Happy Birthday Fiona!!!!
Thinking of you and wishing you a 
Very Happy Birthday!!

Love and hugs,
Jenny & Simone 
XOXOXOXOXOX

We hope that everyone is well and keeping busy!

It’s a dry and sunny Sunday afternoon here. Simon and I have just come back from a lovely little walk up to the Windmill and investigating a new road that appeared which neither of us had been down, so that was interesting.

The last couple of days we’ve had torrential rain, thunder and lightning,  I’ve still been out cycling as it was cool and have enjoyed the empty roads 😀

The week was busy, starting with the arduous job of cleaning, measuring and taking photo’s of all of out ‘Adopt a Coral’ corals and then updating the data & website.  It’s a lot of hard work that we have to on a quarterly basis both in / out of the water.  We’ve over 100 corals to upkeep, so it’s take some time.  A great job for my Intern to help out with.  He can truly see the hard work and regular maintenance that goes into our ‘Adopt a Coral’ program.   This was the first time that we hadn’t forgotten/missed any photo’s/measurements of corals.  Usually I’ve forget a couple LOL

Diving in this monsoon, has it’s bonuses.  You’re going to get wet anyway, so it’s a good time to get those underwater jobs done.   We’ve tidied our artificial dive site by consolidating all the rubble under the domes.  This in turn provides a nice little habitat for all the small fish and invertebrates.  We’ve cleaned all of our coral nurseries that were getting overgrown with ascidians, algae and sponge.  We’re going to, when it’s not raining, make some new structures and deploy them ready for when we get the OK from the DMCR.   Also on the agenda we are going to move some of our Giant Clams that are have been in cages for the last 18 months, onto the natural reef and also select an area of reef in need of rehabilitation and start some simple research on coral transplants.  Lots to get on with, as well as teaching.

This morning Simon was up early making a lovely looking pie and pitta bread ..he’s so talented.  He cooks and I clean up the mess 😀   I did buy some banana’s, so I think it’s time for me to bake a banana loaf 😀

LOVE TO ALL
XOXOXOX

End of another week.   It’s been pretty good diving but the weather hasn’t been the best.  Heavy storms over night and then drying up by late morning and then heavy rain in the afternoon.  Can’t really complain as I’ve not got soaked on the way home yet 😀

I still have my Eco intern for another week.  He’s a lovely chap from Hong Kong and is pretty funny.  Even though he only started diving in the last month, he’s a pretty good diver.  Still needs learn about spacial awareness but he’s good.

We’ve been out collecting coral eating ‘Crown of Thorns’ which has tested Darren.  Not only does he have to measure, note the depth and count how many arms these starfish have (research purposes) I pick them up with some large long tongs and then put them in a sack which he has to dive about with 😀  So all n all, he’s been put through his paces LOL

Earlier on in the year, we had a couple of groups from India that made bottle nurseries, well we finally got around to putting them on the long tail and deploying them at Junkyard.  We’ve not put any corals in them yet, as we are still waiting on approval from the DMCR to do anything. 
Moving these small but very heavy cement nurseries was hard work but we’ve now made a path from Junkyard to the natural reef, so hopefully, people shouldn’t get lost ;-D 

We also deployed a new clam cage and moved some of our giant clams.  Our old cages were very tired and had lots of holes in them which Mr Trigger fish loved as he was able to get in and eat some of the clams.  Annoying when we’ve been been looking after the clams for over 18 months.