Following up on our successful turtle story we move into Chapter 2 of the story Nature Island Dive’s new concentration on conservation.
As most of you are aware we are leading the way in coral preservation by training all our staff in treatment, triage and disease identification on different species. Everyday we are treating, tagging and photographing our reefs in order to document the status of our marine environment.
We are now putting together a program for students to come and learn techniques for ensuring long term sustainability of these coral reefs. Our first step is making them conscientious divers, aware of the delicate nature of sponges, corals and creatures. This is accomplished through a very thorough buoyancy clinic that goes beyond what most major agencies teach.
Neutrally Buoyant Diver
We start with questions, like what is your natural buoyancy position? Do your legs float or sink? Do you have large lungs that cause dramatic change in depth with breathing? Is your weight distributed evenly and as well as possible given your BCD style?
Then we get to work……can you hover?….on your head?…..upside down? Lots of practice and most people should get pretty competent. Then the final exam… hover 6 inches off the bottom, and hold a pencil inside a 2 inch loop without touching the sides!
Next we move onto kicks, frog kick, cave/cavern (also called the modified flutter kick) and finally the ever popular sculling backwards. This one is very entertaining for the instructor to watch. Throw in somersaults using only arms, then only fins, some high speed spins, and then the very hard, hover horizontally 6 inches over the sand with no forward or backward movement skill!
As soon as our divers are showing good proficiency in fine buoyancy control, then we take them out to the Coral tree for some cleaning! This is the immediate application of all those skills into important conservation work: scrubbing algae off the tree with a toothbrush! The coral colonies are very delicate and the tree spins if you push too hard, so you must have patience, teamwork and good buoyancy before you can clean our trees.
I am very happy to report that this week’s class all graduated with flying honors, the tree is sparkly clean, and we have 28 happy healthy Maze (MMEA) colonies floating 40 feet off the bottom and 30 feet deep.
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