Award-winning, non-profit and ethical wildlife conservation volunteering. Advancing citizen science and conservation since 1999 – for nature, not profit.
Have you ever wondered what an expedition packed up looks like? Probably not. And yet the answer is below.
Musandam expedition boxed up and ready to go
Adam (my sidekick) and I have arrived in Dubai and spent the morning going through the kit list and checking everything is there. It was, so our shopping list for this afternoon is simply a laminator, HP 121 printer cartridge, bungees, Nurofen, zinc oxide tape, nasal spray, antihistamine cream. Exciting – not!
Our scientist Rita has also just arrived at our hotel and as I type this, she is going through the emergency numbers and procedures with Adam, updating things as necessary. It’s all the usual pre-expedition fun and games.
The weather? Have a wild guess. Blue skies and temperatures of around 30 degrees Centigrade. Welcome to the Middle East.
See you tomorrow in the lobby at 09:00 and let’s go check those reefs!
Last month, Biosphere Expeditions returned from another successful wildlife conservation project in the Altai Mountains of Asia with some very exciting findings.
Biosphere Expeditions is an international not-for-profit organisation which co-ordinates regular wildlife conservation projects where volunteers from around the globe can take part – enabling them to see parts of the world they might not otherwise be able to, while giving something back.
Their latest expedition to the Altai Mountains was primarily focused on gathering information about the endangered Snow Leopard. However, this year they made a rather significant discovery. By laying camera traps and tracking scrapes, they found that the Pallas’ Cat climbs to much higher altitudes than previously thought.
Pallas’ Cat camera-trapped by Biosphere Expeditions research team at 3100 metres
This information will enable local conservation groups such as WWF Russia and Arkhar NGO to gain a better understanding of the behaviour of the local wildlife in a mountainous habitat, where many threatened or endangered species live.
The Pallas’ Cat has been classified as “Near Threatened” by the IUCN since 2002, so any new information that can be compiled about them will contribute to better conservation of the species and their habitat.
The expedition to Altai sent five groups of volunteers for two weeks at a time to support Biosphere and the local conservation teams.
Eleven people for group 5 have arrived. Poor Bob is the only native English speaker in the whole team amongst seven Germans, two French and a Swiss. But Bob is coping very well so far. I feel like we have made a trip back in time to group 3: the non-driving group (Catherine, Stephanie, Susanne & Eva ) went out Sunday afternoon and activated the box trap at Bergposten while everyone else was busy learning how to drive our Land Rovers.
Then on Tuesday, our first day with research activities after the training phase, the box trap group had to check Bergposten and found a hyaena in it. On our first day! Does this sound familiar, group 3? If it is, then wait until you hear that it was the same juvenile hyaena we caught and took blood samples of in your group. So we let her go straight away.
Also very lucky were the groups that were on elephant survey yesterday as both groups came across the white rhino family with their offspring. We don’t see them very often!
White rhino family
Another great piece of news was delivered by Christian (the landowner) who rang Kristina on Monday to tell her about two leopards (a female and a male) he observed for about ten minutes not far from his house in the morning. Guess where we set up the next box trap…
The last few days have been very busy. On Tuesday morning we checked the box traps on our vehicle game count and in box trap number 3 (where we caught our big male leopard) we found a small juvenile hyaena. We first thought that this might be the female we had caught at Bergposten three weeks ago, but when she turned out to be a he, we decided to get some blood samples and measurements on Saturday. He was sedated, weighed, measured and then placed back into the box trap and finally released when he was fully awake just before dinner.
Hyaena capture & processing
We didn’t expect to find so many different hyaenas in this study area and this is very interesting additional data about the other predators on the farm, thanks to all of you being our constant eyes, ears and data collectors in the field. Yesterday was group four’s last day. We spent it cleaning up, entering data and having a few farewell drinks in the evening. Thanks to all of you for your help and your kind words. Safe travels back home. Roll in group five.
Good news from Muscat, where I have had some high-level meetings with goverment decision-makers about creating a Musandam Marine Protected Area. It’s early days and I can tell you more about it when we meet, but it was an important step forward. The next step is you collecting more data!
Other than that we are pretty much ready for you. T-shirts and Reef Check materials printed, MS Sindbad is being made ready, supplies are being bought and I have done most of my packing.
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I’ll be on the A380 from London next Friday. My UAE number (on Sat/Sun 6/7 October) will be xxx and my Oman number (from 7 October p.m. onwards) will be xxx. Remember these are for emergency purposes (such as missing assembly) only.
