Alison Shaw - Marine and Freshwater conservation programmes manager

Alison Shaw, ZSL’s Aquatic Conservation Program Manager, talked about three amazing conservation projects that she is currently involved in.

The first project that she talked about was the Thames project. People think the Thames is really dirty because if is brown but this is just the sediment and there are in fact 123 species that live in the Thames including seahorses. Alison also explained about the bottle nose whale that was sighted in the Thames last January and the fact that it was very unusual for an animal like this to be in the river as they are normally found in the Northern Atlantic. ZSL were contacted when the whale was first sighted as they had been running a project for the past 2 years asking people to make a note of any sea life they see in the Thames such as bottlenose dolphins, grey seals and harbour porpoises, which have all been spotted in various spots along the Thames. This project is still running and some of the visitors who lived in London took some forms away with them in case they sighted any of this sea life so they could help ZSL with their project. There are also known to be eels that live in the Thames. However they are not born there, they are born in the Sargasso Sea and spend the first two years of their life swimming all the way to our rivers.

The second project Alison has been involved in is in Mozambique protecting the turtles that live there. ZSL work with local communities to patrol the beaches for poachers and they also fit electronic tags on adult turtles to see where they go as we currently know very little about the movements once they have laid they eggs. The more we know about their movements, the more action we can take to safeguard them and make sure they return safely to the beaches again. The programme has already been very successful due to total protection over 400 nests of green and hawksbill turtles. The movements of one green sea turtle called Claudia have also been tracked last year and her tracking map can be seen on the ZSL science webpage. Some more tracking devices have also just been sent out to Mozambique from London so that they can start to track movements of some other turtles like Claudia.

The final project is helping with the conservation of ornamental fish in the Amazon. ZSL have worked alongside communities in Brazil to see if there is a sustainable trade in ornamental fish such as the cardinal tetra. There are reported to be 20 million fish per year exported to the United States and Europe for people to keep in their home aquariums. Extensive surveys are being carried out to see if the trade is sustainable, not only biologically but also socially and economically. The fishery will be locally run by the community with the help and advice from ZSL.