Sara and James, DMTs

February 19, 2018
Sara and James, our Dive Masters in training (DMTs) are now halfway through their stay and well in to the courses.  They are currently completing the mapping exercise and have recorded the house reef in detail. But this isn’t the first time they’ve documented the undersea world.  Just a couple months the were working at a marine research base on the island of Cagalai helping to accumulate baseline data on the condition of the reef.
Two years ago, large storms disturbed much of the reef around Cagalai.  The research  Sara and James assisted with looked at the density of fish, invertebrates, soft and hard corals and more.  The information gathered will help to map out the reef around Cagalai.  They will then present the data back to the villages on the island to allow them to decide where to have their marine protected areas (MPAs), or tabu areas where no fishing will be allowed to let the reef recover.  Sara said that their were patches of reef that were still really good and she could see where the reef was bouncing back.  She is hoping to return to Cagalai after her DMT course at Paradise to continue the research.  She says she was doing about two dives a day, five days a week for three months and did around 100 dives while there.  So you can understand why she would want to go back.
James worked underwater on the research team but also spent a lot of time in the local schools teaching about marine ecology and rubbish.  He started with grades 1-4, mostly 6-7 year olds, which was a bit difficult due to the language barrier as they were just then learning English.  But, he said he had more success with grades 5-8, those aged 10-11, who seemed to get it.  The main focus of his teaching was understanding what was living, what was part of the natural environment, and what wasn’t – basically, why we want to keep the rubbish out of the ocean.  Community meetings were also occurring within the villages and the whole effort was leading to the opening of a recycling center with songs and entertainment provided by the school kids to celebrate.
In addition, there were beach clean-ups, underwater clean-ups that collected a lot of fishing line. Sara says her favorite were the opistobranch surveys to look for nudibranchs.  Often, she would find a whole family of nudibranchs together and find 6-8 different types on one survey.  Both are great divers and are sure to become Dive Masters with ease.  Paradise is pleased to host two divers who have done some great work for Fiji.

First Descent at Vuna Village dive site

With Cyclone Pam around Vanuatu kicking up a fuss, giving us wind and rain from the north, we decided to look for some new shore dives on the south side of the island.  Vuna village has always welcomed us to come visit so we decided to ask the chief if we could dive Vuna reef from their backyard.  We were given the okay and shown to a small rocky cove.  With no idea what they would find dive instructor Antoni led three of our more experienced guests, Matt, Laura and Sally, over the rock and coral bottom at high tide and out to the ledge.  Schools had been canceled because of the weather and a large group of children looked down from the rocky outcrop.  It was the first time they’d seen scuba divers in their village.  Some had taken tentative sips of air from our regulators to see how the scuba gear worked.  The men of the village regularly collect shellfish and go spearfishing here, free diving to great depths including the young high chief himself who commands just over half the island’s landmass.  But as yet the intrepid four would be the first scuba divers to explore the site at length.

I stood on the beach tracking their bubbles through my binoculars, occasionally letting the kids have a look, phone ready in case any problems should occur.  The kids lost interest and wandered off and it was just me and a couple others sitting there when the divers resurfaced 50 minutes after their descent.  They swam through the small surf back to the beach and we got their gear off.  “Amazing,” they said.  “Lots of ghost coral everywhere, some really big ones, bigger than we’ve seen anywhere else.  The hard corals were probably the best on Vuna reef with plenty of large plates and branching staghorn.”  The dive site in the protected southern bay is sheltered from the storm surges that would have hammered much of the reef during previous cyclones.  Then, after the second dive, they came back reporting seeing several eagle rays, one especially large and old.  It was a good dive site, maybe even great.  The villagers said in June and July the surf would be pumping and a hundred kids on school holidays would be surfing on any piece of plywood they could find, vying for the few surfboards available.  But for now we had found a great site to get us through the cyclone season until the surf arrived.  And we had claimed a moment in history: the first descent at the reef off Vuna village.  Special thanks must be given to the chief for giving us the opportunity.  We promise to take good care of the site.