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June 2014 volcano eruption

After almost four years of silence Reunion's Piton de la Fournaise volcano, one of the most active volcanoes in the world, started erupting yesterday (June 21st) at 1:35am this morning. The eruption started on the southeastern side of the main summit crater, in a very remote part of the volcano, so there was little-to-no threat from the flows, unlike the eruption in 2007. There had been 10 days of precursory signs that an eruption was in the works, with higher gas emissions and seismicity, along with a red glow in the area very recently. After about 20 hours the eruption came to a stop.

Here are some pictures.

This was the 11th eruption in 10 years.

The previous eruption was October 14th-December 10th 2010.

See also this video, shot by local TV channel Antenne Reunion:

Useful links:

Volcano observatory webcams (although unfortunately this current eruption is not occurring in view of any of the webcams pointed at the volcano).

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Cilaos Indian Ocean Mafate Piton des Neiges Reunion sport video

Videos for thrill seekers

Here are two recent videos which definitely show some of Reunion's possibilities for adventure.

In the first one, by Epic TV, Réunion plays host to wingsuit pilots Espen Fadnes, Jokke Sommer and Ludo Woerth. Between BASE jumps, they find time to explore Reunion's waterfalls and cliff diving, but their wingsuit jump is still top priority. After days of planning and scouting, including an ultralight flight and wingsuit jump to scout out the area, the three pilots are ready for a flight from the top of Piton des Neiges (the tallest mountain in the Indian Ocean). But first they must get to the top...

In the second video the local organisation "Slack and run" equip and cross a highline at over 2100 metres altitude at the Trois Salazes Ridge separating Cilaos and Mafate. It's a site that offers a 360 ° panorama at the heart of Reunion (Images : Jean-Philippe Lorgeau & Jean Galabert; Editing : Jean Galabert). Don't watch if you have vertigo!

This second video was featured in the Daily Telegraph, see:

Tight-rope walking on La Réunion, Indian Ocean

Indian Ocean Reunion video

2014 promotional films for Reunion Island

Reunion Tourism board has just released two new Reunion Island promotional films for 2014.

The shorter film (4'39") has the caption Combine Your Emotions and its second half in particular concentrates on Reunion's underwater life, especially whales.

diving Indian Ocean Madagascar photos Travelling video

Diving at Nosy Be

Nosy Be is a 312 km2 island located 8km off Madagascar's north-west coast in the Mozambique Channel, generally considered to be Madagascar's major tourist and main diving destination (there are 17 dive clubs located in and around Nosy Be). I've written a separate blog post about visiting Nosy Be in general.

photo © Raquel & Oscar Gomez-Eerland

We chose to visit Nosy Be in October as we'd heard that we had a chance of seeing whale sharks. We chose to dive with Nosy Be's (Madagascar's?!) only British-owned and run dive club: Coral Diving. Due to personal vacation constraints we were there during the second week of October although the whale shark season is mainly late October to early December. However we were in luck and on our second day of diving we got to spend an hour swimming with this majestic animal.

We were very lucky because before our first dive we'd already seen a humpback whale, and during our surface interval en route to our second dive site we saw (bottlenose?) dolphins. Not long before seeing the whale shark we then saw some very big dolphins whose behaviour was quite different to other dolphins. We distinctly saw one swimming about with a fish in its mouth. It turns out that these were rare false killer whale dolphins (also known as pseudorca) and they have been known to approach and offer fish they have caught to humans who are diving or boating. You can see them in this video we filmed:

The previous day we had started our Nosy Be diving with two dives in the Nosy Tanakely Marine Reserve. Nosy Tanakely is a tiny island a few miles off the coast of Nosy Be. A good dive profile meant we were able to have dives which lasted 80 minutes! We saw pufferfish, turtles, lionfish, moray eels, a ribbon eel, and batfish being cleaned by wrasse.

We saw lots of blue-spotted rays when diving at Nosy Tanakely
(photo © Raquel & Oscar Gomez-Eerland)

The dive just before seeing the whale shark was at a dive site called Manta Point, about 14km from the coast. Unfortunately we didn't see any mantas, but we had a dive with flawless visibility, even at a depth of 24 metres. We saw lots of groupers, unicorn fish, and some garden eels.

(photo © Raquel & Oscar Gomez-Eerland)

giant clam, Manta Point
(photo © Raquel & Oscar Gomez-Eerland)

trumpet fish, Manta Point
(photo © Raquel & Oscar Gomez-Eerland)

through a looking glass ...

