10/05/12 Surveying the Reef
The past couple
of weeks have bought around wet weather, a farewell to a few and a welcoming to
a new set of volunteers. Our schedules have now changed to focus on our duties,
diving and surveys and Team Leadership presentations. The time that you have
off in-between is what you make of it. We have now finished and passed our
coral identification workshop exams and on the spot identifications, and have
moved onto the next section of training – the part that I have been most eager
to begin. A lecture and an on-land example of Line Intersect Transect (LIT) and
Belt transect methodologies was given, followed by another exam. The focus of
the upcoming weeks study will be to memorize the abbreviations, which has
already proved to be helpful during methodology dives. The methodology was easy
to understand as the lecture was straight forward and gave an insight as to how
and why things are done. The method used is globally recognised and
standardised, emphasising the regional and global significance of this
project.
The first LIT
methodology practice dive disheartened me slightly as the site was very surgy
and I was not used to spending an entire 45 minutes upside-down, and completing
the task was more difficult than expected. I did find, however, that I was
starting to identify the corals without thinking and so this encouraged me, and
by the next LIT methodology dive I was ready to try harder. It has definitely
become much easier after a few practices and after some discussion with the
other volunteers it appears everyone has developed their own tricks and methods
which help them hover upside-down and made the survey easier to complete. The
encouragement and support of the staff and other volunteers has been a huge
factor in making the practice surveys easier to complete and I am excited to
begin the real surveys!
0 comments:
Post a Comment