Catherina describes herself as someone who adores the ocean and all species, her favourite one being the turtles. She is definitely lucky to be a Seychellois and having such a haven as her office.

Her job as an assistant researcher at the Marine Conservation Society of Seychelles (MCSS) involves a series of field work which keeps her busy.

“Monitoring turtles and the environment including beach degradation and helping out with coral surveys are some of my main duties,” she said.

With coral surveys they check to see if there’s any coral bleaching and enough planktons for whale sharks to feed on.
“We weigh these planktons in a laboratory at the Seychelles Bureau of Standards and we keep a record.”

“On Wednesday I’m involved in turtle monitoring from 6.30am and it’s mostly in the south (Intendance down to Grand Police, then moving towards Takamaka, Anse Louis),” she said.

This is the time where she monitors turtles and checks for any trails left behind by them, taking their Global Positioning System points.

The team do beach profiling on a monthly basis and “there is a beach mapping project to see if the sand is good enough for turtles to lay their eggs”.

Her days in the office, which is not really her thing, involves some filing in of certain books or reports.
For the time being her organisation is working on a project which includes tagging multi species such as shark, ray fish and grouper (which we call vyey).

“We are also learning more about the different types of insects we have here, that’s another one of our projects.”
Catherina, a former student of the Maritime Training Centre, has gathered many skills there which are definitely helping her in her job. She also did an advanced course in open water diving.

“Diving is adventurous, at first I badly wanted to be a diving instructor.”

She was also offered a job at Alphonse and worked there for a year and during which she also visited the islands of Desroches and Aride for some conservation work.

The young diver has only seen one shark when diving – a two-metre tiger shark – and that was in the waters around Alphonse.

“Some people told me that not everybody dives in Alphonse waters as it is dangerous, so I was a bit scared but by the time I was in the water there was no fear.”

She had many adventures there. “Once I helped to remove a stranded false killer whale from shallow waters and bring it to a channel.”

The baby whale’s skin was a bit damaged as sharks had started to bite into it, she said.

Catherina also did tortoise monitoring on other Alphonse group of islands including Bijoutier and St François.

But when a job opportunity came at the MCSS she did not hesitate as she wanted to be closer to home. The conservationist lives at Beau Vallon and her dad is a fisherman.

She even worked with the marine parks for a while and at some dive centres.

“Maybe eventually I’ll change jobs, but it will always be in the line of working with marine life.”

I found the marine parks most interesting because it involved quite a bit of diving.

Catherina encourages the youths who want to follow in her path not to be afraid to stand up for their environment if they are really passionate about it.

“I also need to say that the concept that maritime studies are for boys only is not just completely wrong, but biased. Girls, if you’re interested in the field go for it.”

Apart from work she loves to read romantic books. But for the time being she is reading Beyond the Reef by William Travis which is based on our seas and creatures found here – sharks and green snails.
She does not go out and prefers to stay at home and watch movies.

By Rebecca Chang-Tave & Jean Ladouceur