Help Rebuild the Gulf of Mexico Barrier Reef

Dear Supporter,

Very little is known about trends of coral bleaching on a global scale. Currently, coral health monitoring mainly occurs around a few reefs that are regularly visited by scientists. There are many questions that will have to be answered in order to try and save the reefs. This is why we at Pez Maya are working hard to get as many CoralWatch data from our reefs as possible. We send the data to the CoralWatch project where it is analyzed and made available on the project’s website. This will make it possible to compare the condition of many different reefs at any one point in time, as well as the condition of a single reef over time.

At Pez Maya, we train our volunteers to perform the CoralWatch by first teaching them about the biology and ecology of corals and the different species of coral that occur around our base. There are over 50 species of stony coral in 12 families found on our dive sites, of which the majority is used for CoralWatch dives. These corals come in many different shapes and sizes, from boulders to branches and from golf ball sized to the size of a small car.

Our divers go down in buddy pairs with the necessary equipment, consisting of the Coral Watch Chart, a dive torch, slate and pencil. When they find a candidate for the CoralWatch, they look for the darkest and the lightest part of the coral and find the corresponding colors in color brightness on the chart, as an indication of the amount of bleaching of the coral tissue. Finally, the divers write all their findings down on the slate. Volunteers collect data from 20 different corals they encounter during each CoralWatch dive.

During the first trimester of 2015, 21 CoralWatch dives were done. Almost all of these dives were done in March when the majority of our coral volunteers were trained to the level of CoralWatchers. In total, 420 corals were monitored in 14 hours of diving.

At Pez Maya, we are passionate about this project and believe efforts such as these are important for the understanding of coral reefs, not only the beautiful reef in front of our base, but reefs all over the world! It is one of the many ways we contribute to marine conservation on a daily basis in our Mexican GVI hub.

Thank you for your continued support on this project.

All the best

GVI Pez Maya

Links:

• www.gvi.org