Saturday 7th March at Stuart Cove's Dive Bahamas I taught four more divers the PADI Coral Nursery & Restoration Specialty Course.  The course was created by The Nature Conservancy who teamed up with Stuart Cove's Dive Bahamas to help get volunteer divers involved. 

The morning was spent with a presentation about coral identification, biology, importance of coral reefs and what are the negative impacts causing the decline of coral reefs. I also cover the Coral Restoration project including site selection, what structures are used, why we grow Acropora Corals in the nursery and finally review what maintenance needs to be done on the dives.

After Lunch we headed to the famous James Bond Wrecks where we have two nurseries growing Staghorn Corals.  The students demonstrated good buoyancy skills before cleaning the tree structures and on the second dive wrote down any observations such as paling, bleaching, disease etc.  Congratulations to Michael Mindorff, Marianne Bernadotte, Shenica Campbell and Quin Van Hagen for earning your Coral Nursery & Restoration Diver Certification. Thanks also to already certified Coral Nursery Divers who joined for the dives to help clean...Denise Mizell, Andrew Marmion, Kristin Gilmore, Eddy & Mallory Raphael.

We have been growing the corals and doing maintenance on them such as  cleaning algae and removing predators for over a year now and the corals have been growing successfully and next month we are excited to start outplanting into the reef! The time has arrived to see if the corals will thrive on their own within the reef.  We will map the area and monitor the corals and report back on how they are doing.  

Acroporid corals are fast growing branching corals that form dense thickets contributing to reef growth and providing essential fish habitats.  Sadly two Acroporid coral, A.Palmata (Elkhorn) and A.Cervicornis (Staghorn) were designated as threatened under the U.S Endangered Species Act in May 2006. The decline of coral coverage in the Caribbean is largely due to the loss of Acropora which have declined by a shocking 80-90% since the 1970s. The Coral Nursery project is an attempt to help reverse this decline and restore the reefs in the Caribbean. 

If you want to become a Coral Nursery Restoration Diver and help maintain our Nurseries here at Stuart Cove's Dive Bahamas email me for more information . Hayley-Jo Carr MI#494086 .       [email protected]