The second year of the Vava’u Turtle Monitoring Program will bring the focus of our efforts down to two of the original long term goals, with a broader view to the other goals. Firstly, we are now, thanks to Ruffords, able to ensure a third consecutive year of monitoring the outer nesting islands for signs of turtle activity. As turtles nest in 2-4 years cycles, it is vital that we are able to continue to maintain the annual surveys and monitor the outer islands in these early years to enable us to provide data to the national and regional bodies for a full nesting cycle. The beach surveys also enables us to document the level of human activity on the critical nesting islands. With the Tongan government moving towards establishing marine protected areas in the Vava'u group, a strong dataset of turtle nesting is needed to justify the inclusion of several of the nesting islands into this management program.

During our first year, the primary school education program was hugely successful but was we felt that our efforts needed to be increased to really harness the enthusiasm that the pupils and teachers showed for environmental messages. Over 500 students were reached, as well as their teachers and Principals who attended all of our sessions. The lessons were provided in Tongan by a young woman who often volunteers for us. With this second year funding we are able to follow up on this program and make it a larger part of our work. We are now able to meet the teachers stated need for more environmental education sessions for the children. During our sessions, the teachers also stated how much they were able to learn from the very basic information we provided. It is very apparent that there exist vast gaps in knowledge about the natural environment and species of Tonga in the education system. Encouragingly, this appears to be from a lack of information and lessons rather than from a lack of interest in the subject. Both teachers and pupils were very receptive to our lessons and being able to harness this interest and willingness to learn is critical for the future of turtles in Tonga. We are now able to increase our efforts by providing 20 schools with a series of environmental lessons including materials and posters that we can leave for permanent display.