DJL Seasonal South East Monitoring Camp

Last week we went on our first monitoring camp of the south east monitoring season here on Aldabra. Our camp took place at Dune Jean-Louis (DJL), between 12/07/2026 – 15/07/2026, a total of three nights and four days of monitoring. The camp team included myself (Field Research Officer), William (Aldabra Science Coordinator), Rona (Assistant Aldabra Science Coordinator), Clarisha (Ranger), Angela (Trainee Ranger) and Norisha (Health and Safety Officer/helping hand to make up our numbers for the camp).

Across the entire camp we carried out reptile transect surveys, land crab transect surveys, arthropod monitoring (deploying malaise traps x 3 , pitfall traps x 6 and carrying out beating x 3 sites), landscape evolution (taking photos at specific sites to monitor changes in landscape across seasons and years, and we also started the brand new mangrove fauna monitoring and soil ecology monitoring (Soil testing (3 replicates at two different habitats – Grassland (GRS) and Open Mixed Scrub (OMX)) and tea bag index (18 tea bags – 9 green tea and 9 rooibos buried 8cm deep in pairs, 15cm between the paired bags, each pair 1m apart, 3 pairs to a line, each line 100m apart)). We also deployed three song meters to record bat acoustic data for three nights at permanent sites selected in the open mixed scrub habitat.

We left Picard at 14:30hrs on the 12th July, enroute to DJL we stopped at Ile Espirit to deploy an opportunistic song meter for an external student project (not part of our regular monitoring).

We arrived the DJL landing stage in the mangroves just after 16:00hrs and made it to the hut by around 16:20hrs. From there we split into 3 teams. Rona and Angela went to deploy the Bat SMs, William and I went to do the inland land crab surveys, one transect in the scrub and one in the pemphis, whilst Clarisha and Norisha did the three coastal crab transects. For crab monitoring the surveys are carried out between 17:00-19:00 in the South East Season and are repeated for three consecutive evenings.

After we had completed our first evening of monitoring we ate our dinner which was cooked by Rona and Angela. This camp I decided to take a tent to sleep in instead of staying inside the hut, William and I pitched them on the grass at the beach.

The next morning Rona and I set out at 6:45am to deploy the three malaise tents, it was quite hard finding appropriate places to set them up but eventually we managed to do it. William and Angela were selecting sites for soil testing in the OMX and deployed the tea bags for the tea bag index soil decomposition monitoring before helping us deploy the six pitfall traps.

Whilst we did this, Clarisha and Norisha went out to the reptile transects to complete surveys on transects 1 – 6 (these are repeated in the morning between 8am -11am and again in the afternoon between 14:00-17:00 for three consecutive days).

Rona and I made lunch, then, in the afternoon we went for landscape evolution – to take the images in the appropriate locations (it was a lot harder to match up the exact angle than you would expect), whilst the others split into two teams and each carried out three reptile transects. Later that evening Angela and I carried out the three coastal crab transects (also doing some maintenance on the markings) whilst William and Rona did the inland transects and Clarisha and Norisha cooked dinner.

On our third day Rona and William went out early to select the soil testing locations in the GRS habitat, as well as carry out beating sampling for arthropod monitoring. Then at 10am, William, Rona, Norisha and myself headed to the mangroves to carry out our first official mangrove fauna monitoring in the 10 plots that William, Rona and I selected during my very first weekend on Aldabra. Whilst we did this, Angela and Clarisha surveyed the six reptile transects in the morning and again in the afternoon. With William, Rona, Norisha and I doing the evening crab transects.

On our last day at camp, the last things we had to do were retrieve the malaise traps, pitfalls, SMs and collect the rain gauge readings (done by Angela and Rona), and carry out the last two reptile transect sessions. In the morning, myself and William carried out transects 1 -3, and Clarisha and Norisha carried out 4-6, then in the afternoon Rona and I did 4-6 and Angela and Norisha did 1-3. We returned to the hut by around 16:00hrs and packed up the hut and tents ready to make our way back to the landing stage. We had to wait a little while for the tide to be high enough for us to be able to leave, and it meant we had to trapse across the thick mangrove mud to get to the boat, but luckily we managed to remain steady and not fall over in the very slippery mud!

On the way back to Picard, Rona retrieved the SM from Ile Espirit, and we arrived back at La gigi at around 19:15hrs. William and I then quickly went to retrieve the day 7 samples of the tortoise poo we had deployed last week, ready for drying in the oven the next day.

Overall it was a tiring camp, but it was really nice to get fully stuck into the monitoring season, its going to be a very busy few months! This week we have a lot of data entry and checking at the office before prepping for our next camp which is coming up very soon.

There was unfortunately a small water situation at the campsite - we had to ration water for washing dishes and ourselves because we only had one water butt as the others were broken. Also because it is the South East we are not getting much rain so no more water is getting added to the water butts, and thirdly the gutter is broken so even if there was more rain it wouldn't be collected, so maintenence will need to be done before our next camp at DJL.