Always up for a day free of the library, I got to put my science diver training to work on Wednesday. It’s not that I don’t love writing, mind you; it’s just nice to get back out in the sun and on the water.
That being said, with a boat chock full of six coolers and four people, I left with the BEACON project on Twin V early Wednesday morning. A fairly simple day, the plan was to go out to Hog reef and Crescent reef to return corals, which we did, without too much fuss.
As happy as I was to be out on the water, the leftover wrath of Tropical Storm Bret made the ride kind of choppy and my stomach a bit queasy, still, the morning passed without much fuss. It was even warm enough out there to dive with no wetsuit. (Which was great until I leaned on some fire coral. OUCH.)
BEACON had collected their corals to weigh and measure during the previous week. So we put them back into the water and collected other samples. At Hog and Crescent, there were six coral plates per area. These plastic plates each have four individual corals attached to them and are bolted on to a numbered cinderblock around the reef. We re-attached the corals plates we brought out with us and collected six more at each site to be taken back to BIOS to be weighed and measured by BEACON.
No comments:
Post a Comment