The dives on our third day's diving were at Sakatia Grotto and Fusilier. Nosy Sakatia is a 3km2 island which lies just off the coast of Nosy Be. Both dives were 20-25m deep. At Fusilier we briefly saw a white-tip reef shark, and an (inoffensive) jellyfish during our safety stop.

grouper, Sakatia Grotte
(photo © Raquel & Oscar Gomez-Eerland)

diving with bannerfish, Fusilier
(photo © Raquel & Oscar Gomez-Eerland)

On all our Nosy Be dives we saw a wide range of brightly-coloured nudibranches, some of which I had never seen the like before.

nudibranch, Fusilier
(photo © Raquel & Oscar Gomez-Eerland)

Crocodile fish, Fusilier
(photo © Raquel & Oscar Gomez-Eerland)

Sweetlips, Fusilier
(photo © Raquel & Oscar Gomez-Eerland)

On our final day we started with a small wreck dive. The dive site is called Chameau ('camel') and is also about 14km off the coast of Nosy Be. We saw lobsters, turtles, and lionfish and went to a depth of about 30 metres.

wreck of a small fishing trawler on which we dived

nudibranch
(photo © Raquel & Oscar Gomez-Eerland)

nudibranch
(photo © Richard Swatman/Coral Diving Madagascar)

this was not our dive boat!

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Indian Ocean music radio Reunion UNESCO video

Reunion on BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4's From Our Own Correspondent programme is billed as "Insight, wit and analysis from BBC correspondents, journalists and writers from around the world". First commissioned in 1955, it takes the format of a half-hour programme in which five correspondents each broadcast 5-minute monologues on topical current events from countries outside the UK. No music or interviews are included, and it gives the correspondents the chance to offer a personal account of events that can be epoch-making or inconsequential.

It's a programme I've enjoyed listening to for the past few years, either live, or more often as a podcast, and I was pleased to learn there would be a report from Reunion in the programme broadcast on October 3rd 2013.

You can listen to the programme here; the part about Reunion was made by journalist Robin Denselow and starts at 11'38". There's a year left to listen.

Although broadcast in October it was obviously made in early June when Denselow visited the annual Sakifo music festival. In it he talks about maloya music - how it was banned until 1981, and what it represents now. Unfortunately the impression given by the report is of a strict local vs mainland French division of wealth, which was probably true in the 1970s, but is no longer the case (division of wealth still exists, but not along local vs mainland lines). Denselow does however correctly remark on the rising popularity of maloya on the global world music scene.

Maloya has its origins in the music of slaves and along with sega, is one of Reunion's two major music genres. It has mainly African origins, but possible influence from Tamil drumming has been identified, making it a hybrid genre - not very surprising on the melting pot of Reunion. Maloya is slower and more reflective than sega, and like blues music has a chant-response structure. Song themes are often carry a political and social protest message (e.g. slavery, poverty, search for cultural identity, independence, links to the Communist Party of Reunion) which explains why maloya was banned for being too subversive until 1981. Traditional instruments used include the kayamb, a type of flat rattle made of sugar cane flower stems and filled with seeds which is shaken horizontally, and the roulér which is a cylindrical hide-covered drum.

Christine Salem with a kayamb (source)

Some of the most well-known maloya musicians are Firmin Viry, (credited with having stopped maloya from becoming extinct), Danyel Waro, Gramoun Lélé, Nathalie Nathiembe and Christine Salem. Groups such as Ziskakan, Baster, Granmoun Baba, Rwa Kaff and Ti Fock have also mixed maloya with other genres such as sega, zouk, reggae, jazz and rock.

Here's the Firmin Viry performance at Sakifo 2013 that Denselow refers to in his report:

Maloya was inscribed in 2009 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity of UNESCO for France. The video below about maloya was uploaded by UNESCO onto Youtube following this inscription.

Diving, Reunion Island

Réunion Tourisme, the local tourist organisation, has just released an English version of their video about scuba diving in Reunion Island. You can see it below:

Réunion overhead and underwater

Here are three recent videos I wanted to share with you. The first is by local helicopter company Corail Hélicoptères, and it's a beautiful panorama of Réunion from the air. I've been lucky enough to have done two helicopter fly-overs of Réunion myself, most recently in June 2012.

