Today we are near Ovaka in the Vava’u Island group. The sky is blue, the sun is out, and the scuba diving is incredible. During the morning dives, a couple of members of the Science Team saw two octopi only
For thousands of years, Tongan fishing used traditional outrigger canoes known as popao. With modern technology, it is rare to see these traditional fishing boats and it’s even rarer to see traditional fishing gear being used; however, there are still
Does the idea of whales fasting sound strange to you? Read on to find out why they do… Humpback whales are a type of baleen whale. Baleen whales do not have teeth, instead they have baleen plates, which are made
Happy International Coastal Cleanup Day! Across the world people are cleaning up beaches in order to conserve and protect their coastlines and the precious marine ecosystems that line them. While on the Global Reef Expedition in Tonga, the education team
Traveling from dive spot to dive spot in Tonga it’s not difficult to find a misty cloud of water near the surface. We have arrived during Megaptera novaeangliae, humpback whale season. Why are there humpback whales near Tonga this time
One of the most colorful and diverse groups of invertebrates found on coral reefs are soft corals (known scientifically as Alcyonaceans). These cnidarians are related to stony (scleractinian) corals, but they lack a massive, calcified skeleton and have eight hollow
If you follow our blogs, then you might recall the blogs about harvesting sea cucumbers in Fiji. In Tonga, they are also collecting sea cucumbers and processing them. When the sea cucumbers are processed and dried, they are called beche-de-mer.
The coral reef education team is underway while on the Global Reef Expedition in Tonga. On the first day, five different environmental education programs were conducted in Ha’apai throughout the Lifuka district, including one secondary school and four primary schools.
On our second day of diving we had our first encounter with a sea snake. While most of the 62 described species are true aquatic snakes, we observed one of the more primitive snakes, banded sea kraits, Laticauda colubrina. This
The Kingdom of Tonga contains some of the most unique and extensive coral reef environments found in the central south Pacific, with over 1500 square kilometers of reef area. These Tonga coral reefs are located due east of the 35,000
