The kids learned that coral reefs provide shelter and a food source for marine life, and then they played fishes who had to run away from a shark or quickly hide in the coral reef. They learned what a coral is and we all moved like the tentacles of the polyp to catch plankton.

Also they learned what an artificial reef needs. They worked together creating their own artificial reefs with home made play dough. They created the most beautiful shelters for fishes. They enjoyed the Eco Day very much. One of the kids even wanted the recipe of our home made play dough.

During the kids program the adults followed different presentations. Peter told the DMT’s (Dive Masters in Training) about pollution. What are the main sources of pollution, how does it end up in the ocean, what are the consequences and what can we do about it?

Leslie had an interesting presentation about turtles. Which different turtles are there, how to recognize them. At New Heaven they have a turtle head start program. They raise small turtles in a safe environment and after some time they release them into the ocean. By doing this, the turtle have a higher survival rate.

Did you know that you can recognize individual turtles by there lines on there face? Like you can distinguish individual whale sharks? There is a monitoring program for the turtles around Koh Tao. If you see a turtle, take a good picture of it, if possible from both sides. Check out Koh Tao Turtles for more lectures about turtles and submit your turtle pictures for ongoing monitoring.

Frank told a story about the importance of coral reefs, the necessity to take action and creating artificial reefs.

In the afternoon various teams went to clean the beaches, divers and snorkellers went out to clean the reefs and we took a team of divers to the CoralGarden to deploy an artificial reef statue under water. The deployment of the flower went smooth and enormously fast because of the great teamwork between the divers!

Thank you Get Involved Koh Tao and Roctopus Dive for organizing this EcoDay, Siam Scuba Dive Center for offering the boat to deploy the artificial reef. Thank you Tiago for the sophisticated recipe for play dough, and all the volunteers that helped this day.

Here is the video of the EcoDay made by Lee Jellyman. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to be the first to see our latest videos.

Pictures with logo are made by Michael S. South

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The local action group Get Involved Koh Tao every month organizes an EcoDay and is active to persuade bars to stop using plastic straws and plastic cups. On EcoDay many divers, freedivers and tourists from different diveschools come together to get a morning full of education with presentations and documentaries. In the afternoon the group is split up to do a beach clean-up, a reef clean-up and join building or assembling the new artificial reef under water.

We know the drill of building a flower underwater with divers, but freediving is quiet a bit different. Bringing parts of structures down with freedivers has been done before. And now is the next challenge, assembling the flower. A pair of two freedivers take a deep breath, go down and assemble a piece of the flower. When you “run out of air”, you go up and do your recovery breath. On the surface your buddy keeps an eye out for your safety. Then the next pair goes down and assembles the next leaf, etcetera. Sometimes it takes longer to put a piece in the flower, so when you can’t hold your breath any longer you have to leave it for the next team. It is great fun to work on the flower as a team. Great for the team spirit as well!

All the freedivers had to go down many times. When they came back on the boat, they were really exhausted. But I will never forget the smiles on their faces!

Thanks to Blue Immersion for their involvement creating a few flowers on our workplace and assembling the flower under water. Big thanks to Ocean Candy for the beautiful video!

Thank you for all (divers and freedivers) who participated in this amazing achievement! It was great to have one big boat full of dive enthusiasts sharing this experience with different dive methods. Wonderful to see we all share the same passion!

And of course thanks to our local partners on Koh Tao and the sponsors and donators from all over the world. Thank you to all who make this possible!

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see the video of planting the flower.

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On June 30, there was the monthly EcoDay on Koh Tao and CoralGardening took this opportunity to put two new statues down underwater, with the volunteers who made it. There were two groups for the two statues, one with scuba divers led by Charlotte and Emiel and one with freedivers led by Vera. Me myself had taken the job of supplying the materials from the boat to the divers. Fortunately, I could just take part in assembling under water, by filling the flower with the ballast and placing the top on one of the flowers. The assembling of a flower by the freedivers was a new experience for me and many of us. Also because it is the first time an artificial reef has been created, put down and assembled by freedivers.

During their presence on Koh Tao, Frank and Vera are experimenting with materials. In addition to the concrete mache developed by CoralGardening in 2015, we have also made flowers consisting of metal and sisal. In my opinion the concrete-mache flowers are more beautiful to see, but they are also harder to plant coral on, an important thing. With the ropes, it is easier to open the rope and place the coral between the fibers and then close the rope so that it holds the coral. They also experiment with a full metal flower. This new flower has the great advantage that these are much easier to connect to Bob’s Coral Aid.

After this successful placement, we organized a “CoralGardening only” construction morning. With the five of us (me, Frank, Vera, Emiel and Charlotte) we made various leafs, with Charlotte learning to weld. This was a very charming face. Later during my holiday we did this again, by that time Charlotte was already back in the Netherlands. I was able to discover my own welding qualities and was not dissatisfied with the result, and even the critical Vera could live with the final product.

Charlotte gets a lecture from Emiel.

I also learned to weld.

And yes, now you have flowers underwater so then you need some coral on it. One week after the placement we went to the CoralGarden by longtail, twice in one week with the CoralGardening crew. We collect broken pieces of coral from the sandy bottom, that are still alive and place it on the flowers. Half of the corals we put on the rope flower and the rest on the concrete flowers. It proved to be true that correct coral placement is a skill. It is important that the coral is firmly connected so that it can attach itself to the substrate, the flowers in this case.

Finally, the building of the flowers and planting coral on it, is great fun to do. But it must also be maintained and of course it has to be monitored if it is growing well. We returned with the longtail and we strengthened the foundations of one of the flowers and we cleaned the concrete mache leaf from the algae that growth on it. We also did a baseline measurement of the size of the coral and the degree of bleaching. Now I’m curious about the results in a half year. And oh yes, I have learned something new: diving slates FLOAT. When you are at eleven meters and you are focussed on measuring, and when you look up to see your notes floating to the surface. My reaction was not something recommended by dive instructors, but I could finish my notes at least.

Summarizing, it was a great and productive holiday and it gave me a good feeling about the project.

Arjan Blaauw

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