Picture Perfect Mozambique...

Some of my photographs from beautiful Mozambique...

My good friend Madi out by the beautiful seas

Sunrise from our veranda

Survivor Island

Volunteering at Schools...

Our final week was dedicated to helping out at the local schools. We were meant to do a lot of teaching; however, because it was exam week, we ended up doing more painting than teaching, which I actually enjoyed a lot more than I expected. 

In one of the two schools where we worked, my team painted a world map and flags of the world on the back wall. 

It was incredibly rewarding to see the room go from nothing to something beautiful and even cooler to see a teacher using the world map to teach her class. To see my overview video of my volunteering in Mozambique, click here.

The children loved my camera—look how silly they were! 

The final classroom!

Fisheries Research...

During week two, my team was in charge of the fisheries research. This involved a 40-minute walk to a nearby beach where local fishermen bring up their catches. Each day we lay on the beach in the sun napping, reading and waiting for the fishermen to come back so we could record their catches. This research is an important part of the effort to get the local bay qualified as a marine protected area. 

Most difficult to record were the shark catches, especially when they brought up an infant tiger shark; it wasn’t pleasant to watch, but was quite fascinating. 

The shark fishing locally is fairly sustainable as the whole shark is used, however the fins are sold to Asian markets for use in shark fin soup. To see my short video on the artisanal shark fishing industry in Mozambique, click here.

Diving in Guinjata Bay...

My first week of volunteering involved carrying out coral reef surveys on the local reefs. This involved dropping down on the reef, laying out a transect line and then recording video which we analyzed in the afternoon for species of coral and number of fish. While the analysis was tedious, the dives made up for it. We got pretty quick at doing the surveys, so we had the rest of the dive to just explore the reef. 

That’s me on the left taking images of the quadrant.

My Team: Daisy, Mattie, me and Abbie

My team was incredibly lucky as we got to see not only a manta ray on a dive, but we got to swim with a whale shark. We were all watching a free-swimming eel when I spotted a huge thing swimming slowly behind us out of the blue. My heart stopped for a second before I realized it would not harm us. Despite how slow it appeared to be swimming and how fast we were attempting to swim, we could not keep up with it for long and it was quickly out of sight. Safe to say, we used up our air pretty fast on that dive as we partied underwater after such an amazing experience. 

At least I managed to grab a photo of it before it swam away.

Francesca, one of the founders of Love The Oceans, is really into underwater photography and captured this photo of me filming a shoal of fish.

Mozambique...

Veronica takes over my blog for the next few days...

In late June, I traveled down to Mozambique for four weeks to volunteer at the marine conservation non-profit Love The Oceans. I arrived at the dive center where we were based a few days before the volunteer program started so that I could get my PADI Advanced Open Water dive certification. I was shocked how beautiful it was and even more excited when I saw how dark the sky was. It was honestly breathtaking! We could see the Milky Way from horizon to horizon and I took every chance I had to take photos after dark. 

Early mornings meant that I had the chance to capture some beautiful sunrises, too! Everywhere I looked was postcard perfect. 

The accommodations and meals at Guinjata Dive Centre were wonderful. I never expected to gain weight when traveling to Africa, but then again we did have a personal chef cooking dinner every night and delicious fresh bread for breakfast each morning.