Where are you from?

Hi, there! My name is Daphne, I am 23 years old and from the Netherlands.

What project did you sign up for?

I signed up for the 6 week Kruger to Coast project and chose Childcare as my voluntary work. My role was to assist the NCP teacher, educate children between 3 to 5 years of age and concentrate on the language, motor, basic academic and social skills of a child in order to prepare them for primary school. In the afternoons, we had the Homework Clubs with older children, most of them are NCP graduates, from the ages of 12 to 17. We helped them with their homework and if they did not have any, we would played mind games.

What do you do for a living?

Actually, I obtained my Master of Science degree in Marketing Management the Friday before I started the program. At this moment, I am looking for a job.

What does volunteering mean to you?

In my opinion, volunteering means giving something back to a world where there cannot be enough help. In my case, this world was the local community of where my NCP was in. I managed to give something back to the local community in a sense that I helped the kids in writing and learning small English phrases. Afterwards, I never expected that volunteering would mean that much to me. It is impossible to describe the feeling you get when you manage to get a smile on the kids’ faces, or when they – after a couple of times of trying – write a certain word correctly.

Click here if you would like to know more about our Childcare (Eswatini)

Stingrays have had a bad reputation; Steve Irwin’s fateful interaction and the menacing barb on their tail does not comply with their docile, relatively quiet existence. It is actually the last resort for a stingray to use its barb, they would much prefer to take flight than fight.

Stingrays (in their current form) have been flapping around in the oceans for 150 million years. They are a close cousin to sharks, as they also have a skeleton made of cartilage instead of solid bone. You can see this close relationship with some species which have co-evolved with the stingray and shark families, such as the Guitarfish family, which looks like a shark’s tail has been stuck to a stingray’s head.

Stingrays are a valuable part of the marine ecosystem. They provide a link between apex predators, like the requiem sharks, and lower trophic levels, such as the crabs and shrimp they munch on just under the sand. Unfortunately, they face a threat operating at an unfathomable scale. Stingrays like to hang out on the sea floor, which is where some fishing methods, like trawling and gill nets, will entangle and drag them up by mistake.

The lack of baseline data for stingrays globally means it is impossible for effective conservation measures to be put in place. Some stingrays are more common than others, but herein lies the challenge for all marine researchers – how do we research things we rarely see? I can tell you it takes time, perseverance and patience. In Tofo, we see stingrays on approximately 1/3^rd of dives, and every dive is recorded in the hope that the secrets of stingrays may start to be unlocked.

Small eye stingray on Sherwood Forest diving reef. Photo credit: Arco de Man.

Bluespotted stingray on Clownfish diving reef. Photo credit: Jenny Keeping.

Written by Jenny keeping

Click here if you would like to know more about our Marine Research Project