|
“I felt a charged sensation, half fear, half
awe. I began to make out the shapes of branching
corals. Ahead of me a sea fan spread its delicate
latticework from the looming wall of the reef.”
This is how William Cray in the Sunday Times
describes his first dive to help survey the coral
reef around Danjugan Island, one of the smallest of
the Philippines. He was there as a volunteer for
Coral Cay Conservation which is surveying the
corals and fish of the reef so that a Philippine
foundation and the local authorities and people can
plan how to manage the forest-covered island and
the sea around it.
“There is,” says Jonathan Ridley of Coral Cay,
“this fantastic small island with amazing reefs. It
was in danger of becoming a hotel resort. The
foundation bought it for £125,000, which we’ve
been involved in helping to raise. The family who
owned it needed the money.”
It is a desert island in a real sense. Fresh
water was running low when Gray was there. But he
and the other scuba-divers got the chance to see
the wondrous coral; and, in return, they gathered
information accurate enough to produce a useful map
at low cost.
Not much of the world’s reefs has been mapped
because mapping normally costs money and needs
scientists. Coral Cay has devised a system which,
after a week’s training by the scientist in charge,
enables postmen, school-leavers, teachers and
company directors, wielding underwater slates, to
produce detailed and consistent survey results.
Everything they need to know about sea plumes,
yellow pencil and zooxanthellae is set down in a
handbook 100 pages long.
So the Philippine Reef and Rainforest
Conservation Foundation and the local people will
be able to improve the fishing off Danjugan. Bulata
village on neighbouring Negros plans also a resort
to attract some tourists to dive on the reef, which
will augment fisher families’ incomes of only
£l a day. The village will also benefit from
radio communications installed by Coral Cay.
Besides the volunteers, who pay up to
£2,550 plus the air fare (to do a 12-week
stint), Coral Cay has been helping to teach Bulata
villagers about the reef and its value. It has
taught them how to do surveys and run scuba-diving
for tourists. Coral Cay wants the villagers to be
active partners in the Danjugan scheme because
without them it will fail.
They have given up the more damaging styles of
fishing. Cyanide (which enables fish to be caught
alive) and dynamite are commonly used in the
Philippines and the reefs there have been badly
damaged.
Coral Cay was founded in 1986 by a university
research scientist, Peter Raines, who took part in
university expeditions to the reef off Belize in
Central America.
Belize’s Coastal Zone Management Unit had only
two people for 300 miles of reef, and too little
money to educate Belizeans about it. So Peter
decided to have a shot at recruiting paying
volunteers who would both do the work and provide
the cash.
Jonathan Ridley got involved in 1989 when he
volunteered to do underwater photography. He says
he has been fascinated by the marine world since
boyhood when he watched Jacques Cousteau on
television.
Now, from their base in Clapham, they run 12
expeditions a year to Belize, besides those to the
Philippines. In 1998 they will be in Indonesia.
They have also done a marine tourism survey for an
outlying island in Vanuatu in the Pacific.
Coral Cay’s Belize work has led to the setting
up of marine reserves and a wildlife sanctuary.
Over £60,000 contributed by volunteers has
helped establish a marine research centre where
students from the University College of Belize, and
from the United States, will study.
A trust set up by Coral Cay provides
scholarships in Belize and the Philippines and has
produced material on coral reefs for British
primary schools.
Belize people also benefit as food suppliers and
boatmen. A Belizean, Henry Lanza, is Coral Cay’s
operations manager.
Coral Cay is estimated to spend £180,000 in
Belize every year. But the annual value of its work
there is put at six to eight million US dollars, if
people had to be paid to do it.
|