Another year, another Coralpalooza!

June 8th was World Oceans Day, so on June 9th, 2018 Coral Restoration Foundation Bonaire hosted another Coralpalooza! CRF also hosted Coralpalooza in Key Largo and other places in the Caribbean!

View from Buddy Dive (photo credits to me)

Last year I volunteered along with a few other Junior Rangers at Harbor Village. This year, since I am home for the summer, I was able to do it again! While most of the Junior Rangers were at Harbor Village, I was placed at Buddy Dive for the day.

The Buddy Dive morning group (photo credits to CRFB)

 

The morning

Practicing on a dead elkhorn coral (photo credits to me)

In the morning we listen to a presentation by CRFB about the foundation and what we would be doing that day. Coralpalooza is an awesome event because non-certified coral restoration divers can get a taste of the work. We were split up into 5 groups, each led by a different Coral Lover Leader (I just came up with this, so let’s call them CLLs). Once we got into our groups, our CLL used dead pieces of elkhorn (Acropora palmata) and staghorn (Acropora cervicornis) coral to demonstrate the proper tying and hanging techniques. We were then given the time to practice ourselves. After that we hopped in the water and went to the southernmost nursery at the Buddy Dive home reef!

Augusto of Buddy Dive giving the morning presentation (photo credits to CRFB)

Technique
The southernmost nursery has 6 trees. We were a group of 5 volunteers and one CLL. Each of us worked on cleaning one tree while the CLL worked on the sixth tree. Each tree has pieces (or fragments) of corals hanging on the “branches”. These fragments are attached by wrapping a piece of monofilament around it and hanging it on the tree. The tree itself is attached to the seafloor and has buoys attached to the top to keep the tree buoyant. This allows the tree to be able to sway with waves and not damage the fragments.
As volunteers, we used a little sponge to clean the monofilament. It was really important to clean the monofilament in an upwards motion to move the algae away from the fragments. We used iron bristled brushes to clean the branches of the tree as well as the trunk. Because I was more experienced, I was given the task to clean fire coral off of the tree as well as the regular algae.
One by one the CLL asked each of us to come and hang a fragment on the 6th tree. We even got to transplant a large fragment (almost a foot long) onto the bamboo structure on the reefs! It was a really fun and informative dive!

Cleaning a tree the previous weekend along with fellow Junior Ranger, Elohim (photo credits to Tracy)

An example of a nursery tree – covered in algae and fire coral (photo credit to CRFB)

The Afternoon
After the morning dive, we all went our separate ways to have lunch and relax before the afternoon BOAT dive. I had my packed lunch and a good book. After logging the morning dive (dive #103), I had a lovely nap. Before I knew it, it was time to get ready for the afternoon dive. There were more volunteers that came in for the afternoon dive, and we were all separated into 3 groups onto Buddy Dive’s 3 boats. Buddy Dive wasn’t the only dive shop participating in Coralpalooza! Harbor Village, WannaDive and GoooDive each had divers participating at their own nurseries.
The afternoon dive was at Klein Bonaire, the small uninhabited island right next to Bonaire. The Klein Bonaire nursery is between Joanne’s Sunchi and Rock Pile. There are about 50 trees there now if I’m not mistaken! We worked in groups of two and cleaned the trees. All the afternoon volunteers were working together at this nursery. Such a beautiful sight to see all these volunteers together and working hard!

The volunteers on my boat (Photo credits to CRFB)

Group pic! You can kind of see my arm on the right side of the photo, haha. (Photo credit to CRFB)

On the way to Klein! (Photo credits to me)

Cleaning a tree at the Klein Bonaire nursery (Photo credit to Tracy)

The Evening
After all the daytime activities, CRFB hosted an evening get together to conclude Coralpalooza 2018. It was awesome to be able to mingle with the other volunteers, talking about the day and other interesting things! The funniest part was how people pounced on the waiters when they showed up with the plates of pizza. It seemed like people emerged from out of nowhere to fight for a slice of pizza. Three pizzas were devoured before the waiter/waitress could even put them down on the tables!!

Dusk (Photo credit to me)

Thank you
A special thank you to CRFB, all the dive shops involved, STINAPA Bonaire Junior Rangers, STINAPA, Yago (my CRFB instructor from 2014), Bridget, Buddy Dive and their cooks (the pizzas and quesadillas were AMAZING), and of course, the 110+ volunteers that helped restore the reef one coral at a time! I hope that I will be home next summer to participate again!

xoxo from a coral lover

PS: Please consider donating to CRFB! Maybe this video will give you a better idea of what you would be funding.

Isn’t this frame AWESOME?! (Photo credit to CRFB)