The other two are short videos filmed by my husband and I while diving at St Leu off Réunion's west coast. The first is of a large stingray, the second of a large octopus. As these are amateur videos I'm afraid the quality isn't as good as the previous film!

diving Indian Ocean Mayotte photos Travelling video

Diving in Mayotte

Since I became a certified diver I had been looking forward to diving in Mayotte, which has one of the world's largest - and reputedly most beautiful - lagoons (1100km2).

Lionfish

This trip to the Mozambique Channel became reality in January 2013. After some initial research we decided to stay in three different locations to make the most of our voyage.

yellow leaf fish

Mayotte's lagoon has 12 channels, 160km of barrier reef and an average depth of 40 metres. 254 different species of hard coral have been identified there and its deepest point is 70m.

S Pass dive sites (courtesy of Reve Bleu)

First off we started diving with Reve Bleu, based in Mamoudzou, to visit the renowned S Pass, a channel with about 20 or so different dive sites.

Bat fish

Needless to say in the time we had available we were only able to dive 5 of those sites: Coude à Jojo 2, Merou Palace, Balcon sur le Bleu, Pointe Barracuda and Canyon Vallée, the latter being a drift dive.

Titan triggerfish, we saw them on all our Mahoran dives

One of the first things we noticed was that the coral and plant life was in better health than what we're used to in Réunion.

Black stingray

Mayotte is home to two species of turtle : green turtles (the same as those found in Réunion), and hawksbill turtles.

Hawksbill turtle

We saw Napoleons on several occasions, and even an enormous Bumphead parrotfish which I'd only ever seen in Indonesia until now.

this particular Napoleon wrasse was seen from afar

After several days we headed to the south-west of Mayotte to dive with Abalone Plongée at M'Zouasia beach, near the town of Bouéni.

Abalone Plongée, landside

Abalone Plongée from the sea

Abalone is within diving distance of three channels: Boueni pass, Bateaux pass and Sada pass. We dived l'Ancre and the north of Bateaux pass, and Patate à Barracada at Boueni pass. We also dived Lépoé, Oasis and Chamonix in the lagoon.

Back roll!

Tassled scorpionfish

Abalone drift dives one of the south-western passes in the morning to see pelagic marine life, and the afternoons are spent diving the coral reefs inside the lagoon.

some rare red anemone with Yellowtail clownfish

We dived twice a day for three days, and saw sharks (grey reef and whitetip reef) on every morning dive, as well as barracudas and other pelagic fish. On one memorable occasion we were on the surface waiting for the boat to pick us and realised a grey reef shark was circling underneath our feet!

juvenile Oriental sweetlips

Giant clams of all sizes and colours were always plentiful on all our Mahoran dives.

giant clam

This stingray made himself scarce!

Headshield slug

Spiny lobster could be found at most dive sites around Mayotte, sometimes living in colonies.

spiny lobster

school of barracuda

We did a very interesting dive at Lépoé where we only explored the sandy bottom - we saw lots of pipefish, partner gobies, an ejaculating sea cucumber and in particular a demon stinger scorpionfish. Jean-Patrick, our guide, was especially excited as he'd never seen one in 25 years of diving (and neither had we)!

Demon stinger scorpionfish, also known as 'devil stinger'

a non-ejaculating pineapple sea cucumber!

The third leg of our trip saw us heading up the west coast to Happy Divers at M'liha beach, near the town of M'Tsangamouji.

Happy Divers (left) when approaching from the sea

Here we dived the sites Porite fendu, Mtsangafanou, La Plage and Champs de pavot.

a shy octopus

I got the impression we saw more moray eels here in the north-west than at other dive locations.

the head of a very large moray eel

This is only place where we spotted a crown of thorns sea star, although apparently they can be found all around Mayotte.

a yellow Guineafowl pufferfish

me with a turtle

Returning from one dive our boat was surrounded by friendly dolphins. (Note that, like Réunion, humpback whales can be seen in Mayotte between July and October. And ten days after we'd been diving with them, Abalone plongée saw a manta ray and a hammerhead shark on a dive!)

dolphins

a grey Blackspotted pufferfish

lionfish

While diving in Mayotte we would have loved to have seen a dugong, but as there are only seven of them (and a calf) in the whole lagoon we knew the chances were slim! And although coelacanths are found in the area we were unlikely to see them either, as they are a critically endangered species and live at 100-500m ...

Most of the underwater photos were shot with a Go Pro 2.

Useful links:

For more links about Mayotte see here.

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