Volunteer To Help Coral Reefs

If you feel the urge to enrich your vacation time and want to go beyond relaxing under a palm tree with a good book, take the plunge and explore the many "do something" project vacations offered by environmental and marine conservation groups worldwide.

I did just that last year when I signed up to participate in a coral seeding project sponsored by the non-profit group CEDAM on the Caribbean island of Dominica. What's coral seeding you say? Well, it's an interesting new approach to stemming the decline of the world's coral reef ecosystems. Several organizations and companies have come together in a joint effort to replenish damaged reefs. Applied Marine Technologies in Dominica grows "coral babies" in hundreds of blue plastic swimming pools on patented bases that are then attached to a concrete "reefball". The Reefball Coalition constructs these hollow, half-spherical concrete balls from molds, designed to provide an attractive habitat for marine life of all kinds. When deployed underwater in significant numbers, it is possible to construct a sizeable artificial reef. Volunteers are needed at many locations to construct the reefballs, as well as assist in the deployment to the designated underwater site.

CEDAM's expedition to Dominica was the first of it's kind to combine reefball technology with coral seeding. The primary objective of the expedition was to deploy two concrete reefballs in 50-60 feet of water approximately 100 yards offshore in a sandy area near other reefs. Volunteer divers seeded one of the reefballs with 15 native coral species, while the second reefball remains unseeded. Over the next several years, the abundance and diversity of corals on both reef balls will be observed and the effectiveness of artificial reefs and coral seeding determined for this location on the leeward coast of Dominica. A secondary objective was to perform fish and coral census activities and make a photographic record of all this activity in an attempt to determine the overall environmental health of this coral reef system.

Six enthusiastic, environmentally aware dive volunteers and two expedition leaders arrived at Castaways Beach Hotel to do their part in helping save the world's coral reefs. This premier coral seeding project was underway with divers relocating one of the cement reefballs, scrubbing it with brushes to clean the surface, and recording the GPS location on day one. AMT owner, Alan Lowe and Dive Castaways' dive staff assisted the volunteers with the underwater drilling task. AMT-grown fingerling coral was transported in plastic bags to the reefball location by divers while two volunteer underwater photographers recorded the whole operation. Once the 15 hard and soft coral species were screwed into the reefball's concrete surface, the entire ball and each specimen were numbered, identified, and photographed.

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