Mexico Staff training workshop!

Our second staff training workshop of the year took place in Pez Maya base from Thursday 24th to Tuesday the 28th of September. This time besides having some fun and insightful activities we spent 4 days immersed in our science techniques and methodology!

It was a very productive workshop as we succeed to standardize a our teaching and monitor techniques in both bases in order to improve the quality control for our reef monitoring data collection!

As you can imagine the days were long and we were very busy but at the end the product was great! We are still working on many points to improve but this was a good start thanks to all staff from Pez Maya, Punta Gruesa, Regional office and Amigos de Sian Ka'an.

The training involved some diving so we were very happy to be able to dive all together as we had never done it before.

Furthermore, we were lucky enough to clean a turtle nest and help releasing about 15 baby green turtles that hatch during the workshop!

Some of the extra activities consisted of visiting Muyil ruins and floating through the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve SKBR channels, which turned out to be a great relaxing, fun and bonding activity. We floated using some outrageous nappies through 1 kilometer of pristine water surrounded by red mangroves and who knows maybe by some hidden crocodiles too!


We also had a very insightful talk from CONANP (Comision Nacional de Areas Naturales Protegidas) people, who are in charge of managing all Mexican protected areas such as SKBR. Given that one of our expedtions in Mexico is in this Reserve and the other one is very close to it, it was very interesting hearing about its land uses, problems and challenges to protect such a big area consisting on 652,000 ha’s.

There was also an interesting talk about all the new GVI projects that have been launched, learnt about Mesoamerican Barrier Reef and how GVI Mexico was settled and analysed the dynamics of the expeditions. We finished this workshop with a well deserved and delicious pasta in Tulum beach!

Mexico Staff training workshop!