General Surveyor projects
The St Katherine Protectorate monitoring programme needs a lot of survey effort to complete the atlasing and teams of General Surveyors provide much needed manpower for this. The group will spend the first 3 days at the Fox Camp at St Katherine including trekking up Mount Sinai. There will also be training in how to dress and survive in the desert and the survey techniques that will be used. At the start of the fourth day the group will move to the desert camp in 4x4 vehicles, or by trekking with support from camels to carry the bags and water. For the next 3 days the group will survey the wadi, sleeping in a temporary Bedouin camp. The groups will be completing quadrat surveys for plants, timed searches for reptiles, transect surveys for birds, mist netting for bats, and assessments of mammal populations from spoor and scat. This is an excellent opportunity to see some of the most spectacular scenery and wildlife in Egypt.

On Friday night the group will move to the Nuweiba camp where they will spend the next day debriefing, relaxing, and participating in some further lectures and debates on conservation issues relevant to the region. On the Sunday the group will begin their week undergoing the PADI Open Water course (the entry level qualification for SCUBA diving), or, if already dive qualified, a course in reef ecology. Note that this course consists of a series of lectures and in-water practicals, which can be completed via Scuba diving or snorkelling, so those students not wishing or not able to dive can still complete the course. The reef ecology course will give participants basic training in the identification of the key groups of fish, coral and invertebrates.

Typical Expedition Schedule