The weather has started to improve throughout the week and the beginning of week two has seen me diving more. We have to dive in the mornings as the afternoons are too windy. It is a full moon at the moment so the tides are all over the place so we are up at 4.15 to be able to dive.
I have dived 7 times this week, the first dive being a ‘point out’ which is to identify specific fish, invert and benthic species important to the health of the reef. I have also completed a land based practice run of the census (where we all looked a bit mad on the beach pretending we were looking for fish and inverts) and also a ‘mimic’ dive to see how we coped with diving in such a way that you have to concentrate on only what is around the transect line (or tape measure) before doing the real one next week. I also did a night dive which was fantastic, the ocean and reefs look like a different world in the night with phosphorescent lighting up the sea, octopus coming out to play and seeing parrot fish in their protective bubble to stop being eaten by predators. There were so many lion fish on the reef, I have never seen more than one at a time and there were 12 in two groups here! There was also a menacing moray eel lurking in the sea grass as we glided over it.
On the Monday I took part in a coral transplant exercise, we dive to a healthy reef and pick up any broken coral that is not bleached or dead. Once we have collected enough we take it to the artificial reef that has been built here and literally glue the coral to the rocks with two different types of compound mixed together to make a putty which won’t harm the coral. The more coral that takes the quicker the reef will get going. We are doing this now as the water temperature is around 24-26 degrees centigrade, but will have to stop at 28 degrees as the coral starts to slow down and bleach at any temperatures higher than this, as we are coming into summer we will be hitting these temperatures very soon. In fact just before I arrived the temperature of the sea was 28 degrees but has cooled again.
On Wednesday we did a deep dive (28 meters) to see the bigger fish in the bay. The colour disappears from the reef the deeper you go but there were beautiful white corals on the reef that I had never seen before. There were beautiful golden fish, cunningly named ‘goldies’, teeming around parts of the reef which gave colour to the dive. We followed this dive by a ‘coral clean’ dive. This is where we take toothbrushes down to the coral nurseries and clean the structure and any dead coral of any algae that is forming around them. Some algae can be good for coral but this stuff is not and when it is growing we need to clean it to give it the best chance of surviving.
We also took part in two aquaculture exercises, one where we canoe out in the reef, snorkel around to clean the seaweed farm ropes and then produce more ropes for farming and growing by collecting bits of seaweed from the farm and threading them into new ropes. The seaweed is then sold to local seaweed farmers for AR 7,000 (less than $2) per kilo and they can export at a higher cost.
The other was to collect sponges for the sponge farm that is being encouraged here. Again if we can grow the sponges the local can sell the sponges for profit and give them more income.
My weekend off resulted in me walking to Mangily, the next village up, on Saturday (about an hour) along the coast and having a seafood lunch (yes I feel a bit guilty trying to help them during the week but eating them at the weekend) as the vegetarian option in the hotels is pretty limited - meat is definitely their weapon of choice as they see it as wealthy eating, but after eight weeks of pescatarianism (if that is a word) I am not giving in!
On Sunday I walked for an hour the other way and found a posh hotel to relax in for the day, but it is hard to leave as it shows me what I am missing! But life is good here and I am learning so much therefore I can cope without the luxuries in life for a little longer…...
As you can imagine there is not a lot to do in the evenings here so after dinner we sit around chatting or go back to our rooms to read. There is no electricity here after 5.30pm and it gets dark around 6.30-7.00. I am usually asleep around 9.00pm but up at 5.00am.
There were a couple of people who had been here for more than two months leaving on Wednesday so we had a ‘party’ on the beach. We built a bonfire and and had beers and local made coconut rum and ginger rum. I had beer as the rum is lethal especially as your glass gets topped up all the time and I have seen the aftermath hangovers the next morning so I am staying clear. When we are diving we are only allowed one beer the night before, so it was good that the party fell on the evening of a national holiday here and there was no diving the next day.
The party drew a close to my second week, I have now been away two months and am halfway through my third leg of the trip and time is starting to fly :-(
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| RD volley ball on the beach with village spectators |
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| staff bringing our fish for supper - only one night a week |
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| just waiting on boat for the second dive |
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| Zebu having a well earned rest in the sea |
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| as they were transporting rocks to RD for the artificial reef |
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| Land census training |
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| woman resting after collecting edible urchins to sell for less than 1p each |
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| measuring the turtle before release |
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| Me and Manjo to boat captain |
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| kebabs in the village for sale |
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| some kids from the village |
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| looking for urchins etc |
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| low tide in the bay |
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| one of the big shops in the village |
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| Another turtle to tag |
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| more land training before doing it for real |
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| school for the divers |
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| children searching for food in low tide |
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