Author: Damian Jensen

In Memoriam: Prof. Charles Sheppard OBE Ph.D.

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We were saddened to hear that Prof. Charles Sheppard recently passed away at his home in Scotland.  Charles was a passionate advocate for the creation of the Chagos Archipelago MPA and a talented scientist who advanced our understanding of how climate change is affecting coral reefs.

The Bertarelli Foundation was very pleased to be able to support Charles’ vision for the Chagos MPA in 2010.  The interdisciplinary and collaborative programme of marine science that followed, was built upon the strong foundation of science that Charles – and his wife Anne – initiated decades earlier.  The hundreds  of scientists that have travelled to the middle of the Indian Ocean in the years since were very much standing on Charles’ shoulders.

Charles’ final book, The Chagos Archipelago: A Biological Biography, was published very recently and is a fitting and lasting testament to his life’s work.

Harvard University Launches the 2021 President’s Innovation Challenge

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The Harvard Innovation Labs has launched the 10th Annual President’s Innovation Challenge, a competition designed to bring together the Harvard community to work on compelling solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems. For the 2021 Challenge, winning teams will receive $510,000 in prizes from the Bertarelli Foundation.  Ernesto Bertarelli commented:

“The Bertarelli Foundation has long recognised the importance of entrepreneurship in driving forward human progress.  I’m pleased to see that with each passing year, the iLab and the President’s Innovation Challenge, fosters more and more young entrepreneurs as they tackle some of the world’s most pressing problems.”

“As we kick off this year’s President’s Innovation Challenge, our focus first and foremost is shining a light on the incredible innovators and entrepreneurs across the global Harvard community,” said Matt Segneri, Bruce and Bridgitt Evans Executive Director of the Harvard Innovation Labs. “Over the next six months, we look forward to supporting all of the venture teams participating in the Challenge, and recognizing their many achievements both leading up to and during the PIC Awards Ceremony.”  

Participants in the 2021 President’s Innovation Challenge will have access to a variety of Harvard Innovation Labs virtual resources, including advisors and industry experts from around the world, workshops on topics focused on starting and scaling a venture, and panels that are both industry- and stage-specific. 

In May 2021, the 10th Annual President’s Innovation Challenge Awards Ceremony will celebrate the work of 25 finalists through a unique, immersive, and interactive virtual experience with focus on a “more human” future. Ten of the finalists will receive $500,000 in Bertarelli Foundation prizes across five tracks: Social or Cultural Impact; Health or Life Sciences; Open for ideas that transcend categories; Launch Lab X GEO for eligible alumni-led ventures, and Life Lab for high-potential biotech and life sciences ventures accepted into the Pagliuca Harvard Life Lab. Additionally, the President’s Innovation Challenge will award $10,000 as part of the Ingenuity Awards, for ideas with the potential to be world-changing, even if they are not yet fully formed ventures. 

Last year’s grand-prize winners, each receiving $75,000, were Umbulizer for building a reliable and low-cost device that can provide continuous ventilation to patients; Coding it Forward for empowering the next generation of technology leaders to create social change; Fractal for developing a solution for streaming Windows 10 desktops to macOS or Windows devices; Vincere Health for using real-time incentives and behavioral nudges to motivate people to live healthier lives; and Tectonic Therapeutic for transforming the discovery of novel drugs addressing targets in the G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCR) family. 

To learn more about the 2021 President’s Innovation Challenge visit innovationlabs.harvard.edu/presidents-innovation-challenge.  

Tristan da Cunha creates planet’s fourth-largest fully protected MPA

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The Tristan da Cunha Island Council and the British government have announced plans to preserve the unique biodiversity surrounding the world’s most remote inhabited archipelago.

 On Friday, 13th November 2020 the Tristan da Cunha Island Council committed to the designation of most of the archipelago’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) as a marine protection zone. The move will fully safeguard an area that spans more than 687,000 square kilometres (265,000 square miles), about 91% of the waters of the remote South Atlantic Ocean island chain, and create the fourth-largest fully protected marine reserve on the planet. Final action on the necessary legislation is expected in 2021.

Industrial Extraction Prohibited

With the new protected zone, which is nearly three times larger than the U.K., Tristan da Cunha will prohibit industrial extraction activities throughout most of the EEZ to safeguard a rich and diverse ecosystem.

