First Boat Dive on Klein Bonaire

Today, I became a certified coral restorationist. For the past two Sundays, I have been taking a dive class to learn the different techniques used for coral restoration. Last Sunday was on overview of what we will be learning and doing dry runs of the different techniques. We also completed one of the three dives required for the certification. So this Sunday, we completed the last two dives. The first dive was a boat dive out on the coral reef off of Klein Bonaire. We spent about 80 minutes underwater pruning coral fragments and hanging them on the tree structures.

The second dive was back on the coast of Bonaire where we were transplanting larger coral fragments from the tree structures to the rebar structures. However, the structures we were placing the corals onto were bamboo because the Coral Restoration Foundation is switching from rebar to minimize pollution. Bamboo is a natural material and is flexible so it is able to move with the waves reducing the amount of damage caused by wave action. This dive lasted about 70 minutes and was a little more difficult because we had to deal with the surge. The surge kept moving us around so we were unable to stay in one location and had to work harder to stay in the location we needed to be at. At times, I ended up using my legs to hold onto a dead piece of coral holding me in place, which worked really well.

Besides helping with the coral restoration efforts here on Bonaire, we got to see some cool marine life. Out on Klein we saw a sea turtle up close and personal, two southern stingrays, and a sand tilefish.