I was really excited to come to this island in Fiji since it is famous for the Manta Ray channel, a spot where the species regularly congregates from May - September each year. But for my first 5 days here, the Mantas decided to take a hike, and they weren't around. I was beginning to worry that I'd completely missed the season! But yesterday, I woke up to the staff banging a drum going around the resort yelling "MANTA RAY! MANTA RAY!" at the top of their lungs. They seemed almost as excited as me! I hopped into my bikini faster than ever, and literally ran down to the boat. The staff were looking at me a little weird and were like, you don't actually have to run, you know, haha :P It took a while to find the ray, but once we did, it was amazing. For a few minutes, I swam right above it as it effortlessly glided through the turquoise blue depths, not even noticing I was there. Here is a video taken by my fellow volunteer a few days ago. Enjoy!
I've started working on a few of my volunteer projects this past week. One of the jobs is to remove the nasty Crown of Thorns Seastar from the reef. These creatures skulk around the coral, munching on it and devastate large tracts of reef in their path. I can't decide if they are ugly or beautiful, but either way, they are covered with long venomous spikes that would not feel good if they pricked you. We go diving and pry them off the reef with a hooked piece of rebar, and then collect them in a big nylon bag. My job is usually the bag carrier, since they can be tricky to spot, but that means that my partner is always pointing these spiky masses of venom at me underwater, and I have to manoeuver them into a bag with an opening roughly the same size as the creature without pricking myself or my partner. It is not easy!! But it is lots of fun.
Me with one Crown of Thorns
Our catch of the day
Alan digs them a grave behind the dive shop. RIP evil starfish.
One of the reasons the Crown of Thorns is such a problem, even though it is native to Fijian waters, is that all of its natural predators have been overfished. Another part of the project here is to reintroduce one of the overfished predators called the Giant Clam. They can reach up to a meter in size when fully grown and weigh over 300kg! So we have an underwater nursery here where we are growing some baby Giant Clams to basically replant them on the reef when they are big enough. Then they will filter feed and remove the Crown of Thorns larvae from the water naturally.
The clams in the nursery tend to get a bit sandy, and we keep track of their growth, so we dive down and clean them off with a toothbrush and measure them.
One of the older clams, this guy is about a foot long!
Cleaning off the little clams in the cages (yep that's me in the back!)
Marlies showing you how it's done with a toothbrush
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