A long-term Management Initiative

To help the community actively manage these newly protected waters, the Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy Project is committed to supporting long-term implementation projects. These initiatives include developing a partnership with Global Fishing Watch to support the planning and management of effective marine protections by harnessing near real-time, open-source and interactive data to evaluate ocean conditions, marine biology, and human activity, such as fishing.

Dona Bertarelli, co-chair of the Bertarelli Foundation and Special Adviser for the Blue Economy to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, commented:

“This ambitious decision by the Tristan da Cunha Island Council to protect the archipelago’s waters is a great example of local leadership that has a global impact. Today’s announcement enhances the resilience of the Tristan da Cunha community, whilst making a significant contribution towards the science-based global target to protect 30% of the ocean by 2030. The Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy Project looks forward to partnering with the Tristan Island Council to support the long-term implementation of the new protections for years to come.”

Congratulations to the Winners of the 2020 Harvard President’s Innovation Challenge

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$510,000 in Bertarelli Foundation prizes were awarded to ventures across industries during a virtual awards ceremony presented by the Harvard Innovation Labs

The 2020 President’s Innovation Challenge (PIC) Awards Ceremony was vastly different to the ones of previous years.  The corona virus pandemic meant that the event was held online rather than on Harvard’s campus but, despite this, the ceremony was still a great success with more than 1,000 people tuning in to see the largest prize pool awarded to the successful teams.

People tuned in from around the world for the PIC Virtual Awards Ceremony to see ventures founded by Harvard students and alumni showcase their solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems across industries. During the one-hour live-streamed event presented by the Harvard Innovation Labs, 25 finalists showcased their work, and 10 ventures received $500,000 in Bertarelli Foundation prizes across five tracks: Social Impact or Cultural Enterprise; Health and Life Sciences; Open for ideas that transcend categories; Launch Lab X for eligible alumni-led ventures, and Life Lab for high-potential biotech and life sciences ventures accepted into the Pagliuca Harvard Life Lab.

This year’s grand-prize winners, which each received $75,000, are Umbulizer for building a reliable and low-cost device that can provide continuous ventilation to patients; Coding it Forward for empowering the next generation of technology leaders to create social change; Fractal for developing a solution for streaming Windows 10 desktops to macOS or Windows devices; Vincere Health for using real-time incentives and behavioural nudges to motivate people to live healthier lives; and Tectonic Therapeutic for transforming the discovery of novel drugs addressing targets in the G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCR) family.

Sanchay Gupta, Chief Medical Officer and co-founder of Umbulizer commented after receiving grand prize award in the Health & Life Sciences Track:

The world needs ventilators now more than ever, and this award will directly fund the production of additional devices that we can then deliver to patients in need.

The four runners-up, who each received $25,000, were Concerto Biosciences for discovering functional microbial communities for human therapeutics using a patented screening platform; Tang for its international mobile payment app that makes paying and sending money easier; Change The Tune: The Studio for providing impactful learning opportunities for young people and innovators; OZÉ for its platform connecting small business owners in Africa to data, cash, clients, and each other; and Day Zero Diagnostics for combining genome sequencing and machine learning to modernize infectious disease diagnosis and treatment.

The President’s Innovation Challenge awarded a further $10,000 as part of the Ingenuity Awards – for ideas with the potential to be world-changing, even if they are not yet fully formed ventures. This year’s Ingenuity Grand Prize winner was Foresight for empowering people with vision impairments with a novel wearable navigation device using soft actuators and computer vision. The two runners-up were 1,000 More for facilitating crowd-funding lobbying efforts so that average Americans have access to that part of our democracy; and Datacule for developing molecular data storage technology.

Matt Segneri, Bruce and Bridgitt Evans Executive Director of the Harvard Innovation Labs.commented:

I am so proud to be a part of this diverse and incredibly talented Harvard Innovation Labs community.  This year is our ninth year hosting the PIC and over 1,500 teams have now passed through this community that we are building together. We are excited to be a hub that connects, supports, and inspires students and alumni across all Harvard schools, and we are dedicated to nurturing the endless curiosity of these entrepreneurs and innovators.

The President’s Innovation Challenge prizes are exclusively funded by the Bertarelli Foundation, which announced the President’s Innovation Challenge Fund in October 2017 to fund the competition for the next five years. This gift extends the Bertarelli Foundation’s support of student-led ventures at Harvard, which began in 2013 when the Foundation funded the Deans’ Health and Life Sciences Challenge at the Harvard i-lab.

