Il tuo carrello è vuoto
Lemurs, chameleons, the great biodiversity, the giant Baobabs, the endemisms, the continuous discovery of new species have attracted my attention to Madagascar since I was a boy.
Fourth largest island in the world, it hosts 5% of the Earth's species, 80% of which are endemic, that testifies to the millennial isolation of the island from other continents, Africa and Asia, from which 140 million of years ago.
I am just back from a stay in Nosy-Be (Big Island) where, in addition to contact with terrestrial fauna, I had the opportunity to do many dives and get to know the equally varied underwater fauna of this stretch of the Mozambique Channel.
October and November, thanks to the flowering of plankton, are the months in which whale sharks are present in the waters around Nosy-Be and in addition to them it is possible to meet mobulas, manta rays and even the rare Omura's whale. The benthic fauna is very abundant and is a pleasure for enthusiasts and for macro photography: nudibranchs, leaf fishes, frog fishes, pipe fishes, crustaceans ... in every dive you meet different species and often never encountered even in other stretches of the Indian Ocean.
Nosy means island in Malagasy and around Nosy-Be there are many beautiful and interesting islands: Nosy Tanikeli (marine park), Nosy Komba and Nosy Iranja, a small tropical paradise characterized by two islands connected by an isthmus of white coral sand which joins them at low tide and which disappears during high tide; moreover, the beaches of the island are an important reproductive site for the Hawksbill Turtle.
In Nosy-Be what is striking is the kindness of the population and their dignified poverty which is certainly less than in Gran Terre (the large island of Madagascar), because the presence of tourists helps the economy of this small island.
Nosy-Be is also a small chest of biodiversity. For me it was a real emotion to walk the streets around the resort where we stayed and, after realized where to look, I located many chameleons (Furcifer pardalis), both male and female, quietly perched on thorny bushes looking for prey; walk the paths of the Lokobe Reserve, both by day and night, accompanied by expert local guides and discover the richness of the forest’s fauna: lemurs, both diurnal and nocturnal, brookesias (the smallest chameleons in the world), the Calumma nasutum (another small chameleon which is almost impossible to see during the day), leaf geckos, small and abundant frogs (in Madagascar there are 228 species, almost all endemic), the Madagascar boa, all accompanied by the sounds of a forest still quite virgin.
Another big surprise was the presence, in a bay of the island of Nosy Sakatia, of a large population of green turtles (Chelonia mydas) of considerable size (that I never encountered so big), practically sedentary, which in two meters of water grazes the plants on the bottom and, now used to free divers, they let themselves be approached and photographed without getting worried.
Then the encounter in the water with whale sharks, gentle giants that follow the abundant plankton and feed on it, practically on the surface; the sight of the rare and fast Omura's whales (identified for the first time in 2003 and particularly present in the Nosy-Be area) and the luck of having one that emerged next our boat, the mobulas hunting and the underwater evolutions of manta rays are a concentrate of unrepeatable emotions!
Definitely a knowledge to deepen and an experience to expand with other trips.
