So it’s been a few months since we have last touched base with everyone, and we had quite a time. We finished up our time in Asia by spending three weeks moving across Vietnam over the festive season and into the new year, then spent the following three weeks moving from Mumbai down to Trivandrum in India by bus and train.
Exploring the Mekong Delta and meeting great groups like Wildlife at Risk, who gave us an interesting perspective of the deep trouble the Vein of South East Asia find itself in. As one of the most important resources in the area
there are basically zero marine or water based work being conducted in the area. There are large scale dredging and massive amounts run offs from aquaculture and agricultural farms, as well as sedimentation that can be
seen from the plane over 200km out to sea. This is a deeply troubling situation.
India provided us with some inspiration on a monumental scale. They have extremely diverse and overexploited fish stocks and amazing people such as Dr Deepak Aptee of the Lakshadweep Project, Dr Kartik Shanker and his
insights to conservation work in India. Dr Supraja Dharini and the Tree Foundation and Father Thomas Kocherry, an activist and priest who has taken on the battle of community fisheries, very inspiring. India was just full of
it, we barley managed to cover all the different projects in such a short time. We will be posting each on our website in the following weeks along with the photos.
We are also still contributing to Beyond Blue magazine, www.beyondbluemag.com and www.africandiver.com, for more intense discussions on the countries we have visited and the projects we have encountered.
Currently we are in Oman for the month, busy filming and working with Turtles, whales and doing some ‘really’ amazing diving in a very interesting country. We look forward to telling you all about it soon, as well as having
added one more to our little team, Elsie Farley. She will be joining the expedition and adding much needed help till we reach Kenya.