To watch the President’s Innovation Challenge Virtual Awards Ceremony and learn more about the winners, visit pic2020.innovationlabs.harvard.edu

Physicists, Biologists and Geneticists Join Forces to Protect the Ocean

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Professor Heather Koldewey leads the Bertarelli Foundation’s marine science programme, which is dedicated to advancing our understanding of the ocean. The programme fosters collaborative science that combines the skillsets and disciplines of a range of scientists, all of whom conduct their research in the British Indian Ocean Territory’s Marine Protected Area.

Here, Professor Koldewey describes how the marine science programme helps scientists make progress in this important area, and what she considers to be ocean conservation’s biggest challenges.

Can you explain the collaborative approach that the Bertarelli Foundation has adopted?

The idea behind the programme is that by bringing together scientists from diverse fields, working on different projects and with their own particular insights, we can solve bigger, more complex problems. Within our team of more than 70 scientists we have a wide range of disciplines including physicists, geneticists, biologists and ecologists and many others; so although everyone’s working in the same study site, everyone approaches the research with their own particular perspective.

For example, physicists are looking at how underwater waves move around seamounts.  At the same time, we have biologists studying the distribution of sharks around the same underwater mountains.  By working together, they are finding out how the physics of the ocean is affecting where sharks are found.  The more you understand these processes, the more you can start to identify “hot spots” where sharks will be found.

How does the Bertarelli Foundation support marine protected areas in particular?

The Bertarelli Foundation played an important role in helping establish the British Indian Ocean Territory’s Marine Protected Area (MPA) in 2010. Since then, the Foundation has worked with the Pew Charitable Trusts to establish new MPAs around the world, including around Easter Island, the Pitcairn Islands and many others. The Bertarelli Foundation is helping to safeguard these large ocean wilderness areas and help governments achieve international targets for ocean protection.

Can you describe some of the more significant results that have arisen thanks to the collaborative approach taken by the Bertarelli Foundation?

One of the biggest insights has been the relationship between the land and the water –  we’ve discovered that what happens on oceanic islands has a huge influence on the neighbouring reefs. For example, there is a much higher biomass and diversity of various reef species adjacent to islands that don’t have rats. These islands are not only much richer in seabirds and natural vegetation, but there’s also evidence suggesting that islands without rats, and therefore healthy bird populations, have better resilience to detrimental events like coral bleaching.

How does the Bertarelli Foundation link science to policy making?

In the UK, there’s a very large marine science community, but it can be difficult to translate research into effective public discourse. Scientists often focus on their research but the Bertarelli Foundation’s work ensures that science is used to inform policy, not just in the Indian Ocean but globally.

2020 is the deadline for governments to meet their targets for ocean protection.  Programmes like this are providing robust science to give policymakers the ability to make confident decisions and take much needed action.

There are a lot of issues facing ocean conservation today. If you had to choose just one, what do you think is the primary issue that we should be focusing on?

Having worked in ocean conservation for over 25 years I’ve seen many far-reaching changes. Although some are positive – and obviously the creation of marine protected areas is a positive development – they are often overshadowed by concerning declines in marine species and habitats

If I were to pick just one, the climate crisis would be it. Marine protected areas can build resilience over time but they can’t get to the root cause of the problem. It really is going to be down to policy makers to deliver on their promises such as the Paris Agreement!

Marine Science Research Continues in the Indian Ocean

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Sea bird researchers Dr. Malcolm Nicoll and Hannah Wood from the Zoological Society of London have been working as part of the Bertarelli Foundation’s marine science programme in the Indian Ocean for the last several years.  Returning to the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) twice a year to conduct their field-work is always a highlight and their most recent expedition is no exception.  Although they counted fewer breeding birds than expected, they still managed to tag 31 adult red-footed boobies in the first few days. Birds were tagged with small GPS loggers that record the birds’ position during their long oceanic foraging trips and are recovered from the birds when they return to their nests.

The researchers also started a study of the distribution of wedge-tailed shearwaters on Nelson Island. This population of ground-nesting birds has not previously been studied and, at the time of the expedition, the adults were just starting their breeding season, so this is a fantastic opportunity to make an island-wide population survey.

