The Monaco Explorations’ research vessel ‘S.A . Agulhas 2’ was in the Seychelles waters conducting research at the Aldabra Atoll, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The team of 80 scientists from Monaco, France, Seychelles, Reunion, and Mauritius, spent a week on the atoll and will carry out scientific work on coral, mangroves, seabed, turtles, and much of the flora and fauna around and on Aldabra.
Monaco Explorations was initiated by Prince Albert I of Monaco over 100 years ago and is now being headed by his great-great-grandson Prince Albert II of Monaco. The project was created with the aim of supporting marine governance and planning.
SNA met with Robert Calcagno, managing director of Monaco Explorations, to learn more about the Indian Ocean and Seychelles research.
The Monaco Explorations have already been investigated in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The Monaco Explorations is concerned with the global ocean – we consider the ocean as one global entity, but the western Indian Ocean is clearly one of the richest, one of the most diverse, and even one of the healthiest oceans in the world. At the same time, it is also one of the least explored and investigated.
Robert Calcagno stated : “We are trying to carry out more work in that region, which is why we selected the western Indian Ocean. In the last 50 years, Monaco has had specialties in studying and protecting the coral reef, and with the Indian Ocean being one of the rich coral reef regions, it was a reason why we chose the western Indian Ocean.
First, we have a programme studying plastic debris and its potential to carry viruses and invasive species. We collect the plastic debris, using the large manta ray filters. They are not easy to manage but we have done that in Mauritius and Reunion and on the way to Aldabra.
We tried to analyse and characterize the plastic debris. There is already one good observation that we have made: there is much less plastic debris around Aldabra than what we found around Reunion and Mauritius. This is not surprising as there are much more people in Reunion and Mauritius.
It is good to know that plastic debris is traveling all around the world but presently there is less plastic debris around Aldabra than in the other parts. It is to be noted that these are not plastic debris on the beaches, but rather plastic debris in the water column. We did some investigations on the beaches of Aldabra, finding and characterizing all the plastic debris.
The other one is that Aldabra, just like other coral reefs in the world, suffers from coral bleaching. There was a decrease in the coral cover in the reef of Aldabra.
We have collected 60 different parts of corals and in partnership with the Seychelles Islands Foundation, we will study these corals and try to understand, through experiments, if some species are more resilient to climate change than others. At the same time, we will keep this coral safe in the oceanographic museum in Monaco. When there are other coral bleaching events, we will be able to not only give you back the corals but also tell you that be careful if you can plant and regrow this kind of species they will be more resilient against climate change than other species.”
