T&T's lo­cal "Spi­der woman," Jo-Anne Sewlal has once again made us proud. The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies PhD Zo­ol­o­gy stu­dent was se­lect­ed to be in an in­ter­na­tion­al en­vi­ron­men­tal book en­ti­tled, The Sun Mak­er 2009, The Art of In­ter­view and Doc­u­ment­ing His­to­ry, which fea­tures coastal clean­ing ef­forts in T&T. Sewlal, whose love for spi­ders en­cour­aged her to spe­cialise in arach­nol­o­gy, said it felt great to be cho­sen. "With­out these nat­ur­al habi­tats, my spi­ders won't be there. In ad­di­tion to spi­ders, I do things like alert­ing peo­ple about the en­vi­ron­ment," she said.

She was cho­sen by the en­vi­ron­men­tal blog based on in­for­ma­tion she had pre­vi­ous­ly dis­sem­i­nat­ed for Non-Gov­ern­men­tal Or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGO) re­gard­ing last year's coastal clean up. Through her ef­forts at dis­sem­i­nat­ing in­for­ma­tion, Sewlal peaked their in­ter­est and they re­quest­ed an in­ter­view about her ef­forts in con­tribut­ing to a healthy en­vi­ron­ment. Sewlal's in­ter­view stood out and she was fea­tured un­der the ti­tle 'Clean­ing the Coast of the Caribbean: T&T,' in The Sun Mak­er's book, which was re­leased in De­cem­ber.

"My in­ter­view was se­lect­ed along with nine oth­ers from around the world to be fea­tured in the book high­light­ing the most out­stand­ing in­ter­views that were con­duct­ed for the year 2009," she said. A stu­dent who wears dif­fer­ent caps, Sewlal is a mem­ber of the lo­cal NGO, En­vi­ron­ment To­ba­go and is a mem­ber of their ed­u­ca­tion com­mit­tee. She al­so ed­its their quar­ter­ly newslet­ter and writes a week­ly col­umn on en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues and na­ture on be­half of the NGO. "The pub­lic needs to be more in­volved. Some coast­lines, be­cause of the tide, they do get fre­quent­ly loaded with garbage," she said. Al­so the au­thor of The Ecol­o­gy of Web-Build­ing Spi­ders: Stud­ies of Four Trop­i­cal Species, which was al­so re­leased in De­cem­ber, Sewlal has been recog­nised be­fore. The Zo­ol­o­gy stu­dent has won the Vin­cent Roth award on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions and was the first lo­cal to win the award giv­en by the Amer­i­can Arach­nol­o­gy So­ci­ety three times. Shar­ing her love for spi­ders, she said, "They are car­ni­vores, so they're like pest/bi­o­log­i­cal con­trol. Al­so, eco­log­i­cal­ly speak­ing they are mid-lev­el preda­tors."

About The Sun Mak­er

�2 The Sun Mak­er has more than 1.7 mil­lion vis­i­tor page views from 194 coun­tries and that num­ber is grow­ing.

�2 Based in Buenos Aires, the Sun Mak­er is di­rect­ed by Ramiro Gas­ton Fer­nan­dez Lu­ci­fo­ra, a jour­nal­ist, grad­u­ate in Ox­ford DL and a stu­dent of En­vi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence.

�2 It fea­tures ar­ti­cles and con­ducts in­ter­views with ded­i­cat­ed peo­ple who work with NGOs on en­vi­ron­men­tal and hu­man­i­tar­i­an is­sues from all around the world.

�2 The Sun Mak­er Pub­lish­ing House, re­leased the book with two goals–to pub­lish high qual­i­ty con­tent and in­for­ma­tion, and to doc­u­ment his­to­ry