Meanwhile Dr. Nicole Esteban of Swansea University and Dr. Jacques-Olivier Laloe of Deakin University returned to BIOT to continue their work studying Green and Hawksbill turtles.  They  had great success flying a drone over Nelson Island’s reef flat to count juvenile turtles using this unique habitat. These new data will help assess how many turtles – and which species – use these waters as foraging grounds.

They also started a new piece of work looking at how plastic pollution is impacting the wildlife on the atoll. Sadly, after completing several surveys of the beaches, they observed that all sorts of single-use and durable plastic items are littered across the island such as plastic bottles, flip-flops, toothbrushes, cigarette lighters, but also cooling boxes and fishing gear. One important research aim is to better understand how this plastic debris might affect the incubation, and sex-ratio of turtle hatchlings.

The two research teams worked together to conduct night-time turtle surveys and managed to deploy a satellite tag on an adult female green sea turtle. This is the first time a turtle was satellite-tagged on this northern outer island of the Chagos Archipelago and we look forward to finding out where she travels to once she has finished laying her eggs.

 

 

Scientists Track Hawksbill Turtles for the First Time in the British Indian Ocean Territory

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The use of electronic animal tracking has revolutionised marine science and conservation; in recent years, animal tracking has become incredibly sophisticated and allowed scientists to observe behaviours that had so far remained completely unknown.  Tracking devices are getting smaller allowing them to be attached to a wider range of species, whilst at the same time, battery technology is improving which allows the recording of longer time series of data.  Sensors are also becoming more sophisticated so that scientists are now able to observe not just the location of tagged animals, but also their speed, acceleration and even, in the case of sea turtles and seabirds, whether they are in or out of the water.  From this wide range of data, scientists are able to recreate the most detailed pictures of animal behaviour.

Prof. Graeme Hays of Deakin University with Dr. Nicole Esteban from Swansea University and Dr. Jeanne Mortimer has been studying turtles in the British Indian Ocean Territory for many years.  Their work, which is an integral component of the Bertarelli Foundation’s marine science programme, has been utilising satellite tracking technology on Green turtles which has shown them travelling as far as the coast of Somalia – over 4,000 km away to the west.  Dr. Esteban recently returned to BIOT to attach satellite tags to Hawksbill turtles for the first time; once the data from these tagged animals are analysed it will help give the team an even better understanding of how the Territory’s MPA protects sea turtles in the Indian Ocean.

Off to a Flying Start on Danger Island!

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The Chagos Archipelago is an important refuge for seabirds in the middle of the Indian Ocean – one of the planet’s most heavily exploited oceans.  Researchers from the Zoological Society of London and Exeter University have been studying populations of Red Footed and Brown Boobies on the islands of Diego Garcia and Nelson Island to learn more about how they use the Territory’s Marine Protected Area.  They recently traveled further north to the menacingly named Danger Island to find out how the populations there differ in their behaviour and foraging habits.  Hannah Wood took some time out to send us this update from the field:

Hello from Danger Island in the Indian Ocean! I am writing this blog from our campsite by the beach, sitting amongst a grove of squat, leafy beach heliotrope full of small, white moths and unexpectedly arboreal hermit crabs. Today is thankfully overcast which gives us a break from the intense sunshine and lessens the sweltering heat. The sea is relatively calm at the moment, but the coral reef fringing the island means that there are always white-tipped breakers rolling and crashing into the shore.

We arrived here six days ago with the aid of British military forces and a British patrol ship. With their help we unloaded camping gear, drinking water, food for two weeks and all our science equipment. It took us the rest of the day to set up our camp and the following morning we circumnavigated the island to assess potential tagging locations. That afternoon we began tagging red-footed boobies with tracking devices, and by the end of the second day we had tagged 33 nesting birds.

Our base camp and research station for the next two weeks

Once the red-footed booby tagging was complete we moved on to the brown boobies, which are slightly larger and nest on the ground under bushes rather than in the trees. We have now tagged 15 of these and hope to begin retrieving the tracking devices tomorrow! In addition to all the tagging we have been conducting twice daily monitoring of nest attendance at all of our 33 red footed booby study nests, and erected a long-term camera trap near a collection of booby nests.

Hannah Wood and Pete Carr measure the wingspan of a Brown Booby on Danger Island

The tag recovery phase of this expedition has now begun; this morning we collected six of our devices from red footed boobies, hopefully full of interesting data! As the afternoon passes it should get cooler and we can head out to gather more tags, until then we are recharging our electronics with portable solar panels and recharging ourselves with powdered isotonic drink!

