Wild Tobago

Anjani Ganase joins the team to survey coral reefs which innovates a process that allows scientists to monitor the health of corals The experience on Heron Island working on my master’s research led to the opportunity to map coral reefs of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR) for the XL Catlin Seaview Survey. This project had two main purposes: outreach, by bringing coral reefs to people using 360-degree imagery to create an immersive learning experience. The second purpose was scientific using the camera technology to create one of the largest visual baselines of the Great Barrier Reef from which researchers extract information on reef composition and study the spatial patterns of this expansive reef system. For me, it was the ultimate dream job. As the marine technician, I was tasked with collecting all the imagery and associated data for all the sites during the four-month excursion from the Southern Great Barrier Reef to the Far North GBR and Coral Sea. It was ...

Anjani Ganase continues to relate her journey to ocean scientist. She spends eight months on Heron Island and lives among the creatures who feel safe there. I thought that the island I grew up on was small. Then I moved to a tiny island called Heron Island in the Southern Great Barrier Reef for eight months to study the impacts of climate change on corals. I thought my island upbringing would prepare me for the sea life, but this opportunity to study coral reefs came with a full immersive experience of living in the marine environment. Heron Island is a two-hour boat ride from the mainland (Gladstone) of Australia and sits in the outer Great Barrier Reef. Heron Island, about 800 m long and 300 m wide, and as the name suggests, houses a colony of herons among other marine birds such as sooty shearwaters and noddy terns. As lovely as this sounds, no one mentioned the eye-watering smell of bird guano or the haunting sounds of hooting shearwaters in the night – the h...

Shivonne Peters-McPherson discusses the changing face of the popular party site in the Buccoo Reef Marine Park. All photos courtesy Shivonne Peters-McPherson Tobago has long been known for her diverse, pristine and unique marine environments, spanning colourful coral reefs, dense mangroves and white sand beaches. This beauty propelled the island’s popularity in the 1990’s and 2000’s as an ‘unspoilt’ destination, perfect for visitors seeking a benign nature experience. Along the island’s south-western coastline, beaches such as Pigeon Point, Mount Irvine Bay and Store Bay are popular. Underwater adventures are found on coral reefs such as Kariwak Reef off Store Bay, or reefs off the northern coast such as Charlotteville and Speyside. Among Tobago’s top beaches, one specific beach is memorable, No Man’s Land.   In 2020, the occasional boat visited No Man’s Land     No Man’s Land is now a regular stop for food and liming on many tour operators’ itinera...

Faraaz Abdool tells us about female hmmingbirds dressed as male, and another bird where some males dress as female. All photos by Faraaz Abdool   In this age of polarising perspectives and the politicising of even the most benign things, nature proceeds as she always has - not according to our self-imposed rigid rules. After all, our understanding of nature is premised on observation, and if we observe more, we understand more. Problems arise when we take what we already know and assert that that is all that needs to be known. Nature is fluid, academic categorisation isn't - and so we need to remain open and willing to learn. Prime example is the rewriting of astronomy textbooks after analysing observations from the James Webb telescope in 2024. Without this willingness to accept that we still don’t understand the full gamut of existence, we are destined to stagnate in ignorance. In the world of birds, we constantly learn via observation. Species we acknowle...

Dr Anjani Ganase learns to dive, and falls into the splendour of life in the ocean. This is the third instalment of the series in which she recounts her journey to becoming a coral reef ecologist.  All photos courtesy Anjani Ganase   I decided that I needed to learn to scuba dive when I went to university. I signed up for an undergraduate degree in Marine Biology but I had no idea what the marine world looked like. Like most freshmen, I expected that being a marine biologist meant working with dolphins, whales and turtles or any megafauna. But an unseen world was being revealed through courses in microbiology, chemistry, oceanography and invertebrate zoology. The ocean systems are built on the microbes that regulate ocean food, and they drift on currents that regulate the climate. It was about time that I saw what the ocean looked like. During my summer vacation, I signed up to for an open water certificate in Trinidad. The lessons started in a classro...

On her journey to monitoring and conserving coral reefs, Dr Anjani Ganase works with a sea turtle study in Tobago, and visits Grande Riviere to see the nesting leatherback turtles. Life for a marine biologist begins on a beach. One big reason I turned to studying the ocean were the bugs. Endless biting insects – sand flies and mosquitoes – enjoyed my sweet blood on every visit to the bush or the beach. Even worse, I would swell up like a jelly bean wherever I got stung. As an adult, I have learned to be prepared as I still seek out nature on hikes and chasing waterfalls. Last weekend I covered up for an extra special visit to Grande Riviere, the most densely populated leatherback turtle nesting beach on the island, and some say, the world.   The first time I was taken to see leatherback turtles, it was with my parents on Matura Beach. I was still in primary school. My parents were reporting for the Guardian at the time, covering a story about the use of satel...