On Friday morning we had an early start to count prey animals just after sunset. Soon group 1 (Jesaja, Linda, Allyson and I) came across a very fresh leopard track close to where we caught our male two weeks ago. Then, just after we had finished our vehicle game count, Allyson and Linda spotted a freshly killed impala next to the road. We decided to set up a camera trap on the spot straight away. On our way back to camp after setting the trap, we found more fresh tracks: cheetah this time.
The new camera trap yielded great pictures straight away (see below) with two different leopards feeding on the carcass at different times. A female leopard was there first and a few hours later our recently collared leopard male “Omusamani” took over. It seems the kill is the perfect new spot for live trapping. As I write this one trap is already set up. The second one is being set up as I type by our research team, who decided to give up their free day. Thank you.
Our first days in the field started with car checks before breakfast, so we got up very early to be ready to leave camp at 07.30.
Checking the Land Rovers
Ginny and Susan went for “Tracks & Scats” with Jesaja yesterday and bumped into a group of new-born ostriches. When they spotted the mum close by, they wisely decided to make a detour.
The elephant survey teams on Tuesday had some close encounters with their study objects and on Wednesday we had a hairy moment of hearing a juvenile trumpeting and chasing the Land Rover.
Elephants
All quiet on the trapping front, though, so we thought we’d show you some slides of lots of traffic at one of our traps with one of “our” leopards walking into the trap at the end.
With a couple of weeks to go until our Musandam expedition, I thought I would introduce myself and make you familiar with some changes (remember nothing is as constant as the change of plan on expedition ;).
My name is Matthias and I am the founder & executive director of Biosphere Expeditions and also your expedition leader. There’s a short video of me and why I am your leader (and not Rossella Meloni as per the dossier) below.
Change 1: I am your expedition leader.
Change 2: I will be on UAE mobile number xxx and not the expedition leader mobile advertised in the dossier. Since we have a good crew and have done this expedition for several years now, I will only arrive in Dubai 30 hours before we meet at the Holiday Inn Express Jumeirah. If you are late for assembly or if there is any other urgent matter, please ring me on this phone. Once we get to Oman and onto our liveaboard, I will switch to Oman mobile number xxx for the rest of the expedition.
No change: to the assembly point or time or to the fact that you are joining a research expedition, not a cushy dive holiday 😉 I hope you have all done your swatting up on Reef Check and are ready to help us with our reef research. Here’s an old 2011 survey itinerary. As you can see it’s early mornings and mostly survey dives, but we usually get in a few “lazy dives”, i.e. dives when you don’t have to fill in any datasheets. So please come rested and with your heads clear for all the Reef Check information we’re going to hit you with (and test you on) before you are allowed to collect data.
But enough of the scaremongering! I hope your preparations and packing is taking shape. Remember there is NO dive hire gear in Musandam, so please bring all your own stuff or arrange hire gear in Dubai in advance (see page 19 of your dossier).
I may write once more from Dubai before we all meet at 09:00 at the Holiday Inn Express Jumeirah on 7 October. Safe travels and I look forward to meeting you soon.
Regards
Dr. Matthias Hammer
Executive Director
Biosphere Expeditions
Our all women power team (group 4) has arrived safely on Okambara to join the fray. We’ve been through the training and biefings and Susan now knows that the reason for the big ears of African elephants are not that they can hear better 😉 Kristina was brave and took Sylvia, Allyson and Ginny for driver training even though Sylvia had not driven a manual car for 25 years. All are now well prepared for the upcoming data collection and we made sure they will remember all the GPS, compass and telemetry skills out in the field. The second day ended with Joerg’s presentations and a lovely rainbow over our camp when it started to rain. Weather patterns really are changing!
On Monday Andrew, Julia, Terrence and Josh had a tough day working in the heat and built a great new hide at Bergposten so we are now able to observe the animals under the comfort of a sun shade / roof.
Bergposten
Over the last few days we have found the box traps empty, but with their doors down and inside one of them John noticed a big mess. Something must have been in there. When we checked the camera trap pictures yesterday we found we had captured another predator: a honey badger went into the trap at night, but somehow made its way out (probably between the bars) before we could get there in the morning.
When looking through the other camera trap pictures we had another big surprise: our first cheetah picture!
Cheetah caught in a camera trap
Finally, we decided to call our latest leopard capture “Omusamani” (meaning “old man” in Herero). His collar is working and the data are coming in.
Yesterday we punched the rest of the data for this group into the computer before heading out to watch the African sunset. When you get this this group should all be packed up and ready to go. Thank you everyone. Roll in group 4!
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