking away quite loudly, and yet we never saw them despite our intensive searching.

A great start, and the seas today are predicted to be the same as yesterday, so we’re off to the Physeter to catalouge whatever animals show themselves to us today.

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Update from our volunteer vacation / conservation holiday protecting whales, dolphins and turtles around the Azores archipelago (www.biosphere-expeditions.org/azores)

Greetings from Banana Manor, our base in Horta. Lisa, Catherine and I (left, right, centre) have been very busy preparing for your arrival. Base is now all set up, and we are eager to greet the first team on Monday.

Girl power (left to right: Lisa Steiner, Alisa Clickenger, Catherine Edsell)
Girl power (left to right: Lisa Steiner, Alisa Clickenger, Catherine Edsell)

You can start arriving at Banana Manor after 13:00 on start day. Training begins promptly at 14:00 so please be on time as there is a lot of information to take in during the first 24 hours of the expedition slot. (Please do not arrive at Banana Manor before 13:00 as you are likely to find it empty or in the process of being cleaned with no room for you to put yourself or your belongings in.)

Lisa, Catherine and I will be at Peter’s Café at 11:30 on Monday morning, so if anyone would like to join us we’d be happy to see you. This is an informal pre-expedition lunch and is self-pay, but since we are eager to meet you and we have to eat too, we’ll socialize there and then walk back to Banana Manor. We’ve organised luggage transportation from Peter’s to base camp, so feel free to come to Peter’s straight from your flight or other hotel if you’ve already been on the island and you won’t have to worry about rolling your luggage a couple of kms to base. Walkers get Alisa’s 2 cent tour of downtown Horta.

If we don’t see you at Peter’s, then we’ll meet you at the official meeting time between 13.00 and 14.00 at Banana Manor. Expedition briefing will start promptly at 14:00.

It’s not a cushy holiday, but if you’re still packing your things, it might be a good idea to bring some cushy house slippers. They’re not official expedition kit list, but they might make base camp life more comfortable since Banana Manor is a stone and tile building. If your slippers are in the shape of cetaceans, you’ll get a star for the day 😉

I hope you all have good journeys and if you need to contact me before we meet, I confirm that my Portuguese mobile number is xxx. Please call me if you are going to miss the assembly meeting at Banana Manor. I am eager to meet you all!

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Update from our volunteer vacation / conservation holiday protecting whales, dolphins and turtles around the Azores archipelago (www.biosphere-expeditions.org/azores)

Hello everyone

Alisa Clickenger here. I’ll be your expedition leader in the Azores this year. I love working in the Azores because our scientist Lisa Steiner (we like to see if you are paying attention using our given names Alisa and Lisa) is great to work with. You won’t find anyone more passionate about whales than she is, and she has the best “eyes” on the ocean for spotting cetaceans. I learn so much from her every year. There’s a video of Lisa below

I’m finishing up some things here in the States (mainly a visit with mum) and then I will arrive a few days before you volunteers in order to set up the expedition headquarters. We’ll have Catherine, Craig and Sue as expedition-leaders-in-training (see www.biosphere-eexeditions.org/about for their details) along with us on each slot (and in that order), and we’re fortunate for that. I’ll send around another message once I get on the ground in Horta and confirm my local mobile telephone number. It should be xxxxxx, but I’ll confirm it’s working when I get it out of storage on arrival. Please remember this is only for emergency use such as missing assembly.

Ah, yes, mobile phones. There’s reception on Faial in addition to internet here and there, but we won’t be using cell phones while we’re at sea, so I invite you all to tell everyone you are off the grid for the expedition, leave your devices at home, and soak up all this expedition experience has to offer. I’ve recently become addicted to backgammon, so if anyone has a game they’d like to bring along…

I know you’ve all been eagerly reading your expedition materials and know to bring many layers of clothing. Last year was freezing cold, and the year before that very warm. We’ll see what 2014 brings. I’ll mention now that every year we have someone arrive without waterproof pants, and they get very wet and cold and miserable, especially if they are stationed on the bow as a lookout and the weather is choppy. While you can purchase waterproofs in Horta, they are expensive on the island.

Lisa tells me that she’s already been whispering to the whales, and they are eager for your arrival. So am I. Lisa has posted some updates of cetacean activity on www.facebook.com/biosphere.expeditions1 and there is a welcome video by yours truly below, so you can meet me before you meet me, it you see what I mean.

Safe travels and see you in due course.

~Alisa

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Update from our conservation holiday volunteering with lynx, wolves and wildcats in the Carpathian mountains of Slovakia (www.biosphere-expeditions.org/slovakia)

Addendum:

Tomas has picked up our camera trap from Lake Blatna and this is what it showed….

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Update from our conservation holiday volunteering with lynx, wolves and wildcats in the Carpathian mountains of Slovakia (www.biosphere-expeditions.org/slovakia)

For 2014 the Slovakia expedition has come to an end. We have had a great time and it was sad to see slot two leave on the train to Bratislava on Saturday morning.

