Coral Nursery Cleaning! скачать в хорошем качестве

Coral Nursery Cleaning!

Sit back, relax and enjoy some coral nursery cleaning! :) First and most importantly, a huge thank you to ERIC (Environmental Research Institute Charlottesville) for letting all of us come out to help and learn about coral reef restoration! Also big thank you to Dr. Briggs for organizing and coordinating this study abroad trip as well as Dr. Hines for helping make the trip run smoothly! If you are interested in learning more or donating to ERIC you can find more information here: Westie: https://www.eric-tobago.org/ Youtube: @erictobago Instagram: @erictobago Facebook: ERICharlotteville What was being done in this video? And why? In this video, our dive master (black mask), the rest of our student group, and I are cleaning coral nurseries installed by ERIC in Man-O-War Bay in Charlotteville Tobago. These coral nurseries are a set of PVC “trees” anchored by a cement-filled tire to the sea floor. Each of the PVC branches has holes drilled in them, from the holes wire is used to hang coral fragments. In this nursery, Staghorn coral (Acropora Cervicornis) is being cultivated for outplanting at various places on the reef in Man-O-War Bay as a part of a long-term restoration project. In this video, you can see everyone working on cleaning the nursery trees. We are working on getting rid of unwanted algae on the PVC and wire. This algae can out-compete the coral, growing over its surface, blocking sunlight, preventing the symbiotic algae within the coral from receiving sunlight and essentially smothering the coral. In Charlotteville one of the greatest threats to the coral reefs comes from overfishing. In a healthy coral reef, there would be a balance of herbivore fish which would feed on the easily available algae preventing overgrowth and smothering of coral. In the absence of these herbivore fish species, the algae grows unchecked, so we are giving the coral a little extra help here. Note on methods: I want to start this by saying, aside from my open water training dives, this was my first time actually SCUBA diving. Hopefully, that gives you a bit of an idea of my skill level and perhaps you can forgive me for bumping my head on some of the coral. In that vein, if anyone has some constructive criticism, I would love to hear it! Naturally, I think some people will think I was being too careful when cleaning, others not careful enough. Coral is very fragile and the polyps can be easily damaged, so I was trying to strike a balance between effective and efficient cleaning and minimal coral damage. If anyone has expertise in this matter I would love to hear any comments/recommendations. I would also like to note that ERIC is doing the best with what they have, however, their funding is limited, so there simply weren’t enough tools for everyone. Ideally, I would have liked to have a set of pliers to clean wires, a set of coral cutters to cut off dead and algae-covered coral and a smaller toothbrush to more easily clean between the corals, this just wasn’t possible because of the amount of tools ERIC had/has. Additionally, it would have been really convenient if there were clips attached to the brushes and tools so they could be clipped onto our BCDs. That is one downside of having many tools, you then have to find a place to keep them and prevent them from getting in your way, something that can be difficult underwater. However clips to attach them to your BCD I think would keep them out of your way sufficiently, at least during cleaning dives. The wire “pokie thing” we made to clean the holes of the PVC could also probably be replaced with a pipe or straw cleaner, which I think could be more effective, however, both may be helpful to have on hand if the hole is really clogged. Quick note on nursery placement: I am not sure if anyone is interested/in a position to create their own coral nursery however I just wanted to point out, that this nursery was in relatively shallow water and this was very handy. It allowed us to dive for an extended period of time and enabled short surface times between dives, which can be crucial if you are collecting coral fragments from the nursery and taking them by boat to another location for out planting. Also, shallow water allows for good light penetration which is obviously beneficial for the coral. However, I would assume this also has to be weighed against the effect sunlight will have on water temperature and thus coral bleaching. In this particular instance, bleaching wasn’t a huge threat to the nursery. There is obviously much more to consider when thinking about the placement of a coral nursery, just thought I would throw this out there in case it helps anyone.