After telling others about the storm and the damage done to the reef, we managed to get a large group of concerned divers to come out to the reef to perform another full survey of the reef to see how much damage was done.
With some of us staying behind for a few more days to complete the job, we set out with ambitious goals: firstly to repair the damage done to the perimeter line; secondly, to take high-resolution photos of every inch of the reef, hoping to compile a photo composite; thirdly, to start on a wildlife catalogue to document what species call the Salang Menagerie home.
Here’s a blow by blow account from Juanhui about what we did on the site that weekend:
- 27th July, Dive #1: fixing the 3m line & water quality testing
Elsie laid the transect tape, Pam positioned the poles, Tim did the hammering, Lu Yin placed the cable ties at every metre (double cable ties at every 5 metres), Teresa trimmed off the cable ties and added the new line (along with Juanhui).
Water quality data was done by Elsie, Pam, and Gemma. Lu Yin and Teresa started taking photos of wildlife - 28th July, Dive #1: placing the 9m line, fixing 100m vertical line
Elsie laid the transect tape, Pam laid the line and positioned the poles, Tim did the hammering, Lu Yin placed the cable ties at every metre (double cable ties at every 5 metres), Teresa trimmed off the cable ties.
For the 100m line, Juanhui tied new line to broken existing line, Lu Yin and Teresa helped to secure the ends with cable ties - 28th July, Dive #2: Redoing 50m-100m portion of 3m line
Leon marked out position of 100m line, Tim and Jun laid out transect tape and new line before adding the poles to secure. Located crushed video stake #5, and hammered in replacement near a surviving coral colony. - 29 July, Dive #1: Started shooting photos for wildlife catalog
Jun focused on corals whilst Tim tried to take inverts & fish. - 29 July, Dive #2: More photos for wildlife catalog
Tim and Leon did more hammering of poles to secure lines and added a 6th video stake. Jun focused on taking photos of corals, Colin focused on inverts.
With over 13 hours of diving in 4 dives, Leon, Gemma and Colin managed to finish taking the photos of the entire reef. It was an arduous task for sure, resulting in close to 6000 photos to go through and process. Here’s a sample of a manual stitch done for the 000-001 line.
Hopefully when the photo composite is done, we’ll able to compare it to what we surveyed before, getting a true picture of how much coral was destroyed in the storm. It’s a pity that we didn’t have any data on the wildlife before the storm, else we could have learnt about the impact on the animals as well.
Despite all the devastation, the wildlife there seems to have bounced back somewhat, they must have found somewhere to hide during all the carnage. Here’s a video of Grouchy swimming along, like nothing happened.
Most amazing though, was this cuttlefish, who managed to ignore Tim’s advances, and still deposit some eggs into the coral. Here’s hoping there will be more little cuttlefish in the near future!
And here’s all the 6 video stake locations we’ve settled on:
Aww, this reminds me that there are more photos in my dropbox waiting to be stitched