Saturday, January 24, 2015

SRMR - first Management Meeting!

Epic boatload: Elisabeth; SRMR managers Ian, Bati and El Ciro; El Diego and Kira from Projects Abroad; and a whole gaggle of BAD boyz - click for detail!

Great day!

But first things first.
That lady in the bottom right hand corner is none other than Elisabeth Holland, a veritable Nobel Prize laureate! On our boat!
Who would have thought that possible when we embarked on this crazy journey eleven years ago! Needless to say that she is (obviously!) smart and incredibly passionate - but she's also refreshingly humble, very witty and just a genuinely nice person on top of that.
Really nice meeting her - and yes, we are incredibly honored!

And then we had our first management meeting.
Juerg is abroad but will be here next month - but with the freshly coined Director of Fisheries, Aisake "Bati" Batibasaga, El Ciro and Ian we did have a quorum and were able to formulate a first set of immediate initiatives, first of which will be a substantial increase both in the number of fish wardens and the number of patrols. 
We've just received our first baseline report (= detailed Coral cover assessment, and rough assessment of Fish and Invertebrate abundance) from Helen, and there are indications of recent small-scale fishing. In itself, this is not terribly worrisome - but it IS poaching and we need to nip it in the bud.

And after that, there will be other stuff.
No as usual I'm not telling as it's way too early to divulge any details, let alone make breathy announcements - but i can assure you that you will like it! :)

So, keep watching this space!

No comments: