The first few days of training at NusaPenida with the Coral Triangle Centre have been a great success so far with participants practicing procedures for setting up transects, recording fish by genus and size and corals by genus and health and any diseases found to be present. It was fun, although slightly strange, to be estimating the length of plastic cut out fish on the reef - but all in the name of science!! The real surveys are due to start tomorrow and for two days, 4 teams spread across two boats will be out diving and recording their findings alongside Andreas Muljadi from CTC and leading scientist Joanne Wilson from The Nature Conservancy. It's been fun so far and a great honour to be part of this project and I hope that the data we collect is going to help progress the Marine Protected Area and everything that lives within and around it. I'll be blogging again once we get the surveys finished so watch this space!