An interview with Dr. Ida Pavlichenko, co-founder of PionEar Technologies Inc.

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The Bertarelli Prize is awarded each year to the winners of Harvard University’s President’s Challenge – an initiative of the university’s Innovation Lab which helps students and alumni develop their nascent business ideas.  PionEar Technologies was one of the 2018 Challenge winners after impressing the judges with their use of anti-biofouling technologies to treat infections of the middle ear.  Dr. Ida Pavlichenko, one of the company’s co-founders, describes how PionEar has progessed since winning the Bertarelli Prize.

After earning her PhD in inorganic chemistry at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in 2014, Dr. Ida Pavlichenko joined Prof. Joanna Aizenberg’s lab at the Harvard J. A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, which pursues a wide range of research interests in the field of bioinspired materials science. She became interested in the idea of anti-biofouling, and together with her colleague Dr. Michael Kreder and collaborators from Prof. Jennifer Lewis’ group – Nicole Black and Dr. Claas Visser – she started to contemplate what novel medical applications might arise from these technologies. Very quickly she wondered whether it might help improve treatment of middle ear infections.

Why are ear infections such a serious problem?

Over 700,000,000 people globally suffer from ear infections each year. For young children the consequences can be very serious – over 40% develop a chronic condition with a persistent fluid in the middle ear and 25% suffer from a permanent hearing loss which impacts their learning ability and communication skills.

If infections become regular and the fluid in the middle does not clear for more than three months, doctors will often suggest the surgical implantation of an ear tube into the eardrum which helps equalize pressure in the middle ears, drain away any build-up of fluid, and allow the introduction of antibiotics. After six to 24 months ear tubes typically fall out from the eardrum on their own accord. Incredibly, the insertion of ear tubes is the most common surgery for children in the US.

What is wrong with the current design of ear tubes?

Up to 40 to 60% of the current tubes fail for a variety of reasons and resulting in the lumen or passageway of the tube getting clogged by blood, pus, bacteria, cellular debris, etc. This clogging prevents ventilation of the passageway, and does not allow for drainage of fluid and passage of medicine through the tube and into the ear. Some tubes even get prematurely pushed out of the eardrum, or stay in the eardrum longer than needed. In either case, the tube will need to be removed or replaced which is another unwanted operation under general anaesthesia – especially for a young child. Tubes can also get infected by the bacteria present in the middle ear and cause new infections which can be challenging to treat.

How will your product help doctors treat infections of the middle ear?

We have pioneered a novel design which features a unique material and design geometry that allows us to address all of the key complications experienced by patients today. Our proprietary design leverages a unique “non-stick” material to reduce biofouling and blockage of the device, and improve ear fluid drainage. The combination of our material and proprietary shape enable the unique fluidic properties of our device. Importantly, the improved fluid flow properties of PionEar’s device enable a drug delivery channel with a smaller device size – this is a great benefit for young children and means their surgeries are less invasive and the tube causes less damage to the eardrum. Our invention has also won the Collegiate Innovators Competition by National Hall of Fame and the United States Patent and Trademark Office this year.

How did winning the Bertarelli Prize help PionEar Technologies?

Winning the Bertarelli Prize gives us a great deal of credibility and confidence as we take the venture forward over the next few years – perhaps that’s even more important that the prize fund itself. We are incredibly thankful for the Bertarelli Foundation for giving our team the impetus to commercializing out technology!

We are using the $75,000 prize to outsource the manufacturing of the prototypes with silicone injection companies, and pay to the costs associated with starting a new venture.

How did you come up with the idea behind PionEar Technologies?

I have a young daughter who was herself suffering from recurrent ear infections; eventually her paediatrician started to talk about ear tubes and so tackling this problem and making treatment more effective is really very important to me.

The idea was borne out a meeting with the co-inventors of the technology: Nicole Black, Dr. Michael Kreder, Prof. Joanna Aizenberg, and our medical collaborators at the Mass Eye and Ear – Dr. Aaron Remenschneider and Dr. Elliot Kozin, and we started to recognise the potential for this material in treating ear infections.

Having an interdisciplinary team is so important; by combining the expertise of medical doctors, material scientists and experts in business, we’ve been able to progress this venture much more quickly than we’d be able to do otherwise.

How’s does the iLab prepare you for the Innovation Challenge?

The iLab environment – and the staff – are incredible. Our iLab mentor Alice Ly was a huge help and really made sure we were making the most of everything the iLab had to offer.

