FOR Michael Markovina, Linda Schonknecht and Elise Farley, Oman is a special country and they have been treated to its beauty time and time again. They were in the Sultanate on a marine expedition, exploring deep the marine life altogether.

 

 

The team’s goal in Oman was to discover and co-ordinate with those working and preserving the country’s marine heritage, which according to the team members is one of the innate beauties of the Sultanate with its rich diversity and quality.

They stayed in the Sultanate for about a month to do study on marine life here. The expedition team works under a body called Marine Resource Expedition that was born out of a passion towards the marine environment in the jungles  Gabon, where Linda and Michael worked for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in 2007.

 

 

Michael has a Master’s degree in Ichthyology and Fisheries Science, while Linda obtained a Bachelor of Journalism and Media Studies. Both spent considerable time in Gabon, Central Africa, where they worked for WCS. The core team members — Michael is in charge of marine-going expeditions and fisheries compliance, while Linda takes care of photography while the team is on the expedition.

Elise was born in Zimbabwe but grew up in Cape Town. After finishing school she studied at Rhodes University completing a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Science and Political and International Studies. Then she went on to complete Honours Degree in Political Science.
After Rhodes, she lived in Asia for a year and then moved to Europe.

 

 

She did a short stay in Nigeria and worked at an orphanage. After that she moved back to Cape Town where she is living and working for an NGO.
“Our ambitious project was to drive through 42 countries in 24 months looking for positive marine resource conservation initiatives and interviewing exceptional and positive people involved in such initiatives. We would look for anything, be it NGOs, governments, single people, it doesn’t matter,” said Michael in her comments.

 

 

As long as they were doing something positive in the marine environment they wanted to learn from them. They want to find what different people in different countries were doing to solve their marine problems and find Oman to be preferably on the higher scale when it comes to working for the environment and conserving the marine wealth.

“We feel very strongly that if we understand the positive aspects of marine resource preservation, we would then be able to challenge the negative aspects with inspired minds. By highlighting on positive initiatives, the marine resource expedition hopes to find solutions to marine resource management, solutions unique to a country and its challenges,” he said.

 

The expedition was launched from Cape Town, South Africa, on August 25, 2008 and has come a long way since then. The team has driven along Africa’s west coast from South Africa to Morocco, and crossed into Europe beelining their way to the northern most point of Norway. Then they drove the entire length of the Russian continent and shipped over to Japan, where the team traversed over China, Vietnam, Hong Kong and moved along the west coast of India. “A mammoth task that many assumed we would not be able to achieve beyond Angola,” said the team leader Michael.

Explaining about the expedition team’s journey he said: “The road has not been without its challenges though. We have dealt with the police in Nigeria to crippling diseases like malaria along most of the west of Africa to 11 hours of digging the vehicle out of some of the worst mud holed roads in Africa.”

 

 

According to him, people are not inherently bad, but they should know that if they are the problem, they have to look for solution also. “Given the similarity of marine resource issues globally, solutions to successful management and conservation are within our ability, which inspires us to continue on their epic journey of discovery.”

 

 

The expedition was launched from Cape Town, South Africa, on August 25, 2008 and has come a long way since then. The team has driven along Africa’s west coast from South Africa to Morocco, and crossed into Europe beelining their way to the northern most point of Norway. Then they drove the entire length of the Russian continent and shipped over to Japan, where the team traversed over China, Vietnam, Hong Kong and moved along the west coast of India. “A mammoth task that many assumed we would not be able to achieve beyond Angola,” said the team leader Michael.

Explaining about the expedition team’s journey he said: “The road has not been without its challenges though. We have dealt with the police in Nigeria to crippling diseases like malaria along most of the west of Africa to 11 hours of digging the vehicle out of some of the worst mud holed roads in Africa.”

“And we also had 12-hour drives a day for 16 days to traverse the gargantuan continent of Russia. We had been bitten, scraped and drowned in paper work and logistics running a 10-man operation with only two people, but we have achieved volumes. The expedition, although on a tight budget have achieved their goals with no salary, something we are particularly proud of and have time and time again found inspiring people and projects that have made the hardships worthwhile.”

While praising Oman’s concern for marine life Michael said the government in Namibia has turned 65 per cent of Namibia’s coastline to a marine protected reserve and brought about the regeneration of entire fish stocks that were on the verge of collapse.

“We found a one-man conservation army in Benin where he is  using the principals of voodoo to protect areas where turtles come in-shore to feed, as well as running education talks within schools and marine awareness in local councils, educating the Beninese on marine issues as well as another individual in Senegal who has managed to replant over 6 million mangroves in an area where they are all but destroyed, and creating over 10,000 jobs for local people.”

 

 

The team members also met NGOs in India, like the TREE Foundation, that has worked with the local fishing community to make them custodians of their marine environment, creating alternative incomes for communities who are battling due to the depletion of fish stocks in their areas, as well as fostering a wonderful relationship between the community and the Olive ridley turtles that nest on their shores.

 

“Every country we have visited we have been amazed and humbled by the dedication of the local people to trying to come to grips with their marine issues, and then finding active and lateral thinking solutions to their problems, and tackling them with astounding success.”   By Kaushalendra S Singh -  Oman Daily Observer

SURFSPOTS-GPS