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The first day that we set up the tanks to hold our corals while we stablized them for transplant onto the Reef Balls, everyone learned a quick lesson in playing in the sand and aquariums.
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Learning to make a sand mold was fun and easy.
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When shaped properly, it fits perfectly into a Reef Ball adapter plug hole and allows the coral to be embedded in quick setting concrete specially designed for the purpose.
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The team springs to action to make several hundred molds.
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The process continues and the volunteers get faster and faster.
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Finally, the volunteers learn how to stablize natural fragments in the plugs so that instead of dying in the sand after the hurricane, they can be saved to grow into heathy adult corals creating a natural reef system.
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Two tanks are set up, one for the unprocessed fragments and the other for the fragments ready for transplant.
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Water is supplied directly from the sea so no filtration system is required, just shade to make sure the coral's don't get a sunburn.
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Learning to mix concrete for the plugs takes some practice. It has to be just right without too much water. A special mix design makes it harden in 3 minutes....just enough time to plant a coral and get in back into the tank for full curing without stressing the coral. Of course, microsilica and the other trademarked Reef Ball admixtures are used even in the tiny plugs.
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The first collection trip, the volunteers gathered dying corals and learned how to spot the ones that would not survive naturally. They also learned that they could not allow the different corals to touch each other so that they did not have the opportunity to sting each other.
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Making your first successful plug is a very satisfying moment. These divers will never bump a coral by accident again!
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Rinsing the coral after the plug is fully hardened before placing the in finishing tank is critical to removing the slime which the coral generated to protect itself for the brief moments when it was set in the plug.
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Nina suggested arranging the corals roughly by species type to make counting them easier. Of course, Nina likes to scrub Reef Ball bases to a waxing shine.
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An acropora fragment (common elkhorn coral) was a prized find since the area used to be abundant with this species before the storm. The fast growing nature of the acropora family will bring quick micro habitats to the reef system.
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There are a variety of methods of setting the acropora into the plugs to make a more stable base. Pioneering work on Reef Balls was done with acropora and brain corals in Puerto Rico by scientists (Dr. Austin Kirby Bowden) in 1996.
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Here are several types of brain corals which were cultivated, not propogated.
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Finger corals, (Porites) are good complexity builders.
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Look closely at the extended polps...they were happy even with the short stay in the tank.
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Nina proudly shows off the team's work.
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Tourists at the resort kept stopping by seeing how the work was going, they loved what the group was doing.