Jocara Newsletter
April 11, 2005

Stop Press!  The Jocara website has just been overhauled and updated with 
lots of exciting new material including dolphin research, videos, new 
projects, places, faster-loading pages, a guestbook and more!  Please log 
on, check it out and sign our guestbook.  Let us know what you think of 
the new site!

Jocara is anchored close to a beautiful tiny island consisting mostly of 
sea-sculptured rocks with a sprinkling of palm trees on top. Casper and 
Alex have been clambering all over the island and have been making the 
surrounding waters unsafe for small fish. They're becoming excellent 
fishermen, catching our dinner with their casting rod trolling from the 
dinghy. We left Victoria, Mahe and headed for Praslin and surrounding 
islands last Friday after some days of running around town, getting 
cooking gas, doing laundry, shopping and meeting with local nature 
research and conservation folk. We're combining a few days of snorkeling, 
diving and relaxing with a bit of turtle research. Some years ago 5 
Hawksbill turtles were satellite-tagged to find out where their foraging 
grounds are, where they go after the nesting season. It turned out that 
they all stayed on the Seychelles bank and one turtle spent more than a 
year in a very small area not far from here.  Jocara went to this location 
to find out what this habitat looks like and what food the turtle snacked 
on. After mapping the depths John and Caro went for a dive to have a look 
and were astonished. We found a nearly barren sandy bottom and couldn't 
imagine what a turtle would find to eat. Then we spotted many shallow 
hollows which could have been dug by turtles, but why? To get food?  We 
were puzzled.  Still are!  The local turtle researcher we're working with, 
Jeanne Mortimer, tells us that Leatherback turtles have been observed 
digging for molluscs in Australia, but Hawksbill turtles have not been 
seen doing this... yet. If they do, this would be a really interesting 
find. We now plan to return to the site for second dive to check for 
evidence of broken bits of shells. 

Jocara's location is 4 deg 18.1 South and 55 deg 45.0 E