7 tips what you can do on holiday to protect coral reefs:

• Bring your own drinking bottle, cutlery set, mug and reusable bag
  In many countries water from the tap is not drinkable. Drinking water is sold in plastic bottles. The smaller the bottle, the more you need to quench your thirst. Worldwide, about one million bottles are produced per minute, of which we do not yet recycle 10%. About 900,000 bottles per minute end up in the environment, on landfill sites or are burned. The same applies to all other single-use plastic. Prevention is better than curing. Nowadays there are fancy and strong bottles for sale.
• Support local communities
  By supporting them, the money that you spend in the local economy will remain, instead of going to the country with the headquarter of the multinational. Often it is also even nicer to stay in a family hotel, than in a resort of a large chain.
  Also check which local sustainability projects in the region and volunteer for a number of hours or days. Always educational and a fun way to meet new people.
• Eat local dishes
  My rule is: “The larger the franchise chain is, the less tasty the food.” Simply because the big companies want to keep the taste the same everywhere, the food is processed and imported from different countries. Hamburger, fries and spaghetti must be supplied from far away. They also contribute to a higher CO2 emissions.
  Local dishes, on the other hand, are freshly prepared and you can taste that. You also support the local farmers. From my own experience I can tell that it is much more exciting to try new dishes. Not to mention the enthusiastic owners of the small restaurants who are often very proud of receiving foreign guests.
  Are you vegan or vegetarian, then there are useful apps that lead you to local vegetarian restaurants.
• Follow local guidelines when snorkeling or diving
  When you go by boat you use a buoy to moor up, instead of throwing the anchor. This prevents anchor damage. Here are a number of guidelines that apply everywhere.
  
• Buy and use sun cream that does not contain Oxybenzone or Octinoxate.
  These substances are harmful to coral reefs. It seems like a minor adjustment, but if hundreds of people visit a coral reef every day, a large amount of sun cream will come into the water with all its consequences. It is estimated that every year 14,000 tons of sun cream touches the coral reefs. 1 drop of Oxybenzone in 6.5 Olympic pools is already harmful for coral reefs.
• Do not feed fish.
  Fish provide a natural balance between coral and algae. They generally eat algae of the corals. When fish are fed, they are no longer hungry and do not eat algae. The algae will then get the upper hand and grow over the coral.
• Do not go fishing or spear fishing. Or rather, eat as little fish as possible.
  There is overfishing, we are emptying our ocean. For example, go diving in Crete and see with your own eyes how little fish live there. It is an amazing contradiction because tourism makes more money than fishing. The revenue from tourism is around 1.9 trillion US dollars annually worldwide and fisheries around 27 billion US dollars. A living shark is worth much more for the local economy than a shark fin in your soup.

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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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