- EDITORIAL - GREEN TOURISM - TREND - ACTUALITES POLYNESIENNES - TREKKING FAIR - TOURISM PROFESSIONALS WORKING ON BEHALF OF THE ENVIRONMENT - INTERVIEW -
Le Méridien Bora Bora: The Sea Turtle Protection Center
Le Méridien Bora Bora has a privileged location at the point of a “motu”, or islet, opposite the main island and on the edge of an exceptional lagoon that offers three remarkable sights. There’s a sandbank of Platax, a channel of turtles and a coral garden.
The Sea Turtle Protection Center is a scientific and tourist project created in 1999 by the company Pae Tai Pae Uta. The existing lagoon needed a regular circulation of fresh water from the ocean in order to become a peaceful place for the protection of biological diversity. Once the circulation of fresh water between the ocean and the lagoon was restored, the lagoon became a gigantic saltwater swimming pool offering a typical French Polynesia ecosystem.
This was the exceptional site where Le Méridien Bora Bora decided to actively participate in the protection of sea turtles, a species in the process of disappearing. Working in coordination with the French Polynesia government, a team devotes its time to caring for sea turtles and helping any ill or injured turtles to recover. Volunteers bring the turtles--adults and babies--to the center, where staff members monitor their health and growth. The turtles are later set free when they are strong and healthy enough to escape their future predators.
Last year Le Méridien Bora Bora expanded its operation by creating a bigger center with the objective of setting free nearly 1,000 turtles a year. The center also developed an educational program. The island’s schools are invited to bring youngsters, the future guarantors of the perpetuation of the species, to discover this safeguarding operation. Visitors also have the same opportunity to discover the center and obtain a privileged close up view of these exceptional animals in their natural environment and observe their feeding and care, with complete respect of the ecosystem.
More information may be obtained from visiting this Web site: www.boraboraturtles.com
Bora Bora Pearl Beach Resort & Spa’s Unique Coral Nursery
Coral is a complicated, incomparable ecosystem that plays a key role in the preservation of biological diversity of our seas and oceans. Today this ecosystem is in danger. Toa Nui, the coral nursery at the Bora Bora Pearl Beach Resort and Spa is a unique and ambitious project. The objective is to protect the coral, the coral reefs, the variety of marine life that makes its home amidst the coral and, finally, safeguard the capital resources all of this represents.
A natural masterpiece more than 5,000 years old
Coral reefs are the result of the slow growth of a coral family. They are sometimes more than 5,000 years old and grow in disparate forms: plateaus, branches, cones or lettuce-shaped, balls and columns. As they multiply, protective coral reefs are formed, protecting most of the islands and atolls in French Polynesia.
If the coral in French Polynesia is in good health overall, the situation is quite different in other latitudes. Climate warming, ocean pollution, development and exploitation of the coasts, excessive or destructive fishing, use of the reef for building material take their toll. This fragile ecosystem is damaged daily.
Toa Nui: a unique and ambitious project
Alerted by Denis Schneider, a biologist, the management of the Bora Bora Pearl Beach Resort & Spa decided to support his idea of a virtual experience: a coral nursery. The main objective of this underwater laboratory is to protect the endangered coral, providing care and enable the coral to grow in a protected environment. But the nursery also makes it possible to discover the mysteries of this particular ecosystem under the best of conditions.
Artificial reefs made out of cement were placed in the lagoon in June 2001 to serve as supports for coral colonies and to slow down the effects of the lagoons bottom currents. Today more than 91 reefs support nearly 3,000 coral colonies. Thirty-three of the reefs are located beneath over-the-water bungalows at the Bora Bora Pearl Beach Resort & Spa. Guests can snorkel around the nursery to admire the coral below, while underwater signs posted at intervals give explanations of the work that is being undertaken. Snorkeling tours are also led daily by the resident marine biologist who supervises the project. |
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The InterContinental Resort and Thalasso Spa is located on an islet facing the main island of Bora Bora and Mont Otemanu. This luxury hotel with 80 over-the-water villas has resolutely chosen the path of sustainable development and ecotourism. It is the only hotel in the world using the revolutionary system known as SWAC, or Seawater Air Conditioning. Seawater with a temperature of 41°F (5°C) is drawn from the ocean’s depths and fed into a cooling station. The water is pumped up from a depth of 915 meters (3,000 feet) through a 2.4 kilometer- (1.5-mile-) long pipe up to the nearby coral reef. |
The ice-cold water is pumped through a heat exchanger, transferring the cold water into a separate fresh water circuit, which provides the air conditioning throughout the hotel.
The SWAC system is designed to save up to 90% of the hotel’s electricity consumption for air conditioning, or 2.5 million liters (660,430 gallons) of fuel oil each year. It is also perfectly clean, eliminating the use of potentially hazardous compounds that deplete the ozone layer and provoke climatic change. The 5°C seawater is warmed during the process and returned to the ocean at 11°C, but is discharged at a depth of 200 meters (656 feet) to avoid cooling the fish and coral and protecting the marine eco-system.
But the hotel’s air conditioning system is not the only destination for the deep cold seawater. Since the water comes from such a depth, it is extremely pure and rich in active minerals and trace elements, all free from any atmospheric or ocean pollution. So the water is also used at the hotel’s Deep Ocean Spa by Algotherm, offering guests an experience of a lifetime—being treated with water from an ocean depth of 3,000 feet.
Moorea’s Sea Turtle Clinic
The Moorea Turtle Clinic has existed at the InterContinental Resort and Spa Moorea since February 2004, operated by four persons working for the Te Mana O Te Moana Association as part of a general program for the protection of sea turtles set up in French Polynesia by the Ministry of the Environment.
In French Polynesia, which celebrated the Year of the Sea Turtle in the Pacific in 2006, an international agreement signed in Washington in 1982 has prohibited since 1990 the collection of eggs and the transport, detention, capture on land or in the ocean of any of three types of turtles: green turtles, hawksbill turtles and leatherback sea turtles.
The private Moorea Turtle Clinic was authorized by ministerial decree for collecting and caring for ill or wounded turtles. The majority of turtles arriving at the clinic have been injured by a spear from a spear gun. For the most part these are green or hawksbill turtles.
Cécile Gaspar, a veterinarian, conducts a medical diagnosis of each turtle and prescribes a treatment. Nicolas Leclerc, a biologist with the Te Mana O Te Moana Association, determines what each turtles’ diet should be and monitors their behavior. He is helped by Heremoana Pere and Poanere Hora.
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Once the turtles are healed, they are identified and given a numbered ring and then rapidly set free to return to the ocean. Autopsies are conducted on turtles that die while at the clinic.
The clinic has treated 110 turtles since it was created in 2004—98 green sea turtles, 11 hawksbill sea turtles and one olive ridley sea turtle. Thirty-three turtles have been set free.
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You may also help protect sea turtles. If you find an ill, injured or dead turtle anywhere in French Polynesia, or if you need information about sea turtles, please contact 24/7 the Moorea sea turtle clinic. Ask for Nicolas Leclerc, biologist, or Cécile Gaspar, veterinarian.
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- EDITORIAL - GREEN TOURISM - TREND - ACTUALITES POLYNESIENNES - TREKKING FAIR - TOURISM PROFESSIONALS WORKING ON BEHALF OF THE ENVIRONMENT - INTERVIEW -
