Handout Freediving Instructor Course

Guillaume Chièze

Instructor: Richard Wonka

“Can Freediving play a role in the research and restoration of coral reefs, and is it the best method?”

August 2015

Guillaume Chièze Freediving Instructor Course 2015

Table of Contents Handout Freediving Instructor Course ------1 Guillaume Chièze ------1 Instructor: Richard Wonka ------1 “Can Freediving play a role in the research and restoration of coral reefs, and is it the best method?” ------1 Introduction ------3 I. Coral reefs, the environmental context ------4 Importance of coral reefs on our planet ------4 Threats facing coral reefs ------4 II. Coral reef restoration ------5 Concept ------5 Process ------5 Advantages ------6 Costs ------7 III. Why Freediving? ------8 Freediving and Monitoring: ------8 Natural reef: ------8 Artificial Reef: ------10 Freediving and settling a new reef ------11 Environmental assessment ------11 Sinking structures and filling them ------12 Grafting coral props ------12 Synthesis ------13 Conclusion ------14 References ------15

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Introduction

Part of the exam of the Freediving Instructor Course is to write on a subject we have expertise or a great interest in. Having worked in the coral reef restoration field and being a scuba diving instructor made me have no second thoughts about choosing my topic. I am in love with the ocean and I try to do everything I can to protect it. Because I did not arrive by myself where I am today, I will refer as “we” in this paper. I like to think that the credit also belongs to my numerous “teachers”. I received a business education thanks to my parents, and then chose to redirect my path into marine biology later. My many teachers, friends, coaches and of course my family brought me my knowledge and opened my eyes on the world. Thanks to Miguèl Vannieuwenhoven and to Richard Wonka, my passion for Freediving grew day after day. They taught me the techniques to achieve my goals, and at the same time taught me the patience and the philosophy of Freediving. Thanks to them and their efforts, I am today able to take this Instructor Course, and share a little bit of my knowledge with you. I chose a topic that is of crucial importance to me nowadays: The health of coral reefs. They are greatly endangered, and we have the power to stop this massive extinction. It made then sense to write about Freediving and coral reefs at the same time. I came up with this issue: “Can Freediving play a role in the research and restoration of coral reefs, and is it the best method?” The reason I chose question is that I truly believe that the use of Freediving could help corals, or at least reduce the damage we are causing.

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I. Coral reefs, the environmental context

Importance of coral reefs on our planet

Coral reefs are a treasured world with their amazing diversity of shapes and colors. Having a vital role in the marine food chain, they provide a daily alimentary resource to millions of people (1). They represent around 0,1% of the ocean’s surface, but host more than 25% of the world’s underwater species. Their biodiversity contains hidden potential still unexplored by science. Thus, they create a complex and diversified food chain around them, where all parts find what they are looking for:

• Tourists: Multiple species and colorful dive sites • Local fishermen: Around one billion of the human population rely on fish as their main protein source, mainly in developing countries: (2) • Bigger predators: The first links of the food chain are supported by coral reefs, creating a healthy food chain, with predators like barracudas or sharks patrolling the area • Worldwide fishing companies: They buy permits to countries, allowing them to fish resources and import them to their respective harbors.

All the while protecting coasts and human habitations by absorbing wave energy, coral reefs are an important source of monetary income thanks to tourism. Many islands would not exist without coral reefs and their power of limiting erosion.

Threats facing coral reefs

Coral reefs are sensitive animals working in symbiosis with all their surrounding elements. If this fragile equilibrium comes to an end, consequences would be catastrophic.

Coral reefs are highly endangered: One fifth of their area having been continually destroyed over the last forty years. The causes are simple to understand but difficult to counter for many concerned individuals and organizations. The over-exploitation of marine resources, the harmful effect of global warming, acidification of oceanic waters and the growing pollution have indeed negatively impacted the entire marine ecosystem (3).

