Marine Volunteering in the Seychelles

My time in the Seychelles was the best of my life so far. It was my first time travelling alone and so far away from my home. At first I was worried about getting there and what activities I would be doing and conditions I would be living in. I met my group in the airport and we were immediately picked up by the driver and taken to where we needed to be which was very helpful. My first look on base was exactly what I expected it to be, very basic. I was however surprised by how nice the bathrooms were and found the lack of hot water did not bother me. The staff were very friendly and I felt very welcome. What I did find to be a struggle in the coming weeks was the food situation. We mostly ate rice, pasta and vegetables and by the end I was sick of the plain-ish food (especially red peppers). We were treated to some chips and burgers occasionally - those were my favourite nights and on 2 evenings we ordered pizza in from the nearest town which was very enjoyable. I wish I had brought more snacks with me since I was always hungry after the dives.

My time scuba diving was extremely enjoyable and productive. We dove 2 times a day for five days a week. For the first week we completed our advanced open water course. After that we moved on to the marine research part, doing point-outs for our specific area of learning to practice our observation skills. I personally did fish 1 which was reef fish. We were taught by a series of PowerPoints and scouring through books to identify which types of fish we had seen during our previous dive- this was very efficient and a fun way to learn. By the end of the course I had learnt around 50 fish plus other incidentals and was able to identify them during our surveys in the last week. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about the marine animals and me and my friends came up with fun ways to revise and test each other. Some of my favourite sightings were nudibranchs, turtles, eels and rays. I also did other surveys such as seagrass surveys, coral surveys and nudibranch surveys. The coral one was interesting as we had a numbered colour palette and picking out random bits of coral, compared its colour to the palette for the closest match.

During the weekdays we had free time in the evenings and the volunteers often organised fun activities such as movie nights, table tennis tournaments, football on the beach and coconut hunts (which was my favourite although I did get a lot of mosquito bites wandering around the jungle). We also did a few cards games which got very competitive.
On weekends we left base to explore the island and others surrounding it. Most weekends we stayed in mahe and a group of us just booked hotel rooms. In our free time we liked to relax at the beach, wander around the local area, eat out in restaurants etc. My favourite activity was the three bothers hike trail. It took us over an hour to get to the very top and it was not an easy journey either, the majority of it was spent on hands and knees scaling up boulders and over huge tree roots but it was worth it as the view was incredible at the top. We could see so much of the island and could watch as aeroplanes landed in the airport: it blew my mind being so high that even the aeroplanes were lower than us. If I remember rightly we were 2220ft from sea level, it was just such an amazing experience. On another weekend we went via boat to another island where we cycled the whole island, visited various beaches and enjoyed a couple nights in the reggae bar. On another occasion a couple of us even organised a night dive which was so much fun, we saw the likes of lobsters and huge white sea snakes. If I turned off my torch and waved my hand around I could see the glow of the bioluminescence which was surreal. I would have liked to do more night dives and hope to do so I’m the future.

Overall my time in the Seychelles was just incredible and I have made life long friends all across the globe. I feel much more confident in travelling now and my ability to overcome any worries. It has inspired me to carry on and study marine biology in the future and I would definitely like to do another course similar to this with GVI again. A wonderful experience.