Marine Resouce Management – Final Day

An early start today as we were out on the 7.30am boat for a couple of observatory dives at ‘White Rock’ and ‘Twins’  Both dives were good, looking at coral types, formations, diffences of depth and shallow waters, bleaching etc   At the end of both dives we all did some ‘Coral Watch’ basically noting the darkest & lightest parts of a coral against a colour chart which Nathan was going to log later.

Back on dry land Simon and I had a quick snorkel at the front of Crystal to look for a spot to place our coral nursery.  Only meters away was a cordened off snorkel area and just infront of that,  found a sandy area which would be ideal.

After lunch at ‘Safety Stop’ we gathered in the Crystal bar area just as the concrete pilars arrived.  How perfectly timed was that?!  So that meant we could now deploy our nursery.

The concrete pillars were really heavy and I struggled with mine but with them all in the water and coral nursary tied on top, we started to gather broken bits of coral.  Our first study will be of Foliose coral.  We collected 21 pieces which were put in order of size in 3 rows and then placed gently on the netting, which was cut to accomodate each piece to keep it in place.

It’ll be really interesting to see how/if the broken bits of coral take.  Nathan’s taken some photo’s so we’ll post these soon.

Courses like ‘Reef Check’ and  Marine Resource Management  ..have enlightened us both, we look at the coral reef in a totally different light.  as to how complex and  important they are to us to the world, and our survival…

Marine Resource Management – Day 3

This morning we completed all the theory covering:

The Effects of Marine Tourism
What Science says about divers
Marine Protected Area’s
Sustainable Dive Practices

We had lunch and then our next task was to construct a coral nursery.  It just had to be simple so we all popped up to the wholesalers with Nathan and bought pvc piping with connectors, netting and conctrete pillars.  We cut the piping into 2 x150cm and 2 x 100cm lengths and joined them together with the connectors forming a large rectangle.  Then covered that with netting, holding it in place with string.    I must say our first attempt wasn’t bad at all, we could have overlapped the netting to make it slightly stronger, but we’ll see how it holds up when it’s in the water and has coral on it.
So, with the nursery nearly complete, we just needed the concrete pilars, which will act as table legs.  Unfortunately they’re being deliverered tomorrow, so work came to a stop.

For a change we finished pretty early so headed home for a shower after a sweaty day in the Crystal workshop.

Marine Resource Management – Day 2!

More classroom theory in the morning, with me being quite grumpy since I hadn’t slept enough or eaten properly! Once we were done with that, it was time to grab the afternoon boat for a coral nursery observatory dive.

We dived at Aow Leuk on the other side of the island, and met up with New Heaven dive school to plant coral mushrooms.

Two weeks ago, they dive during a coral spawning (happens once or twice a year) and caught eggs in nets to grow on land (in aquariums) and transplant onto little concrete mushrooms, to see if we can assist in the growth of coral reefs.

Today it was time to put them in the water and hope they grow.

It was a good dive, and due to the highly experimental nature of this project, I don’t predict a high success rate, but trial and error can only improve it.

In the evening, after an exploratory night dive, we went to Muay Thai to see a few boxing matches, and then to bed…. super tired…