Today I woke up at about 7:45 and took a shower before meeting at the cattle guard. Just like yesterday, we went straight to the docks and had a quick breakfast. After breakfast we took about 15 minutes to go pick up a few souvenirs. We then boarded the boat and set up our gear. The boat ride to the site only took about 20 minutes but the breeze on the top section was great! Once we got to the site we snorkeled for 45 minutes and observed the area for damaged staghorn and elkhorn coral. We then got back in the boat and put all our scuba gear on and entered the water. There are various steps to coral replanting including: site selection, harvesting coral pieces, and finally attaching those pieces to substrate or an ideal rock. The site had already been selected so on the first dive we harvested coral pieces. We did not break pieces off of healthy coral but instead found a mildly damaged piece of coral, measured up 5cm and broke off the remaining. In total my group harvested 14 pieces of staghorn coral. This first dive lasted about 40 minutes and was in about 10-20 feet of water.
After the first dive, we took a two hour break, relaxing on the boat and eating some sandwiches for lunch. Following this two hour surface interval, we geared back up and descended again. This dive was entirely focused on attaching the harvested pieces of coral. In order to do this, each harvested piece was given an I.D. tag and was zip-tied to a piece of clean rock or substrate. Even though it sounds like a fairly simple task it was hard to maintain good buoyancy and not damage established coral in the area. In order to do this I basically had to work in the handstand position for the vast majority of the dive. Because this coral replanting was a tedious process, the dive lasted about an hour. On the swim back to the boat we saw a school of squid and it was really interesting to watch them change colors as they moved in the water.
After the second dive, we dismantled our gear and took the short boat ride back to the dock were we unloaded and exchanged the tanks. We then took the taxi back to the villas where we had two hours to relax and shower before dinner. We went to Mad Dogs and had wraps and macaroni and cheese for dinner. I can’t wait to paint the walls tomorrow and figure out what design we will use for our own wall.
**Photo Credit – Alex Curry**
