Chumbe Island Reef Sanctuary: The Conservation & Education Coordinator and Chumbe Island Rangers are launching their 4th season of coral reef monitoring efforts, adding coral reef diseases to this year’s efforts. Seagrass monitoring continues in addition to our long-terms manual sea urchin removal project, which includes fish monitoring and substrate observations. The team is looking into any potential ecological relationships between sea urchins and their main predator, the orange-striped triggerfish (Balistapus undulaus). On-going monitoring of the crown-of-thorns sea star, a major predator of coral reefs, continues as well.
Chumbe Island Forest Reserve: A comprehensive vegetation survey of Chumbe’s “rag forest” revealed high biodiversity rates for this small island of only 22 hectares, particularly of plant species with great medicinal value. Monitoring of the rare and endangered Ader’s duiker (Cephalophus adersi) occurred in partnership with Zanzibar’s Department of Forestry.
The conservation team is working to identify more effective ways to study and monitor these shy and elusive creatures and is networking with WIOMSA to improve the estimation of population size, sex distribution and health of our Ader’s duikers. Chumbe is also hoping to obtain better information on the population of our endangered Coconut crabs (Birgus latro) from researchers or local partnering agencies.
