First Month in the Seychelles! – Month 1 (April – May 2026) Assomption

It’s been a while! I stopped writing up blogs whilst I was working in the Maldives as I never had any time to sit down and write them, but I’ve decided to try and get back into writing up what I’m getting up to now that I’m on a new adventure in the Seychelles.

I have recently started my new role as a Field Research Officer with the Seychelles Island Foundation based on Aldabra Atoll, UNESCO World Heritage Site. However… after one month in the country I have only just arrived at Aldabra. I landed in the Seychelles (on Mahe) on the 9th April, after waiting a few months for my work visa to come through. Getting out here was a little stressful, there is a North West Season here (October ish – April ish) and South East season (May ish – September ish). The sea conditions during the South East make it very difficult to access Aldabra and all Supply boats and any tourism (Cruise Ships and Private charter or liveaboards only – with special permissions and expensive impact fees) is not possible during South East. Therefore SIF wanted to get me here before South East begun but we had to wait for my work permit. There were lots of last minute changes (I only knew the date I was flying for sure the day before), and even once I arrived in the Seychelles, my onwards travel to Aldabra Atoll kept changing. The only way to get to Aldabra Atoll is to fly by small plane from Mahe to an Island called Assomption which is over 1,000Km from Mahe and around 30km from Aldabra. From there the only option is to travel by boat. Usually the flight and the boat happen during the same day, however due to the time of year I ended up spending an entire month on Assomption, waiting for sea conditions to allow transport across to Aldabra! But as of 3 days ago, I am now finally on Aldabra Atoll (specifically Picard is the island of the Atoll that the research station is based on). When I arrived on Mahe I was staying in a place called Beau Vallon (I actually stayed there when I came to visit Adam at the end of last year – so it was nice to be somewhere familiar), I was only supposed to be there for one night but it ended up being 6 nights until my flight to Assomption. I spent the Friday, Monday & Tuesday at Head Office in Victoria and had a nice chilled weekend in the middle. On the Tuesday all my bags and belongings had to be biosecurity checked and then on the Wednesday I was taken to the Seychelles Coastguard for my flight, I also met Angela who is a new Trainee Ranger for Aldabra Atoll (who I am now living with on Aldabra) and also three people from the Indian Ocean Tortoise Alliance (IOTA), who were heading to Assomption contracted by SIF to do a study on the Aldabra Giant Tortoise population on Assomption. This is part of a wider biodiversity assessment that is currently happening, as part of a requirement for construction that is occurring on the island for a new very luxury resort which is being built – controversially. I won’t go into all the details but if anyone is interested I’ll share some links about what’s been going on: • https://news.mongabay.com/2025/06/green-groups-oppose-qatari-luxury-resort-near-pristine-world-heritage-site/ • https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/sep/11/giant-tortoises-in-seychelles-face-threat-from-luxury-hotel-development The flight from Mahe to Assomption took over 3 hours, we stopped at an outer island called Alphonse to refuel on the way as well. The flight was very scary… it was a very small plane and you could feel every little movement, I was very glad when it was over. As part of the biodiversity assessment that is happening, there was a team conducting sea turtle track monitoring for 3 weeks before Angela and I arrived, I had been asked if I could lead the continuation of this monitoring whilst we were on Assomption as well as assisting the Environment Officer (Daniel) who is based on Assomption with Biosecurity duties as needed whilst we waited to make the crossing.

After arriving on Assomption on the 15th April, we were told the expected travel date to Aldabra would be the 23rd or 24th April, this changed to the 26th and then was moved to the 4th May, then the 8th May and then the 15th May, then the 13th May. This meant our monitoring plans were constantly changing, I had planned for initially 18 surveys (3 per beach – there were 6 suitable beaches for turtles to nest on), but in the end we ended up doing 46 surveys. I had wanted to do an equal number of surveys across each beach but with a constantly changing schedule it wasn’t possible in the end.

For the surveys we were walking the beaches and recording any turtle activity, for every emergence track we found we would mark the location on a GPS as well as the furthest point the turtle reached (to look at the impact any construction towards the back of the beach might have) and also the outcome of the emergence (if the turtle nested or not and any factors that might have caused disturbance etc.). In total across all 6 beaches and 46 surveys we spent over 51 hours on doing surveys, recorded 940 turtle activities with 41% nesting and encountered 5 live turtles on the beach during the surveys. Angela and I also got the chance to help the IOTA team out with some tortoise monitoring – if we saw any whilst we were out on turtle survey we would take a GPS point of where the tortoise was, we would measure the width of their 3rd Dorsal vertebral scute and take a curved carapace length (CCL) measurement. We would then give them a number and mark it on their shell with a white marker pen. In total IOTA marked over 1000 tortoises and are going to do some analysis to predict a population estimate which will definitely be over the 1,000 as for sure not all of them were marked. We also joined in a tortoise ‘sweep’ one morning where we went out and marked as many tortoises as possible.

I also went snorkelling a few times whilst on Assomption, there was large seagrass beds where the turtles would hang out and also mate. I saw lots of turtles, a grey reef shark, some black tip reef sharks, octopus, moray eels and lots of different fish and corals – very cool. Our food was provided for us at a canteen on Assomption, we had breakfast at 6:30am each day and 8am on a Sunday, lunch at 12:00pm and dinner at 19:00pm every evening. The food was nice, there was always some Dhal and rice which I could have and sometimes the chefs would bring me some separate food to make sure there was vegetarian options for me, it was very basic but still good food. I only had internet at the office, not at the accommodation I was staying at but I did a lot of reading during my free time which was nice, the weather was VERY hot and made surveys quite tiring, each day between 2 – 5 beaches surveyed on some days with some beaches being a lot longer and intensive to survey than others.

Eventually we made the crossing on the 14th May, getting transport from a privately chartered Liveaboard called Basilisk who were bringing the last tourists from the season to visit Aldabra for 2 days. We had been warned the crossing would be really rough but it actually wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I had been expecting which I was relieved about. I’ll write a follow up blog soon about how my first week on Aldabra goes but I am excited for my next new adventure!