We had a busy week last week. We built two new nurseries in an action-packed three day trip to Thanda Island Private Marine Reserve. We were joined on this adventure by Salty Sapiens, who documented the trip for us and made it possible for us to share our efforts with you.
We made the two hour trip to Thanda Island Private Marine Reserve in our dhow, fully packed with equipment, to build nurseries with the resident marine biologist, Rianne Laan, who has been part of The Ropes of Hope team from the start.
With a much smaller, but experienced team, we were able to build a 2000 fragment capacity floating rope nursery in a day and a half. We then built a table nursery, based on one developed by Christian Vaterlaus of Marine Cultures in Zanzibar. Of course we still try to use locally-sourced, biodegradable materials as much as possible so we made the frame with mangrove poles. We then added a chicken wire table, to which we can attach cement “plugs” with coral fragments adhered to them. When the fragments grow big enough, the whole plug can be out-planted directly on the reef. This ingenious and highly successful method, that Christian introduced us to, minimizes handling of the corals and therefore reduces stress. Christian has 40+ different species of coral growing in his table nursery system so his system is really worth trying. We will share pictures of our experiences with the table nursery later, so stay tuned!
Thank you all for the donations we have received that make it possible for us to build new nurseries and maintain the nurseries we have already built. Our GoFundMe campaign is still open, so if you like what we do and want to support us, please donate at https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-ropes-for-hope