Likewise, other mentors, entrepreneurs-in-residency and iLab staff are all fantastic. They’re obviously very knowledgeable, but also very personal and encouraging. It’s a very supportive environment but one in which you get on if you’re prepared to work hard.

Apart from the Bertarelli Prize, what have you got out of the Innovation Challenge?

Thanks to the Innovation Challenge I’ve caught the “entrepreneurship bug”, so I guess it catalysed a very critical career decision for me. I’ve decided to commercialize our invention, and I was recently appointed as a Technology Development Fellow at the Wyss Institute, which has provided us with a highly competitive and prestigious Validation Grant to support our in vivo studies. I am also currently a part-time CEO and co-founder of PionEar Technologies, seeking to transition into the company full time when locking down the next financing round.

How did PionEar Technologies evolve and what’s next?

Winning the Bertarelli Prize at the President’s Innovation Challenge in May 2018 has opened doors to so many great opportunities for our team. We were accepted on to the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council’s MassCONNECT program and got an incredible help from a large team of experienced Biotech and Medtech mentors on a weekly basis. Our team has won the Audience Choice Grand Prize at the Mass Innovation Nights 115’s 5th Annual Female Founders Event. We are also extremely fortunate and grateful to have won the Gold Prize at the MassChallenge – is the largest-ever start-up accelerator that supports early-stage entrepreneurs.

Shortly after winning the Bertarelli Prize we successfully applied for the grant at the Wyss Institute – one of the world-leading institutions with a unique model that applies the development of disruptive technologies across a range of disciplines. I know that there is more is to come for PionEar Technologies as we compete at the Hello Tomorrow Global Challenge, and apply for US government funding programs. Currently our medical device is undergoing the studies at the Mass Eye and Ear, and we are aiming to continue fundraising for securing the FDA clearance in the near future.

Turtle Research in BIOT Takes Another Leap Forward

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As part of the Bertarelli Foundation’s marine science programme, we have funded a long-term study of sea turtles in the British Indian Ocean Territory with the aim of learning more about the biology of the incredible animals and to determine how effective the MPA is at protecting them.

In the midst of the researcher’s expedition to Diego Garcia, British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), Dr Nicole Esteban provides an update on her work:

The second sea turtle expedition to Diego Garcia in 2018 is underway. Earlier this year we focused on nesting green turtles and this time we are in BIOT during peak hawksbill nesting season to find out more about this critically endangered species. One of our key conservation research objectives is to increase our understanding of hawksbill turtle nesting in BIOT and their post-nesting movements within and outside of the Marine Protected Area.

Unusually for turtles, hawksbills nest during the daytime in the Western Indian Ocean and often emerge to lay their egg clutches during the incoming tide. So we targeted beach patrols for nesting turtles in line with the daytime incoming tide, either starting patrols early afternoon or before dawn. To maximise our chances of finding turtles, we patrolled a 2.8 km beach in the southeast of Diego Garcia as this stretch of beach has one of the highest turtle track densities on the island and is easily accessible. Hawksbill nesting can be completed fairly quickly and they can return to sea just 45 minutes after emerging so we divided into two groups that patrolled 1.5 km of beach every 40 minutes to ensure we saw any hawksbill that emerged to nest. We were lucky to have assistance from over 50 volunteers to patrol the beach, move the restraining boxes and help with satellite tag attachment.

We were amazed to encounter five nesting turtles on our first day of patrols (four hawksbills and one green turtle). All the hawksbill turtles were measured, flipper tagged and a biopsy taken for DNA analysis. During subsequent days, we saw six more hawksbills. The nesting hawksbill turtles were fairly small and ranged in size from 74-86 cm (curved carapace length).

We attached satellite tags to five of the nesting hawksbills. The satellite tag attachment takes around 2 hours: first the carapace is cleaned, sanded and then cleaned with acetone (nail varnish remover), then the satellite tag is embedded in epoxy paint and lastly painted with a coat of antifoul paint before being left to dry. The satellite tag process is the same as we have used for green turtles (see how we have attached satellite tags on green turtles; https://tinyurl.com/yccp7aur). We keep the turtle cool with shade and by pouring water on the carapace, head and shoulders.

