We have had a busy few days over at Thanda Island looking after our coral nurseries together with resident marine biologist Rianne and coral gardener Joshi! We spent three intensive days of ex-planting coral, re-stocking our rope nurseries and marking out experimental plots for renaturation and biodiversity monitoring!
Some coral fragments have made such good progress that we could finally ex-plant them onto the reef, having grown from the size of your little finger to fist-size in a matter of months. It makes us so happy to see them grow and to watch their progress! To ex-plant them, we mix cement with seawater and a water repelling additive and use this to stick the fragments onto clean bare rock at the reef sites that we are renaturing. This saves the corals valuable energy attaching themselves when they are vulnerable and gives them a better chance to grow and make a healthy reef.
Coral gardening is a big team effort and, with the help of our trained coral gardeners, volunteers, family and friends, we then repaired storm damaged and re-stocked our rope nurseries. We are still experimenting with different bio-degradable materials and have recently started using cotton rope (in addition to the coconut rope we use) because it seems less prone to biofouling than coconut rope and less prone to breaking in storms and the thinner diameter means more of the coral fragment has access to light. Always learning, we continue trying to improve our nurseries to give the coral fragments we grow the best possible chance of survival while not putting plastic into the ocean.
Our latest addition to our nursery and renaturation sites on Thanda are two temperature and light sensors that will record data at hourly intervals for the next months. With these sensors we are collecting valuable data to improve our experiments and our understanding of our reef sites. We have also marked out several experimental plots which, over time, will be renatured using the coral fragments we are growing in our nurseries and where we will study changes in biodiversity concomitant with reef renaturation.
We would also like to take this opportunity to promote our new internship program that is going to launch in July this year! We will hold courses in coral reef biology, coral propagation, reef renaturation and advanced SCUBA skills to help you become a coral gardener! If you’re interested in helping us to make a real difference and tackle the degradation of our coral reefs, go have a look at our ‘Internship Program’ tab. Karibu!
Stay tuned!