17/10/10 Home Sweet Home

Our second week on Curieuse has flown by and the base is starting to feel like home. The allure of coconuts has faded and we are immersed in coral studies and other activities. Monday was our 350.org activity and so in the morning all of the volunteers and staff, even the battered and bruised, did a beach cleanup to help make the beaches safer for the turtles to come and nest on. Then in order to further reduce our Carbon footprint, in the afternoon we went on two coral identification training dives instead of four.

Throughout the week we studied, studied and studied in order to distinguish between 49 different species of hard coral for our first Coral Exam. No easy task! The corals all have latin names like Stylocoeniella, Astrocoeniidae and Coeloseris, Agariciidae, which are impossible to spell, pronounce and remember. With a passing grade of 95%, there is no room for error and although we all did extremely well the first time round, most of us had to write the exam a second time.

This week we also started training to become certified Emergency First Responders. “Hello my name is …I am an emergency responder may I help you?” We covered theory and next week when Emily from Cap Ternay comes in we will go over different emergency scenarios and put theory into practice. This week has been amazingly fun and we’re all looking forward to the many activities in the weeks to come.

17/10/10 Home Sweet Home