Timor Leste

Reef Check Australia trained staff from the Northern Territory Government Department of Natural Resources, Environment and the Arts (NRETA) in order that they could work with Charles Darwin University (CDU) and the Timor Leste Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) to establish Reef Check monitoring in Timor Leste.

The team are collaborating to map and assess the coastal and marine habitats of Timor Leste, with an emphasis on the candidate marine park area around the far eastern tip of Timor Leste, from Com to Lore, including the island of Jaco. An important element of the project is to build additional capacity and knowledge within the MAFF to monitor, protect and manage marine resources of Timor Leste.

Training of Timor Leste counterparts began in November 2007. After a challenging week of translating most of the course from English to a combination of Tetum, Indonesian and Portuguese, Shane Penny (NRETA) and Leo Dutra (University of New England) successfully trained three divers and 7 snorklers to begin monitoring as soon as the present wet season breaks.