On Friday 22nd May 2020 a team of six divers completed 3 dives on our East End nursery and out-plant sites to conduct inspections, maintenance and collect data.
This video is for the purpose of a project record rather than a promotional piece. So, it is rather long at 8 minutes, but provides great insight in to what happens on a coral nursery maintenance dive. Think about if you would like to volunteer or take a class from our resident marine biologist on your next visit to Cayman, or just like the zen of a 'wax-on-wax-off' kind of dive.
If you watch until the end, you'll get a little sharky treat too. This guy hung out with us the entire first dive.
Nine weeks without any care, reminds us why coral nurseries work and how they can fail. Hanging corals high in the water column accelerates their growth, but also speeds up one of their biggest enemies- algae. Without cleaning, the corals will die.
We are very pleased to report that some of the trees were in pristine condition and only needed minor care. The majority of most corals trees remain viable with only one in particular needing extensive work and another that was totally overcome by algae with a 95% loss.
A more detailed report is being prepared for the Department of Environment.
We need to get in one more dive at each site urgently and then we can revert to a monthly maintenance cycle until the lockdown is lifted.