Aldabra

After some time at sea heading north from Madagascar (breakfasting outside while watching red footed boobies soar-diving for flying fish...) we reached Aldabra.   this world heritage site was a very interesting environment.  Too quick a visit of course, lots of paying attention to group tours and driving boats so my photos aren't particularly fantastic I feel like.... but they do have a seasonal volunteer program to go and work on conservation projects... hmmmmmmm!

Aldabra is sometimes talked about as the Galspagos equivalent of the Indian Ocean... animals unafraid of people and distinctly evolved in this environment.  The site itself is an elevated coral atoll made of several islands, with a huge interior lagoon... you can't really see across to the other side. As I understand it, Aldabra is named after an Arabic word that means the green land or some such-- after the fact that the lagoon is so large that it reflects upon to the clouds above-- creating a green tinge to the clouds... thus the 'green' place.  Maybe you can see that in this pic, a little aquamarine tinge in the lower middle here?

Within the lagoon there are little blobs of islets, called 'champignon' because with tidal action the limestone has been undercut leaving mushroom shaped islands behind.  The inner lagoon drains entirely at low tide so we had to time our activities correctly or get stuck inside or try to fight against the tide to enter via one of the few inlet channels... Which doesn't really work.  We actually had great luck with our schedule and had a whole morning to access the lagoon, and had an afternoon in a drift snorkel again with the right ride direction.  The lagoon is home to red footed boobies, lots of green and hawksbill turtles (saw some mating actually!), rays, and there is even a resident pod of dugong... We didn't see any but the thought that the island and its seagrass beds are healthy enough to have dugong reestablish themselves on their own.

Cruising the mangrove-lined channels past red footed boobie and frigatebird rookeries

Navigating the shallow lagoon...

Oh yea, and then there's the tortoises...

And tortoise poo... They're herbivores ;)

Dugong had been hunted out in the 17-1800s for food by the seafaring traders that were so numerous in those times... they took tortoises too, turning them on their backs on deck to keep them alive for fresh meat for months... in this way the various species of giant tortoise throughout the islands of the Indian Ocean were exterminated, all but those specific to Aldabra because it was such a remote island ... there they persisted long enough until a conservation ethic developed strongly enough to protect the remaining individuals... now individuals from Aldabra have been exported to other Indian Ocean islands for tourism attraction but also to assist with ecological restoration...  They are herbivores and crop the vegetation back to native plants evolved to persist rather than plants that are tall growing... so in one example on Round Island near Mauritius the tortoises help to control non native plants, allowing for other native species, lizards etc, to rise in number... pretty neat!

Also of note, the giant coconut crabs, tree dwellers and ground scavengers...

Another excellent end of day