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II. Coral reef restoration

Coral Reef Restoration in Koh Tao

Concept

Coral reefs are bustling cities under the sea. The buildings are made of corals, where fish settle down and prosper. Techniques differ from all around the world, but the results show that it is fully possible to bring life to a deserted seabed and restore a disturbed marine environment. Artificial reefs and coral transplantation projects have had much support from governments around the world. Likewise, they have been widely acknowledged by scientists as a valuable tool for increasing fish populations and nurturing coral reefs back to health. The aim is to mitigate the adverse impacts to coral reefs by human development.

Process

The installation is counted in weeks, but it depends on the size of the project. When a project is launched, the installation of underwater steel structures begins, on which corals are transplanted. Afterward, special rocks are created with natural elements, attracting the food chains' first links and placed into the structures. A chain reaction is launched until the coral nursery reaches its full sheltering capacity.

This kind of project needs full attention during the development stage. Indeed, corals need to be competition free (algae, plastic etc…). This means that during the first three months, artificial reefs must be monitored daily. After this period, the inspecting frequency can be reduced to weekly visits. After 3 years of development, observing visits become monthly or bi-monthly. According to Susan Clark, artificial reefs are very resistant to extreme conditions: “Initial monitoring [in Mexico], after one month, showed that mortality was low even after Hurricane Roxanne had impacted Cozumel just after the completion of transplantation” (pp. 180).

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Advantages

Because graphics speaks better than words, we inserted two different ones. The first graph shows the growth of the biomass over the years. We can notice that it is growing pretty constantly and that after one month only, the biomass will be around half of the one in three years.

Figure 1

The Second graph shows that after 6 months, the reef is fully colonized in number of species, from benthos (first link in the food chain) to predators. The individuals will grow until they become too big for the reef, leaving it instead of devouring all the other species.

Figure 2

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Costs

The cost of an artificial reef depends of its nature. If it is a nursery made by metal or concrete structures, then it will not cost the same as an ex- warship transformed in an underwater museum. The technique we chose to use for this paper is called “Transplantation using Acropora fragments in low to moderately exposed shallow reefs without the use of scuba”. The costs are around US$ 7000 per hectare. This way is cheaper compared to the one they use scuba: around US$ 58000.

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III. Why Freediving?

Freediving and Monitoring:

“One of the main goals of reef managers is to minimize further ecological losses and prevent loss of biodiversity. […] The major constraint in evaluating reef restoration is that, apart from a few exceptions, there has been inadequate provision for examining over time-scales from five to ten years” (Susan Clark, Coral reefs, pp. 191). In other words, with a proper examining method, there would be more motivation, studies, money and people helping towards reef restoration. The damages would have been also more scaled and anticipated. This is where Freediving becomes handy. A single person can perform around 10-20 dives in an hour. According to Freediving safety rules (5), Freedivers should rest: ”Not less than 5 minutes between deep dives and up to 8 minutes depending on water temperature. The purpose of this is to allow gas balances to return to normal: O2 and CO2 / Lactic Acid.” A deep dive is defined lower that forty meters or 85% of a personal best (depth). Because the average depth where corals are found is between one and thirty meters, no deep dives are technically required.

Natural reef:

Natural reefs tend to be very spread and shallow. Therefore, it is surely a bigger surface to cover but at the same time easy of access. Per example, let’s take a reef, around 500 square meters. The average depth is between 2 and 12 meters. How many dives or Freedivers does it take to complete the assessment? To make it simple, we will imagine that a diver can perform 20 dives in an hour. Each diver will be assigned in a group in function of their maximum performance recorded. Those dives will be safe because each diver will have minimum one buddy, and their maximum depth for the assessment will be half of their maximum performance. For instance, the first group, which dives the deepest (12 meters), is composed of 2 Freedivers. Their deepest performance, recorded any other day, was 30 meters. Therefore, diving to 15 meters will be for them a piece ok cake, thus safe. They will each accomplish 20 dives each, consequently 40 dives or 40 m2. They will then assess the deepest part of the reef, which is from 12 to 10 meters. On each dive, the participants will roughly evaluate the health of the colony, its depth, its circumference, the number of fish species living around and the biomass (kgs). They will perform this task by taking pictures and writing on slates. Buoys and lanyard will also be available (minimum one buoy per group and one lanyard per diver). The visibility is 15 meters.