After heavy rain during the middle of last week, we were rewarded with fresh snow and sunshine on Thursday and Friday. No more bear sightings, but Jade was able to take a photo of a wild boar just crosssing the track – Tomas, the wildlife photographer, went green with envy :-)!

All in all we covered a very impressive total of 476 km of walked transects! Slot 1 covered 228 km and 41 cells, slot 2 covered 248 km and 61 cells. Over the two weeks we collected lots of different kinds of samples of wolf, lynx, bear and wildcat! Our phototrapping yielded good results too and we were able to reach, during this expedition, areas we have not been to before.

We would like to thank everyone for the genuine effort they have put in. Remember that without you, none of these data would be collected and no reports would get written up (we will let you know when the report is published in due course). You could have gone on a skiiing holiday or lazed around on the beach somewhere, but instead you chose to help Tomas and friends with his efforts – thank you for this.

Thank you also to our local friends and helpers Franitsek and others, as well as Swarovski Optik and Land Rover Austria for their support of the expedition. It is great to have all of us pulling together in support of nature and wildlife in this beautiful part of Europe.

See you next year or somewhere else on expediton!

Peter with Astrid, Milos, Tomas

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Update from our conservation holiday volunteering with lynx, wolves and wildcats in the Carpathian mountains of Slovakia (www.biosphere-expeditions.org/slovakia)

Group two has arrived safely, was briefed and met with a light dusting of snow in the valley (and more higher up in the mountains). It made for great conditions on our first group survey. It even gave our team member from Australia, Angie, the chance to make her first ever snow man!

The snow was so fresh that many of the mountain inhabitants hadn’t had a chance to walk out in to it yet! Still, we found badger tracks and some bear prints that were so fresh, they were still warm when the group spotted 😉

In their smaller groups, the team put in a valiant effort on day two. We surveyed more than 62 kilometres – a record distance for one day for this Slovakia expedition and in driving cold rain too! Many tracks of bears, wolf, lynx and wildcat were recorded.

On day three we had extremely cold rain in 1 degree C. When we started, we did so with low expectations as the remaining snow had melted and washed away. But there are still enough north-facing slopes left, so we could find lot of tracks and scats again!

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Update from our conservation holiday volunteering with lynx, wolves and wildcats in the Carpathian mountains of Slovakia (www.biosphere-expeditions.org/slovakia)

On Saturday we waved goodbye to the first group of champion trackers. What a week!

We were all a little apprehensive at the beginning of the week. The low snow levels lead us to believe that tracks would be less apparent, oh how wrong we were…. The findings were incredible. Almost 230 km were surveyed in the past five days, a huge area covered. We have found many bear, wolf and lynx tracks, as well as a wildcat track, two bear sightings and bear and lynx camera trap shots. We have also discovered the presence of two possible new wolf packs in the Veka Fatra National Park…! All these pieces of information are invaluable to the project, and therefore the protection of these wonderful wild creatures.

Katie, Dave and Sonny made it to the summit of mountain Klak and Linda, Louise and Martyn walked an incredible transect of more than 22 kilometres! Back at base our fantastic host Frantisek had prepared a birthday cake for Jeroen, which we promptly ate up. Happy birthday!

A huge thanks to team one, courageous, valiant and committed to the cause!

Group two are being trained as we speak.

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Update from our conservation holiday volunteering with lynx, wolves and wildcats in the Carpathian mountains of Slovakia (www.biosphere-expeditions.org/slovakia)

In the past couple of days, the team of 14 have broken into four smaller groups and surveyed side valleys, ridges and summits; In total we have surveyed 114.1 kilometres of the Velka Fatra National Park.

Our findings….

Several separate lynx tracks, bear tracks (the warm weather means bears are not hibernating), wolf tracks, and many golden eagles sightings.

One group have discovered a bear’s den. Tomas (our scat and track pro scientist) was disappointed that rather than venturing in to count how many bears were in the den, take some pictures, collect some scat samples and perhaps stay for a cuddle, the group pushed on, rather quickly…. Probably keen to get to cafe ‘Pod Lipami’ for hot chocolate delights.

The group have made great progress and are in good spirits. The data collected has already been incredibly valuable to the project.

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Update from our conservation holiday volunteering with lynx, wolves and wildcats in the Carpathian mountains of Slovakia (www.biosphere-expeditions.org/slovakia)

Yesterday everybody arrived safely in Slovakia and we immedialety started the introductory talks and briefings on safety and science;
followed by training on the equipment this morning. We then went out as one team to get used to the terrain and learn about ‘the tracking techniques’.

Without much snow (it’s thawing at the moment) we walked almost 14 kilometres and found lots of stuff: Tracks of three lynxes, tracks of a wolf pack and two single wolves, tracks of two bears, a bear scat, two wolf scats, a bagder track, and a so far unkwown badger den, also, tracks of a haselgrouse, sightings of a herd of red deer and two golden eagles.

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First results of our camera traps include photos of a fox and a pine marten on our deer carcass.

Since we started working in Slovakia, this has been without a doubt the day with most findings  😉

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