By the end of the expedition, we will have completed two weeks of nesting activity surveys to find out more about nesting emergence timings and the size of the nesting population in Diego Garcia. This will help inform timings for our expedition in November 2019 when we will continue our work with nesting hawksbill turtles. Satellite location uplinks are showing that all the satellite tagged hawksbills are still just offshore of the nesting beach, so we expect they will continue nesting every 12-14 days. In this way we will learn more about how many nests they lay in a breeding season before returning to their foraging grounds.

We wait with baited breath to see the migration destinations of these hawksbill turtles. If you’re interested to receive updates, please join our ‘Chagos Turtles’ Facebook Group .

This research was kindly funded by the Bertarelli Foundation as part of the Bertarelli Programme in Marine Science.

Marine Science Symposium 2018

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On Tuesday 11th September 2018 the inaugural marine science symposium for the Bertarelli Programme in Marine Science (BPMS) took place at the Royal Geographical Society in London. This one-day symposium brought together scientists, students, conservationists, policymakers and Marine Protected Area (MPA) managers to listen to presentations highlighting key research being undertaken in the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). This impressive line-up of speakers included keynote presentations from Amb. Peter Thompson, the UN secretary General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean, the New York Times’ journalist, Ian Urbina, recounting stories on ‘outlaw ocean’, and a special video message from HRH the Prince of Wales.

The Bertarelli Programme in Marine Science includes more than 60 scientists and marine conservationists from across the world all studying the BIOT MPA to help determine how effective this large, remote MPA is at providing species protection and resilience. The symposium showcased the work of the first year of programme activities as part of the first phase of the programme which runs from 2017 to 2021. Following an introduction by Heather Koldewey, ZSL’s Head of Marine and Freshwater Conservation and Programme Lead for BPMS, and the keynote presentations, the scene was set ready for the programme presentations which introduced us to work from across the programme during three key sessions:

  • The Open Ocean
  • Reefs to Islands
  • Applying Science to Management

The open ocean session introduced the work being done using different technology to track and investigate how sharks and other pelagic species use the MPA, the networks identified and how oceanography can help us to understand how wave dynamics create predator hotspots within BIOT. The reefs and islands session covered the status of coral reefs and investigations to better understand their role in the archipelago and across the Indian Ocean and the use of bio-logging technology to investigate how species such as turtles and birds use the MPA. Nick Graham, Lancaster University and Principal Investigator of the reef fish project, explained their recent work identifying the link between rat infested islands, the presence of birds and the impact this has on the health and biodiversity on the nearby reefs.

The final session linked the science to management, highlighting the important role science plays in informing management and the use of large MPAs as a conservation tool.  After the close of the symposium, guests joined a reception to celebrate marine science and to digest all the information communicated throughout the day. With 2018 as the International Year of the Reef, thoughts are driven to how we can best protect our oceans, what is being done to protect them and how we can raise the profile to ensure we work collaboratively across the world to tackle these pressing questions.

All presentations from the events are now available to watch on our YouTube channel here.

The Impact of Rats on the Health of Coral Reefs

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It has long been known that the introduction of invasive species can have a detrimental effect on native flora and fauna.  Rats decimate seabird populations all around the world by eating eggs and chicks – and sometimes even adult birds.

The British Indian Ocean Territory includes the Chagos Archipelago and 58 tiny islands.  Some of the islands are home to the Black rat (Rattus rattus), whereas others have mercifully remained rat free.  Researchers from the Bertarelli Programme in Marine Science have used these two types of islands – with rats and without – to see what effect the prescence of rats has on the health of the surrounding coral reefs.

Prof. Nick Graham commented:

“The islands with no rats are full of birds, they’re noisy, the sky is full and they smell – because the guano the birds are depositing back on the island is very pungent.  If you step onto an island with rats, there are next to no seabirds.”

On rat-free islands, seabirds including boobies, frigatebirds, noddies, shearwaters and terns travel hundreds of kilometres to feed out in the ocean. When they return to the island, they deposit rich nutrients from the fish they feed on.

Prof. Nick Graham of Lancaster University considered whether these nutrients were being leached into surrounding waters and were influential in the biology of the reef systems.  The findings, published today in Nature, are stark – fish on reefs adjacent to rat-free islands grew faster and larger compared to those fish living adjacent to rat-infested islands.

As coral reefs are regularly affected by changes in ocean temperature and the frequencey of coral bleaching events increases, this research suggests that the removal of invasive species like rats, could become an important way of increasing the resilience of these essential habitats.