Kristen here –

Sorry everyone but Aaron is currently injured and would like to sit out this blog post due to the throbbing pain in his forearm induced by scraping against a starfish known as the crown of thorns. Not be confused with the crown of Christ or the flowering plant with red tiny flowers, this starfish has an amazing self-defense system that renders it practically impenetrable to nearly all predators. The only animal that can slice through a crown of thorns is an urchin that cuts through the starfish like a table saw as it eats on the tender flesh inside the body.

Don’t be deceived by its bright and beautiful colors either! Like most things in nature, the bright colors stand as a warning to other organisms to leave it alone or suffer the consequences. Here in Koh Toa, the starfishes are a purple gray color with an almost iridescent orange on the spines.  When in the water, it looks as though you should be able to run your hand over the protrusions much like you would a mohawk. Because the starfish uses water to pump its body up, it flows with the current and even seems to sway with the waters. But as Aaron can attest, the thorns are sharp and contain a potent poison that induces numbness, pain, nausea and dizziness.

As a part of the Ocean’s Day celebration, our team performed a beach clean up in the local Chalok Harbor and then proceeded to the boat in order to dive and collect trash/rubbish there. We divided into two person teams and set out together to gather foreign objects along the sea floor and trapped in the coral. And if you happened upon a Crown of Thorns starfish, remove it. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Removing these starfish seems kind of mean, but they are the rival of rabbits in the breeding department. There are tons of them and they spawn like crazy. Additionally, due to climate change, the populations have boomed and due to the increased numbers, the corals have been silent victims as these starfish roam the reefs destroying everything in their path.

Today, in less than an hour, roughly 10 starfish were collected and outside their natural habitat, meaning that they are wandering in order to consume more food because there are too many animals in that one area. This poses a serious threat to the corals and other wildlife that live there because it’s the equivalent of letting …. You know I’m trying to think of something that compares and I can’t because there isn’t one.  No other ecosystem that I’m aware of is created by tiny little animals that create a living, breathing infrastructure. And no other animal creeps in to eat as much as they can before moving on – like the aliens from Independence Day. Consuming what they can and then moving on. So because we (humans) made it possible for these creatures to be so deleterious to the ecosystem, it’s our obligation to deal with them and protect the reefs by disposing of them, usually under a mangrove tree.

My partner, a very sweet and lovely Scottish young lady, were quite successful in collecting trash. We found a cracked diving mask, a blue jacket, tons of fishing line and netting, a license plate, a baseball cap,  and other small bits of plastic that we brought back to be properly disposed of. We had a blast cruising around. It was refreshing to see new coral growing from the wasteland of the 2008 bleaching event. New beautiful and vibrant corals were starting to take hold, spread out as if someone just strewn them in the water without a care in the world, fish darting from one hiding place to the next.

It was during this same dive that Kevin and Aaron brought up about 7 crown of thorns and while passing them up onto the boat, the bag swung down and cracked Aaron on the arm. He’s fine, more annoyed than anything it seems. But it’s not a pain he’ll quickly forget. If anything, he can compare his future injuries with it and say “nah, this is nothing, not like that one time I got stung” and the pain won’t seem that bad anymore.

On a side note, there is a walking stick chilling above our room door. Pretty neat!

Kristen here:

Today, the team went out to do a second muck dive since the first was an unsuccessful Waldo search. Which we found out is “where’s Charlie” in french. Aaron joined them on the dive today and I stayed behind in order to assist with some structure building for some of the artificial reefs they are going to be putting down. Plus today gives me some on land time to drink as much water as humanly possible and  hydrate before getting back in the water. I hate not diving, but I’d rather miss one day than the whole week because I got sick.  So artificial reefs….

The structures that are being built here range in size and shape. Most of the time, whatever idea you have will work as long as it’s not overly complicated. The structures must be large and sturdy in order to support the coral growth and not collapse under the weight of the organisms.  Plus they try to include a couple of holes for the fish to hide in, creating a fish hotel of sorts.

Kristen here:

Today we went out to repair the mooring lines on one of the bays and then continued on to remove more crown of thorns from the next bay over.

Mooring lines are increasingly important in the protection of the coral reef ecosystems. By providing a safe and reliable place for boats to attach, it decreases the amount of damage to the reefs by decreasing the need to drop anchors. However, boat captains either through arrogance or ignorance sometimes attach to lines that are used as a ‘no go’ zones, distinguished by the use of small yellow floats on the line. These zones are laid out along shallow reefs as a warning to all that there are shallow reefs which can be damaged by traffic. The rope, which is only an inch thick and attached to small coral head are easily destroyed when a large boat moors to the line. The mass of the boat in the currents and waves breaks the ropes and they float away or sink to the bottom to get tangled up.

