Today, I finished a 2 person Advanced Open Water. A French couple had continued through from their Open Water course with me, and it was quite enjoyable to teach them.

After completing their morning dives, Jen, me and a few other jumped onto the longtail to head out to Junkyard. The day before, during bad weather, the SeaTran ferry decided to park on Junkyard’s buoyline. Being a rather large boat, they dragged the anchor and sandscrews about 100m to the East hitting the edge of the coral reef. We were really concerned about the direction it had dragged it, and I had visions of 3 years of work on our nurseries was trashed.

Once we found Junkyard with Carsten snorkelling and me driving the boat around in circles (and rough waves!), Carsten dove down to tie a temporary line for the longtail to moor up on.

Carsten and his group surface swam to the anchor 100m away, while Jen and I dropped down to assess the damage.

The path of the anchor was clear… and it had missed causing massive damage to our coral nursery by inches.. it actually had only clipped the edge causing some structural damage… which I can happily live with.

Jen and I swam the path of the anchor and met the other guys, where we used lots of lift bags to raise the sandscrew and anchor to return them to Junkyard… It was a tough task and we have to return to move the concrete slabs tomorrow, but a lot got done.

With the anchor and sandscrews back, we plan to return tomorrow and secure the anchor about 20m South East of Junkyard to lower the risk of the same thing happening… we shall see how it goes!

That evening, yet another dive (night) with my 2 students, and then home to bed… I think we both fell asleep 5 mins later…

xx

SD