SOSF D’ARROS RESEARCH CENTRE RAINER VON BRANDIS INTRODUCTION AND HISTORY The natural environment of D’Arros Island and St Joseph Atoll is among the most pristine and spectacular in the world. Scores of sharks, manta rays, turtles, stingrays and fish inhabit the lagoon and the surrounding coral reefs while flocks of seabirds roost in trees overlooking tranquil beaches. In recognition of the islands’ outstanding natural values, the private owners established the D’Arros Research Centre (DRC) in 2004 and tasked it with becoming a regional centre of excellence for marine and tropical island conservation. Initially, collaborations were established with local and international institutions and baseline ecological surveys were conducted in the various habitats. Over the ensuing years an increasing number of research projects and monitoring programmes were implemented in response to questions raised by the baseline surveys and visiting scientists. More recently the D’Arros Research Centre expanded its activities to include ecosystem restoration and environmental education. To date the D’Arros Research Centre has initiated 34 projects in collaboration with more than 25 institutions, resulting in two PhD dissertations, one MSc dissertation, nine scientific journal publications and 27 scientific reports. The DRC’s facilities consist of a dry and a wet laboratory that are separated by a series of eight flow-through seawater tanks. The dry lab contains computer and electronic equipment while the wet lab is used for sample analysis and experimentation. The flow-through tanks house corals, algae and other benthic organisms for experimental research purposes.
and St Joseph Atoll. Rainer spent the next five years based on D’Arros where he gained an intimate understanding of the area and its surroundings. In the process he designed and initiated new research, monitoring and restoration programmes and wrote a conservation management plan for the islands. In 2011 Rainer achieved his PhD and became the scientific director of the D’Arros Research Centre. In 2012, the ownership of the islands changed and the Save Our Seas Foundation (SOSF) was entrusted with the conservation and the centre’s management, and its name changed to the SOSF D’Arros Research Centre (SOSF-DRC). Chris Boyes was hired in 2013 as the lab manager of the SOSF-DRC. Chris spends 10 months of the year on D’Arros, where his main functions include maintaining facilities, assisting visiting researchers, collecting long-term marine monitoring data and managing the forest rehabilitation programme. Chris studied for a BSc in forestry and has been working with nesting sea turtles in Costa Rica, South Africa and Mozambique since 2005. His Masters study was on the nesting ecology of leatherback and loggerhead sea turtles in Maputaland, South Africa. This mixture of experience in forestry and marine ecosystems means that Chris is equally at home and competent on land and underwater. Under the new leadership of the Save Our Seas Foundation, Rainer and Chris have been given all the support and expertise they require to achieve the revived mission statement of the research centre: to preserve and showcase the ecological integrity of D’Arros Island and St Joseph Atoll through research, monitoring, restoration and education.
D’ARROS RESEARCH CENTRE STAFF The SOSF D’Arros Research Centre is directed by Dr Rainer von Brandis and facilitated by Mr Chris Boyes. Rainer began his career in the outer Seychelles in 2001, when he arrived at Aldabra Atoll as a volunteer. Five months later he was hired by the Seychelles Islands Foundation as the research officer for Aldabra, where he remained until the end of 2005. In 2006 he was offered an opportunity to conduct his PhD on the foraging ecology of the critically endangered hawksbill turtle at D’Arros Island
CURRENT PROJECTS Projects undertaken by the SOSF-DRC fall into four categories: long-term monitoring, targeted research, ecosystem restoration and environmental education. Long-term monitoring programmes are a vital tool in conservation because they show trends over long periods of time. The longer the timeline of data, the more powerful the results become. As humans, we tend to limit our perception of change to our own lifetimes. Consider for instance a retired fisherman who, as a child, caught at least 10 times more fish in a day than he does today. In his 16