So let me start by saying that walking along the ocean floor is an incredible experience. Frankly, I never thought it would be so exhilarating. Today was the first day since we have been here that we were able to work on artificial reef habitats. The conditions these last weeks have been very detrimental to coral in this area. Bleaching has been occurring in a high percentage of the coral we have seen. Because of this introduction of new coral structures only provides additional stressors to the environment. Today, there was a recorded temperature increase of 0.4 degrees C, turning the outlook for this magnificent marine life into a much brighter picture.
Our task is during the dive was to gather large baskets full of rocks and stubble from the barren areas around the artificial structures and pack them around the steel framework. This “packing” allows more space to be available for coral implantation and colonization.
As far as the diving aspect, it was one of the weirder dives I have done. The dive plan was to descend to the ocean floor at around 50 ft. where we would mark off a collection area for rocks and rubble. Then we would rig a guide line back to the steel reef structure to guide our path back with full baskets. The kicker during this little moon landing was the process behind moving the baskets loaded down with rocks. Given the buoyancy change when going from a full basket to an empty one, a great deal of the air supply would be used making necessary adjustments if one were to attempt to swim deliver the loads, so to mitigate this and conserve air we removed our fins upon completion of the collection, clipped them to our gear, and used the weight of the basket to quite literally walk along the guideline to the structure where we packed the rocks. After emptying the basket, it had to be a quick donning of the fins to return and repeat the process. I found it quite hilarious to near the end of the packing with a relatively empty basket where I would start to shoot straight up. Definitely a lesson in peak buoyancy control. Haha!
You will notice that, there is quite a large addition to the available photos. I was finally able to upload all of the images I have taken so far as well as some videos. I hope you guys enjoy them. you will undoubtedly see some movie making improvements as time progresses. Given the tasks we have to perform while on the dives, it can become quite tricky to balance with taking good video. There are a few videos that are quite literally the camera hanging off of my gear directed toward the ocean floor. I did do this on purpose because it gives an idea of what we are surveying during the dives but unfortunately for those of you who get a little woozy at shaky video, you may have to take slow.
Tomorrow we will be doing a substrate survey which is largely consists of analyzing precise half meter increments of the ocean floor to determine what the current state of the reef is in terms of health. Although we are blessed enough to be seeing incremental temperature increases, it takes weeks sometimes months for coral to recover from an episode of bleaching like this one so we are probably gonna be seeing some pretty dismal health. I will definitely be posting more about the results and let you guys know how it went.