Today the Department of Environment and Coastal Resources started the Reef Check programme.
Like 5 seconds after Audrey from Blue Waters told me about it and asked me if I interested in participating, I said yes! and this morning at 8.30 we started with the brief and training at the National Museum followed by our first dive.
We met again at Grand Turk Diving and after organizing the teams, we left to the dive site in 2 boats. We went to Black Smiths Rock and it was more a practice to see how well (or not...) we (the volunteers who were doing this for the first time and the experienced ones...) could do.
After the dive we had a short meeting to talk about the mistakes we made, the possible alternatives to avoid them in the next dive, and to compare results such as number of groupers, % of damaged coral, etc. Also to ask questions.
It was really interesting and I am excited about continuing tomorrow. The plan is to work on about 4 sites in Grand Turk and 3 in Salt Cay in the rest of the week.
It is so good to do something like this while diving. I felt something similar when last year I participated in the "coral move" diving sessions to help building the artificial bio reef. After this kind of activities, the dives change because you start observing the marine life from a different perspective, paying attention to different things, details that were unnoticed before... For example, i
t's impressive the number of gorgonians you can find in a rectangle of 5 meters by 5 meters (sometimes more than 100...) or sometimes you find 8 flamingo tongues in a rectangle and none in the other one...
Well, more info will come in the following days... I have to take a nap now. It's a bit rainy now, so a perfect time for that :)
Like 5 seconds after Audrey from Blue Waters told me about it and asked me if I interested in participating, I said yes! and this morning at 8.30 we started with the brief and training at the National Museum followed by our first dive.
We met again at Grand Turk Diving and after organizing the teams, we left to the dive site in 2 boats. We went to Black Smiths Rock and it was more a practice to see how well (or not...) we (the volunteers who were doing this for the first time and the experienced ones...) could do.
After the dive we had a short meeting to talk about the mistakes we made, the possible alternatives to avoid them in the next dive, and to compare results such as number of groupers, % of damaged coral, etc. Also to ask questions.
It was really interesting and I am excited about continuing tomorrow. The plan is to work on about 4 sites in Grand Turk and 3 in Salt Cay in the rest of the week.
It is so good to do something like this while diving. I felt something similar when last year I participated in the "coral move" diving sessions to help building the artificial bio reef. After this kind of activities, the dives change because you start observing the marine life from a different perspective, paying attention to different things, details that were unnoticed before... For example, i
t's impressive the number of gorgonians you can find in a rectangle of 5 meters by 5 meters (sometimes more than 100...) or sometimes you find 8 flamingo tongues in a rectangle and none in the other one...
Well, more info will come in the following days... I have to take a nap now. It's a bit rainy now, so a perfect time for that :)
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