But during the couple of free afternoons I have had over the last few days, while Jen was on normal Open Water Courses, a few of us went and repopulated our Coral Nursery at Twins.. The previous fragments had grown amazingly since September 2010, and we had moved them onto the Coral Ship about 4 weeks ago.
Because of our success previously, with this nursery and the one we have at Junkyard, based on past experience.... we decided to collect coral fragments and bring the up to the boat, where we could be more effective than underwater. Efficiency is critical as we want the corals too suffer as little stress as possible...
Unfortunately, it almost was a disaster...
To keep the stress levels lower, once a tray, or ropes have been populated, we tie them to the boat, and let them hang in the water until we are ready to dive. When we were nearly done, I went to the back of the boat, and all our transplants were missing. The knot that tied them all to the boat was worked loose I guess... and they had all sunk without us noticing...
So it was action stations. Caitlin and I jumped in and guessed where they would be, descending 18m to sand. At this spot, all you could see was sand... no coral... nothing... not great when you want to do a search pattern... I started a search, and thankfully a few minutes later found our hard work laying there... PHEW!!!
After that little mishap, we went back to the surface, where everybody had smiles that we had found them... and we all went down to the nurseries together...
Once completed, they look great and hopefully they bed in as brilliantly as our first attempt..
After that, I went to the Coral Ship, as I hadn't seen it in a couple of weeks...and made a little discovery.... after only 4 weeks.... the corals are starting to attach to the steel frame... Superb!!
2 comments:
Nice pics bro. I eagerly await some vids with my suggested tracks!
Yup... had to pause for a bit with the video, cos of an open water course... hopefully tomorrow... I can complete..!
x
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