New Job Description: Coral Gardener

Last Monday through Wednesday I spent in Punta Cana volunteering at the Ecological Foundation. It was a blast and I helped Victor, who was the Peace Corp volunteer in La Caleta when they were building the lobster houses. His job now is to take care of the coral nursery that is growing two species of coral that almost disappeared in the 1990s due to white band disease. He also travels throughout the DR to find populations of the coral to increase the genetic diversity of the coral growing in the nursery and to maybe start building more nurseries across the country. The purpose of my trip was to help with the coral project and to talk to the fishermen in Punta Cana because they have a few lobster houses that were built with the help of Colleen, a former Peace Corp volunteer who was the first to build lobster houses in the DR.

To get to Punta Cana, I left Miches on the 5:40 guagua through Sabana de Nisibon to Otra Banda, a town outside of Higuey. This trip took three hours because the roads were so bad. Then, I took a guagua from Otra Banda to Punta Cana, which took another hour. I got to Punta Cana around 9:30. Victor briefly told me about the project, showed me some pictures, and told me what we were going to do. Our first dive was at 11:30 and we went out with a group that was going snorkeling.

Once we got down there, I was put to work taking off all of the algae that was growing on the coral because it kills it. This is a lovely photo of me. I look like I'm thinking what the hell are you doing taking my picture?

The species of coral that I worked on was Acropora cervicornis. There were a lot of animals living on the coral, such as crabs like this one that had decorated itself to look exactly like algae!

There were also coral predators attracted to the algae as well. This is a photo of a fireworm. They swallow the coral and it turns white. You can see the damaged coral that is gray and covered in algae. Other predators that were there are damselfish, which attack you when you get close to their coral patch, butterfly fish, and parrot fish. The presence of these predators is a good sign though because that means that there is enough coral for them to survive.

Besides cleaning the corals of algae, I also had the chance to transplant some corals into the reef and onto a new frame because one of them was old and overgrown. Also, most of the coral was dying due to too much predation. All you had to do was cut off a piece of coral that was large enough, find a hole in the coral in the surrounding habitat, and stick it in. The coral was surprisingly resilient. Supposedly some people are allergic to coral because it is a cnidarian afterall and has stinging cells. The skin that gets exposed to the coral starts to peel. I handled a lot of coral though, and I didn´t have that problem. The coral was also tied to a new frame with zip ties, giving it more space to grow so that pieces could then be harvested from those pieces.

I highly recommend taking up coral gardening if you have the underwater space. Corals are really beautiful and attract so many fascinating organisms!