Seychelles

I was thinking this is now a very tangential sort of Halloween connection, but manta rays, you know, beautiful, lovely manta rays are also a type of devil ray.

And in, you know, many places manta rays call some equivalent of devil of the sea or, you know, in Seychelles, you know, because of the horns they have.

But it's been recently shown in a couple of places.

I think, you know, first we had it actually at our Daros Research Center in Seychelles, and it's since been observed elsewhere.

of these remoras that are usually quite happily living sort of on or near to mantas actually when startled ducking and running for cover which in the videos we've seen can include burying themselves into the mantas cloaca which is incredibly unfortunate and the poor manta ray yeah that's a pretty horrific thing and these remoras should really develop some personal boundaries

but i'm gonna i mean what we decided we were going to do is go through some honorable mentions because there are species that are a little bit creepy sounding or have a spooky vibe but we really don't know that much about so we're just going to give them a little kind of like nod at the end of this episode um and for me a lot of them are the deepwater cat sharks and dogfish um so i mean when we're talking about the deepwater cat sharks this is the largest family of living sharks that exists today so you have at least 110 species that kind of range from around 200 meters deep to almost 2200 meters so that's 7200 feet deep and And these are amazing, amazing animals, but we know very little about the vast majority of them.

Did you have to go through South Africa, like Johannesburg or something?

So actually, we had a flight that was basically, we broke it up, but we had Barcelona to Dubai, Dubai to Seychelles.

And actually, we stayed about a week in Seychelles, and that was incredible.

And then there was a flight Seychelles to Madagascar, Antonevario.

Okay, so it's Seychelles.

I've been saying Seychelles for my whole life.

You

know what? Don't quote me on that.

And my regions were Southern Africa and particularly the Indian Ocean Islands.

And I spent many years traveling back and forth from Johannesburg to Madagascar and Seychelles and La Reunion and the Camoro Islands.

And as a result of spending time in the Indian Ocean, I took up scuba diving.

and pursued it quite seriously until I became a dive master and instructor and ended up working as a dive leader in the Seychelles when I was stationed there for a couple of years.

And that led me to write my first book, which was about the history of underwater exploration.

And we came to be able to breathe underwater, going back in history and more contemporary times.

Region 4 is the first where the top-ranked passport loses.

Seychelles has Africa's top-ranked passport, 26th on the index, with visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to around 156 destinations.

Mauritius trails at roughly 27th, with about 147.

On citizenship, IMI picks Mauritius.

The second difference is dual citizenship.

Mauritians by birth or descent may have a second nationality.

A flexibility Seychelles largely denies its own citizens.

Mauritius has also built a well-regulated banking system.

Well, the RMB where to invest in Africa report says the Seychelles still the top place to invest in our continent.

Mauritius and Egypt come after that.

We have been pushed out of the fourth spot and into the fifth spot by Morocco.

So her and I just made this bucket list item.

When she first met me, when we were dirt poor broke, she was like, I would love to go to the Seychelles Islands.

So that's our goal is for in 2027, we'll be married for 20 years.

And we're going to take her to the Seychelles Islands with that.

it's going to be amazing that's going to be so amazing oh i can't wait to hear how that goes

yeah i know well

Have you ever seen No Country for Old Men? No, I haven't seen it.

Llewellyn Lutz in the Seychelles.

I haven't seen it.

Money.

Also, we learned that risk increases with the dose.

Harvey Klewell from Environment Health Sciences Institute reviewed the epidemiologic studies from Seychelles and Faroe Islands.

He showed that the risk of toxicity increases with higher doses of mercury.

Also, we learned about the health effects of mercury.