Lorraine’s work experience travel log

The month of May has absolutely flown by! On the 5th May it officially marked 6 months since I arrived on Ascension, so now as I write this, I’m nearing 7 months and am over halfway through my time here.  Some of the highlights of the past month have included the Kings Coronation Celebrations, Anna and I enjoyed making use of our new Hammocks, I drove up and down Green Mountain for the first time on 17th May, carried on crafting and started and completed a cross stitch reindeer, we practiced some fan work in Kung Fu (22nd May), On 18th May Anna and I helped Chrisna and Sophie build Cairns to mark the boundary of the Waterside Nature Reserve, Mel showed Anna and I how water samples are filtered for eDNA (May 2nd) and I also had my first day out on the boat with Marine team this month as well (May 9th)!  On the 13th May we also celebrated Eurovision, by having a viewing party at Matt’s House, we all dressed in colours representing countries we were supporting so

Excavations are carried out in order to retrieve the temperature loggers which were placed into nests earlier in the season. The green turtle monitoring data base we enter our data into calculates excavation dates based on average incubation lengths per nesting beach. An additional week is given on top of the scheduled date to allow any late hatchlings to vacate the nest as sometimes this can take a week from hatching until exiting the full chamber, this also can prevent any live eggs from being opened accidently if a clutch has a slightly longer incubation time.  By excavating a nest, we can investigate the success of the nest by determining how many of the eggs hatched. We can investigate the emergence success of the nest by determining how many of the hatchlings made it out of the nest. We also retrieve the temperature recorders we placed in the nests on the night they were laid to calculate/predict sex ratios and hatching dates by temperature changes.  Stages of excavat

As an overseas British territory, the Kings Coronation was very much a celebration here on Ascension.  Saturday  Celebrations on the Saturday began at 3pm with an RAF parade into Georgetown Square and three cheers to the King followed by the Administrators speech. There were also small island businesses with stalls selling things as well as fayre games stalls for kids as well as some food stalls and a small bouncy castle for the kids.  Anna and I actually missed the official coronation at 11am on the TV, as we were on sea rescue training, so we were out on the sea practicing deploying a drogue anchor. But I’ll definitely always remember where I was when King Charles III was coronated!  We made it back in time to watch the balcony moment and then headed into Georgetown for the RAF parade in the square. After the speech and national anthem there was the judging of the kids endangered animal fancy dress competition, which was one of the most adorable things I’ve

April Highlights  A bit late to posting this one as it got very busy at the end of April! As April ends and May begins, the 5th May marks 6 months since I arrived on Ascension! How fast time has flown by!  April saw us discover and obsessively use the Ascension Library (lots of books and dvds 😊), the end of turtle night work for 2023, Anna and I have carried on with weekly Zumba and completed the Dew Pond Challenge, and Nest excavations have also carried on for our second round of data loggers this month.  In the evening of the 1st April our friend Matt was hosting an Ascension April fools Talent Show! The ‘inaugural long beach variety performance’ as it were. Everyone was really good sports and got involved. Matt started the talent show by playing a song on his guitar and we then had a range of performances from Sophie doing a recital, Thom playing a video game using a VR headset hooked up to a TV so we could see what he was doing, Nick’s comedy recorder playi