hello from Jamaica mon!

[simonk999]

Hello all,

I am on the 2nd day of an Earthwatch project (hello DivingGal!) that is investigating coral recruitment on the north shore of Jamaica, in Discovery Bay.

We have learned a bit about the difficulties coral reefs are in these days, and Jamaica's reefs suffer from a number of problems, such as sedimentation, over-fishing, storm damage, and others. Our task is to measure so-called "massive" corals to determine when they started to grow. The researcher, Dr. James Crabbe, from Reading University in the UK, has developed a polynomial equation that models growth, and they want to use that to get data on historical recruitment rates.

The diving is in 82F water, with moderate to good visibility (there was a storm the previous week), to various sites around Discovery Bay. We have been to two sites so far, outside the barrier reef, which have had a reasonable selection of hard coral, but hardly any branching corals, and hardly any fish. It being the north coast, there is a good swell, especially after the wind kicks in around 9-10am. The first day, we got out late, and the swell was 4-5 ft. A few of us, myself included, declined to make a 2nd dive due to queasiness. A small boat in those seas isn't that comfortable. The dive today was made earlier in the morning and was in 1-2ft seas, which was quite manageable.

Later in the week, we are going to dive with the American ambassador to Jamaica since she's interested in what the Discovery Bay Marine Lab is doing. It's part of a general Open House that they're putting on in the hopes that the local populace will learn about the impact of humans on the environment.

Well, perhaps more later.

-Simon

 

[ckharlan66]

Sounds very interesting. Keep us posted on the diving and the results of the research. I will be watching for more post.

Chad

 

[DivingGal]

Hey Simon - I was wondering when the project was starting. I was just thumbing through this years "catalog". When you get back we gotta talk, there's a couple of sweet ones!


I expect a report (and pics????).

 

[simonk999]

New Update

Today is the next to last day (excluding the travel day). We've been doing two morning dives for 6 of the last 7 days (it's day 8 including the initial travel day), with a day off in the middle in which we did some exploration of nearby Jamaica. Tomorrow's dive, the last one for this trip, will be our only recreational dive -- no slates or measuring tapes!

All the diving has been off small boats. The sites are 10 minutes to 1/2 hr from the dock. The dives have all been between 25-35 ft, since this is the depth of study, to keep conditions between sites roughly similar. Some dives have been deeper, but the deepest was only to 60 ft, when we had time for a quick look off the wall at the Rio Bueno site (the wall begins at 25 ft and drops off vertically to many 100s of feet, and it was quite spectacular). Viz has been mediocre at best, with maybe 50 ft on the best day, but mostly 30-40ft. Water temps are 78-79.

Coral cover at most of the sites is reasonable, but could not be described as "prolific". There are numbers of damaged and dying corals, and an increased algae presence in many areas. Very few branching corals, some soft corals, mostly sea fans, and relatively numerous stoney corals, such as brain coral, star coral and similar. On the Rio Bueno wall, there are some black coral. There is other benthic life -- sponges, worms, anemonae -- and a small fish population -- quite a few damselfish, a squirrel fish or two, some eels, an occasional crab or lobster, and quite a number of small schools of small juvenile fish. Once they grow up, though, they're liable to be fished. We also saw 4 spear fishermen at various times (on the surface, when we were returning from the dives). Mostly the problem with overfishing is with gill net fishing and trapping, with fine mesh that traps a lot of fish.

We saw one other commercial dive outfit, at the Rio Bueno wall. I suppose there must be other sites that dive tourists are taken, but our sites are mostly off the beaten track (i.e. not close to the resorts). Those tourists were probably from Sandals, the nearest resort, but they had a long bumpy ride to the site for a one tank dive!

The dive with the ambassador was interesting. She showed up with a big entourage, but because the seas were big (but really, not much bigger than any other day this week), we went to the closest site outside the reef crest barrier. One of the things the researcher and his assistant are doing is doing some trial fish surveys using video. They had put down a transect to use for the survey, when along came the ambassador's husband, who proceeded to try to pull on the transect rope and generally got in the way of the work. I'm not sure if it was the same person, but later on in my dive, while I and my buddy were measuring coral (which consists of him measuring, and me floating close to him to write down the measurements), someone came really close to us causing a bit of bumping and polite shoving before they moved away. Anyway, for the Lab itself, the ambassador's visit was quite successful -- she had a good dive, learned a thing or two during the Lab tour and hopefully will be a sponsor of the Lab's work.

So in the end, I'm not entirely sure what the volunteers' work here has really accomplished (we got data to substantiate prior research that used a much smaller sample), but it was fun, the diving was interesting, the group got along well, and my buddy and I made a good team.

-Simon