[ad_1]
Drinking for Conservation
by Elizabeth Fitt – July 5, 2018
Volunteers use beer bottles to bring Malaysia's coral reefs back to life
Well it was a dive terrible. Nothing to do except sunshine dancing on acres and acres of dead coral rubble. The highlight was a lonely Anemone with a couple of isolated clown fish that looked like the aquatic equivalent of Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday, so distant were they other signs of fish dwelling. And this in the Coral Triangle, home to the largest marine biodiversity on the planet. Later in the evening, while relaxing at the end of an old wooden pier, Joachim Naulaerts, a slim and tanned 28-year-old scientist at the Tropical Research and Conservation Center (TRACC), puts things in context. . Swinging his legs over the turquoise water, sipping a cold beer as the sun gently descends into a cloud of golden clouds, he talks about fishing with explosive or l? use explosives to kill a large number of fish at a time. the devastation that he caused. He explains that the dive took place today in an area untouched by conservation efforts, a section of reefs that has remained the same since the TRACC project on Pom Pom Island has started six years ago.
photo of Elizabeth Fitt Pom Pom Island volunteers work to rehabilitate coral reefs heavily damaged by dynamite fishing by creating what they call a "bottle reef".
The reefs around this remote region – which lies along the border between Malaysian Borneo and the Philippines – have been devastated by dynamite fishing in previous decades. And the damage is still going on. Naulaerts is here on the island of Pom Pom to help restore them, starting with their House Reef, located immediately in front of the TRACC camp. He has been Scientific Director for 13 months, living in tents and working with his colleagues, volunteers and scientific trainees to improve marine habitat and raise awareness of the anthropomorphic issues facing the marine ecosystem. He speaks pbadionately about the importance of a healthy marine ecosystem for humans and the vitality of coral for this system.
"Reefs in general are one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet," he says. "They provide food, ecotourism and a lot of natural resources – a lot of medicines come from the oceans, they also protect our shores from erosion and they are a nursery for most of our pelagic fish depends most of the commercial fishing industry.No reefs, no fish, no food! They are also a carbon sink and a nitrogen sink, so in terms of global warming they play a specific vital role. "
He tells me that volunteers are working here to rehabilitate the heavily damaged coral reefs by dynamite fishing with something they call the Bottle Reef. The people at TRACC have created these artificial reef units in response to a need for a cheap, easy to build and install design, using only locally available materials.
photo by Elizabeth Fitt Part of the bottom of the sea that has not yet been rehabilitated by TRAAC remains a wreckage field destroyed by bomb fishing.
Bottle reefs are simple but they work. They have two ingredients: concrete and glbad bottles. Concrete is a good substrate for corals. Corals create their own hard skeleton structure because the individual polyps that make up a colony secrete calcium carbonate to form the basal plates in which they sit. Calcium bicarbonate in concrete is a similar substance and therefore something that corals will bind happily, provided that the concrete has been properly cured for 30 days in the moist environment of Pom Pom so that the pH reaches a tolerable level.
Sonny Culkin is the new Scientific Director of TRACC. It advances the concept of Bottle Reefs, incorporating new revelations in coral research to develop a type of reef unit that he calls ARC Reef (Artificially Rehabilitating the Crest). The goal of the ARC is to reduce coral growth time to 25 years over 25 years while stabilizing the slope of the reef to prevent dead coral debris from slipping and extinguishing live corals .
Culkin explains the evolution of the Bottle Reef from its initial experimental form to the ARC Reef. "We still use glbad bottles in our ARC reefs – their function now is to make ARC Reef structures lighter by reducing the amount of concrete needed for each one. We also use the idea of having ARC reefs intertwined, with the growth of corals forming the "glue" between them. We've been experimenting it a little further down our House Reef slope and we want to bring the concept up to the reef crest, "he says, referring to the highest part of the reef, which supports the most waves. and protects coastal lands from storms. "The ridge of the reef is what keeps the shape and size of the island.For that, we saw sand and rubble collapse on the slope at an unprecedented rate, causing the mbadive smothering of everything that grew on its way. "
Later in the day, Lykke's" I Follow You, Deep Sea Baby "chilling 16:30 air as a group of volunteers, came from Belgium in Brazil and many other places, mixing concrete for a batch of old – fashioned bottle reefs, which were still in production until the new ARC Reef Liberation structures. Part of Portland cement, three parts of sand, part of aggregate, part of micro silica; plus six sweat and four laughs. Molly, 29, from Scotland and Anna, 50, from America, sit nearby, soak glbad bottles and scrub the labels. Ana, Harvey and Farhana – from Brazil, China and Malaysia, respectively – cover the cleaned bottles with a thin layer of cement – which reduces the reflection and softness, which are not appreciated by the corals, they explain. .
picture of Elizabeth Fitt Volunteers cover whiskey bottles in concrete to reduce reflection and create a rough surface to which corals can bind .
for coralline algae and possibly coral polyps to attach. More volunteers take turns to ensure that the concrete mix is fully integrated before pouring into simple wooden molds. Everyone pushes the bottles in wet concrete bases, six to one unit. Then they all retire to the pier for a well-deserved sunset beer, or in some cases a cup of tea. They joke about the fact that they "drink for conservation" because they explain that the bottles containing beer and whiskey that they consume are the bottles that they use to make bottle reefs . "If we do not drink at least a little, we will run out of bottles," rejoices Borja Gonzalez, a volunteer from Spain. Everyone hopes that at some point, a beverage company with a heart and an active corporate social responsibility program will come to save their livers by donating empty bottles. "This has not happened yet – we tried to get help from San Miguel [Brewery] but they told us that they were recycling all their empty bottles themselves, that we know they do not do because we have a lot of them on the reef house, they did not want to give us a lot, which we were rather sad about – we love San Miguel, "he laughs.
Up to now, TRACC has installed 850 units of reef bottles incorporating over 6400 bottles on their own reef., And more at other test sites around the world. Pom Pom Island and they thrive A survey of invertebrates and fish conducted by Allia Rosedy, MSc student, 27 years old, in 2017, found 245 species of fish and 167 species of invertebrates in a reef area which, like the desolate reef that I've plunged with Naulaerts, was barren coral rubble area in 2011 lo the project has begun, and the bottle reefs are progressively embedding hard corals, soft corals and sponges. Most of them have been planted by volunteer coral gardeners, but there are also signs of self-seeding where the coral polyps in the water column have chosen to settle on them. bottle reefs and naturally become a colony. And perhaps most tellingly, the TRACC House Reef now houses corals and bamboo sharks, proving that it is healthy enough to support apex predators.
People who have come here from all over the world to volunteer clearly have a difference at this corner of the ocean and TRACC hopes to deploy its methods to benefit other areas and communities in the future . It's inspiring and full of hope, with a sense of purpose that is contagious.
Editor's note: Shark Stewards, a project of the Earth Island Institute, badociates with TRACC for his work on the island of Pom Pom. To learn more about the work of Shark's Guardians
Elizabeth Fitt
Elizabeth Fitt is a photojournalist specializing in environmental and sustainability issues and the human impact of conflict. She is currently working in Borneo, having spent the year 2017 in Iraq. She loves her poached eggs and crochets hats to relax.
Email this article to a friend.
Write to the publisher about this post.
Subscribing Today 
<img src = "http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/ winter2013 / images / cover80.png "width =" 80 "height =" 104 "alt =" 19659031] Four issues of the award winning
Earth Island Journal for only $ 10
<! – new script 100115 content Relative in ElistComments disabled 091316
<! – Associated content
->
View the posts by date View posts by this author
[ad_2]
Source link
