Phi Phi - Day 4

Today we moved toward the reef conservation dives, rather than the "fun dives" that were preparatory for this.  Our first dive today was on a reef that has been badly mismanaged and damaged by human activy.  The objective is to compare this damaged reef to a pristine reef by counting the number of species of Chaetodontidae that we see in each.  That's the family that includes butterflyfish and banner fish.  In this region, there are ~30 species and the students had to memorize them in the fall class.  There's a report in a scientific journal that shows you can use this family of fish as a surrogate for all reef fish species as a means to assess reef health.  Today they saw a very unhealthy reef, tomorrow we plan to do the same activity in a healthy reef and compare the two.  Following this, we had lunch on the dive boat and then began the reef rehabilitation project.

Gabby, Kyle and Anna ready to go count the chaetodont species in an unhealthy reef.

Ready to go are Colin, Moose, Max, and Luke.

With dive slates ready are Annie, Emily, Rebecca, and Blaire.

After their dive, the kids are coming bak to the boat showing the slates and smiles.

After lunch, we were met by four marine scientists from the Phuket Marine Biological Center, who are conducting a project to determine optimal ways to grow corals for replanting into dead reefs.  We have the unique opportunity to be a part of this important research, and have been participating for the past 10 years.  We take cut coral fragments and place them into tubes, then put the tubes into racks, and place the racks onto an underwater coral nursery.  Here are Franny, Anna, and Gabby working with the fragments.

Emily, Katie, Alex, and Alyssa.

Moose, Colin, Luke, and Abby.

Savannah, Rebecca, Annie, and Blaire.

Kyle, Colin, Abby, and Jaime; with Luke and Emily to the right.

The fragments are put into basins containing seawater while the students put them into plastic tubes. 

I was thrilled to learn that these fragments came from corals that we planted into a dead reef as fragments years ago!!!

The dive deck and the upper decks were quite crowded with teams working with fragments from different colonies that had to be kept separate.

When the tubes were ready, they were pushed into rack with a 6x10 plastic grid.

When we had 18 racks completed, we swam them down to the nursery.  Here is Moose with her rack of coral fragments.

Luke.

Here's an empty nursery platform.  The platform is suspended above the ocean floor by about 6 meters, and it's another 4 meters to the surface.

Max swimming his rack down to the platform.

After five had already been positioned, Colin places his rack on the nursery.

Anna going the extra mile to provide entertainment while she brings her rack to the nursery.

Katie.

The nursery is nearly complete.

After all the racks were positioned, we had to cable tie the racks to the platform and to one another.

Beneath the nursery platform, Colin, Luke and Max are pushing the cable ties up for the people above.

Gabby.

Kyle.

Annie.

Max and Colin... nice teeth.

The second nursery platform had empty space for a couple fresh racks (left).  Compare the growth of the fragments on the right which have been in the nursery for one year.  We'll plant those into a dead reef tomorrow.

Moose.  After we finished populating the nursery, we did a quick tour through a nearby reef.

Two species of sea urchins.

Singular bannerfish

Redtail and triangular butterflyfish.

 Cave sweepers.

Sunset during the cruise back to Phi Phi.  And another great day....