The amazing part of this work is the incredible amount of team work that must go into these ventures. To create one line today took a team of about 15 and roughly two and a half hours of work. This time would have been cut a little shorter if there was more experience  amongst the team, but as volunteers, we can’t develop the experience quickly. This is why the team leaders usually step in and the rest of us generally take orders and accomplish tasks as they are delegated. Aaron snorkeled and free dove today in order to assist with the laying of the “no go” markers, all the while ducking as boats cruised in and out of the area dropping off tourist who would snorkel. These boats tried to cross the rope many times, each time to be yelled at and move back, like sulking children. One yacht in particular in stereotypical snob fashion cruised through our team in order to get near the reefs so that they would not have to swim further than 15 meters in order to enjoy their snorkeling. However, from the looks of the gentleman, it would have been better for him to have gone a mile off the shore and swam in for the exercise, but I would be scared of the damage he would cause as his body lumbering across the sea floor like a hippo.

While this line was being laid out, a few other divers and I descended to find the attachment points for the line above. After finding it, we quickly surmised that it was in disrepair. Another attachment point was located and used instead. While the rest of the team worked with the better point, I stayed behind and removed the poorer rope so that it would not strangle the coral head there or continue to abrade the surfaces of the rocks. Little blue and yellow fish gathered around me watching the rope unfurl and then darted away when the rope suddenly popped to the surface with the makeshift lift bag I had used to keep one end of the rope pointing up while I worked the knot undone.

Once this was all completed, we all clambered back aboard and traveled to the neighboring bay,  and jumped back into the water for a crown of thorns removal. All together, we gathered 20 and disposed of them beneath a mangrove when we returned. Visibility on this dive wasn’t amazing but we managed to stay together, usually so closely that we were bumping in to each other. The complexity of the reef structure on this dive in particular has been fascinating. Most of what we have seen has been fairly flat, laid out on a plain. Here the corals grew over large boulders that were exposed from thousands of years of degradation and erosion caused by the waves battering against the sides of the cliffs. Diving here required us to ‘climb’ over the surfaces, fall down the other sides of the boulders, and hug the walls of the cliffs in the search for the predatory starfish. I think it has  been my favorite dive by far.

For those of you who read this blog mainly for information about the ongoing efforts here, this post may very well be one that you could skip. I have been asked the question “Why do you dive?” many times over the course of the last six months and I have spent that time contemplating what a true answer should be, for myself and possibly others in the occupation/sport. My diving experience is limited, in fact, I am extremely new in the audience of most divers I  have met but I feel there is enough in my logbook upon which to base a conclusion. As fair warning, the following answer could appear whimsical, unrealistic, and borderline philosophical to some, but at the end of each day it still remains my answer. My attempts begin with the basic answer of “Why not?” but for those of you who know anything about me, I analyze just about everything, attempting to break down a question or problem into its constituent pieces to understand the steps necessary to construct a viable solution. A search for the logical and scientific have become the pillars of my daily muses over the past years and I suspect that will not change in the future.  Needless to say the breadth of “Why not?” will not suffice for someone of my construction, although,for those whom it does, the clarity of those two words captures the heart of the sport.

Not too long ago, I ventured out to a site called Buford Sink in the western part of Florida. It was called an adventure dive by those who posted their experiences with the site and I can safely say, adventure it was. We entered a state park where we drove roughly 2 miles to the opening of a small brush covered path. From what we had heard, the dive was located at the end of a mile hike, the last quarter of it being swamplands with all of the pleasant species one would associate with such an area…snakes, gators, mosquitos (teradactals) being the most prominent. At the end of the first section, the grapevine proved not to disappoint. I learned that huffing through this terrain with a full dive load out is quite tedious to say the least. The end of this hike led you to a small muddy terrace overlooking a small serene pond. Aside from its aquamarine ambiance, it appeared as if it held no special dive secret or quality that would set it part from those we had dove before but I was soon to be proven wrong.

After donning our equipment, we slipped into the sink where we drifted to the center section containing two downed trees that sat  crossed over top of one another. A quick peek below the surface revealed relatively no life aside from a catfish here and there but yet there was an innate vitality that seemed to be emanating from sizeable opening that swallowed the sun’s midday rays in its depths.  As we descended into the black, lighting off our torches, a calm like no other flooded over me. Now this is an ironic account given the still ,cold black of the cavern below which in its majority is lifeless. On that particular descent, that day, in that sink, I knew why I dive. I felt more alive that day than any other. The rhythmic sound of a regulator diaphragm adjusting to exhalations and sending streams of carbon dioxide to the surface, the dancing of ambient light against the sandstone cuts in the wall of the cavern, and the feeling of the silt mixture on the floor of the cavern through my hand as I placed my guideline, all of these, bring forth a feeling of peaceful obscurity and insignificance that bend your knee in reverence.

Crossing over into the area of ocean diving yields a similar energy that comes from quite the opposite conditions. You are quite literally lowered down into the hustle and bustle of a new society. In contrast to our wars waged in religious and political pretense, economic interests, and money, these societies fight to grow, survive, and exist in a manner instinctual in nature without the poisonous motivation of power. You see it all around you, your immersed in it, the simplicity and complexity, for once, not a contradiction. These are the moments when you breathe in the life you were born to contain.

For myself, diving brings stillness to the chaos above the waterline and gives me the extraordinary when life becomes too ordinary. That is why I dive and shall continue to until I am unable.