Projects
Expeditions and Research Undertaken
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Third Expedition - 2019
This third expedition continued to build on the vital data already collected. The expeditions will continue to be conducted annually to monitor seal populations, to understand better the factors influencing the decline of the population, and help to form recommendations to protect the species.Watch the video of this expedition, here (provide link).
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Second Expedition - 2018
The aim of this expedition was to observe the seal population in the Northern Caspian Sea and investigate the surrounding environment. On Kulaly Island, where large numbers of seals used to live outside of breeding season, the team only found carcasses.
In the Kenderli area, which used to be a rookery for the Caspian Seals, there was no evidence of the presence of seals. After making enquiries, the team discovered that the seals had not been seen in the area for the past 4-5 years, not since the construction of the Kenderli resort (a tourism project) began in 2015.
It was after this second expedition that Aselle Tasmagambetova decided that more needed to be done to protect the Caspian Seal.
Watch the video of this expedition, here (provide link), and view the findings, here (insert link). -
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First Expedition - 2017
In February 2017, the founder of the CSRRC, Aselle Tasmagambetova, organised the first expedition to the Caspian Sea to research the habitat of the Caspian Seal and the extent to which pollution is harming the environment.
During the expedition, which focussed on the area of the Kalamkas field, researchers from the Central Asian Institute for Ecological Research (Kazakhstan) took samples from the environment (water, snow and silt) and sent them to the laboratory of the Central Asian Institute for Ecological Research and Independent Analytics Centre in France for chemical analysis.
The results of the analysis showed oil pollution in the water across all samples, in addition the samples showed that the levels of Vanadium and Beryllium (two toxic elements) exceeded permissible concentration levels, potentially endangering wildlife in the area.
Watch the video of this expedition, here (provide link), and view the findings, here (insert link).