Another week is done and dusted.

This week we welcomed our new intern Conrad and were joined by 3 students from Loop Abroad Emilee, Jennifer & Alexa.

The start of the week was spent teaching our students about our EMP surveys at Chalok & Sai Nuan.

We then took to the shallows to go on a hunt for the corallivores that we know as Drupella. The team did a great job and were able to remove 2,246 Drupella from the reef with some of those even falling into the less than 1cm category talk about eagle eyes.

Thursday was time to explore the old mineral accretion site of Hin Fai, visibility wasn’t the best and the current picked up but we had a great time exploring the site and came across a bunch of different sea slug species.

We rounded off the week with a trip to explore our Coral Aid site and use the coral predator knowledge from earlier in the week to look out for Crown of Thorns.

Another wonderful week has come to the end. We end by saying goodbye to Alexa, Jennifer and Emilee and finished our last dive of the week with some over under shots. 

Until next time remember

This week marked the start of a new group of students amongst which were:

2 interns

1 x 4 week course

1`x 2 week course

1 x 3 day course

&

1 x Conservation Diver Instructor Trainee

We started the week learning about our Ecological Monitoring Program and the species that we record as indicator species along the reef.

First up was the invertebrate EMP

Marbled Sea Cucumber (Bohadschia graeffei)

       Jorunna Nudibranch (Jorunna funebris)

Our students made their way through the transect counting all of the invertebrate species that fell into our indicator species list.

Then came the Fish EMP and a chance for the guys to have a second run at invertebrates

The transect line 

   Longfin Bannerfish (Heniochus acuminatus)

The most exciting part of the week however was that our students were lucky enough to join us around coral spawning time and it’s safe to say the coral did not disappoint. We were able to catch a whole range of coral genera releasing their gamete bundles into the big wide world.

The aftermath of Fungids spawning

          The start of Goniastrea spawning after the initial setting period       

   Acropora mid spawn

To round of the week we ended with Substrate EMP and Coral Taxonomy

Let’s see what the next week brings

Until then remember its

Another great week and this week it was time for everyone to take their knowledge of corals to the sea as we started with a substrate survey and coral safari.

Our students learnt some mnemonic devices to help them remember the 23 genus covered in the first coral Taxonomy lecture and came up with some of their own.

Can you guess the genus of coral if we were to use the word Platypus?

1 – Astreopora sp, 2 – Fimbriaphyllia sp, 3 – Goniastrea sp,
 

On Tuesday we took to our home bay of Chalok to investigate the health of the reef and to see how many of the corals were suffering from a compromised health state

Wednesday was round 2 of coral safari and another chance to find all 23 genus on the reef. We started with an interactive session with quizzes and games and took to 3 rocks on our safari.

The guys did an amazing job with the corals and the next step is Taxonomy 2

On Thursday we decided to venture away from the reef on the hunt for a creature with unusual breeding habits, the seahorse. Unfortunately we didn’t find a seahorse but we did find some cool critters and a close relative the pipefish.

To round of the week we ended with Coral Taxonomy 2 and we said goodbye to Ohm our 2 week student, come back and see us soon Ohm!!

Let’s see what the next week brings

Until then remember its

June 8^th marked World Ocean’s Day, and with it the reminder to really think about our oceans and the impact we have on them through plastic pollution.

As we know, plastic pollution is a huge issue worldwide with estimates of up to 8 million tonnes of plastic making its way into waterways each year. This marine debris can now be found from the ocean’s surface down to the deep sea, with a plastic bag finding its way down to 36,000 feet (10,975 metres) in the Mariana Trench.