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Amount Covered Number of Maximum Safe Number of of Area: 1 Freedivers performance depth dives/Freediver dives dive = /group 1m2 2 30 15 20 40 40 4 20 10 20 80 80 6 10 5 20 120 120 Total 12 - - 20 240 240 Assessing a natural reef With this example, we can therefore see that in one hour, half of the reef has been covered. This means that in two sessions, the reef would be examined and assessed. The goal of this table is to show how easy it is to monitor a reef with Freedivers. If the number of participants is reduced by half [6], it will take 4 sessions to assess the reef. On the other way, if the number of participants is doubled [24], one session will be enough. Earlier in the text, the author stipulated that the reason why the loss of biodiversity had not been clearly anticipated was because of a lack of observing on reefs. We just demonstrated that between one and four sessions were enough to assess it. Performing recurrent monitoring sessions over years could become really beneficial around the world. Already one per month would be a big step towards conservation and awareness. The ideal situation would be assessing the reef once a week. Freedivers could use this opportunity to clean and remove garbage entangled in corals. Trash can be shoved in the buoys easily.

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Artificial Reef:

On average, artificial reefs are much smaller than natural reefs. This is simply because nature took millions of year to create them, and that us humans have a limited time ahead of us. We can of course build artificial bigger than natural in a few years, but is it more effective? As of today, the biggest artificial reef humanly created is a sunken aircraft carrier, 50 meters high and 271 meters long, that to say 13,500 squares meters or 10 Olympic swimming pools! (6) There is a huge difference between an artificial reef, used to host marine life or to protect from surge, and an artificial reef used a coral nursery. Nursery reefs are hosting a lot more marine species but at the same time need a lot more care. Because they are costly and that there is not abundant studies about big scale nursery reefs, we will take as an example a 250 square meter reef (as big as a tennis court). Using the same principle than for the previous example, we will set the reef between 15 and 3 meters. Because we are choosing where to settle the reef, we can take into account the tides. The artificial reef is composed of 50 structures, looking like the pictures above. To make it simple, we will say that 10 structures are between 15 and 10 meters depth, 20 structures are between 10 and 7 meters deep and 20 are between 7 and 3 meters deep.

Numbers of Depth

structures (meters) 10 15 – 10 18 10 – 7 20 7 – 5 Total 48 - Structures setting Easier to inspect and to count the biomass, each group of divers can agree about how many structures they will evaluate. Coral cuts are wearing tags, so pictures for each of them need to be taken. We can then assume that each structure needs around 5 dives to be fully observed. One structure takes 5 square meters of space. In this example, the first group will cover 40 m2, which represents around 8 structures.

Number Number of Safe Actual Number of Covered of dives Freedivers depth depth dives/Freediver structures /group 2 15 15 - 10 20 40 8 4 10 10 - 5 20 80 16 6 5 5 - 3 20 120 24 Total 12 - - 20 240 48

Assessing an artificial reef

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With this example, we can see that one session is almost enough to cover the reef. We used the same number of Freedivers than in the previous example, but the reef was twice smaller. The structures dividing and at the same time condensing the areas to assess makes it simpler to evaluate. Why? Because most of the time the divers can see through the structures (they are not fully filled). This reef is an artificial one, which means that the first months or years, the monitoring sessions need to be weekly. With this kind of reef, it is certainly easy to assess because it is easy to remember where you stopped or began. If the weekly monitoring were to be divided in 3 sessions, it would still be effective. It would be easier because it would require fewer divers, less material, and at the same time more efficient for the cleaning (ie. Removing trash…). The idea here is to demonstrate that with the same amount of persons, assessing an artificial reef is faster and easier. It also allows you to see how much it is growing, instead on how fast it is degrading. In both examples assessment is not finished once you get out of the water. You still need to assemble the results and to analyze them.

Freediving seems to be an efficient way to observe a reef in many ways. This raises the next question: Is Freediving the best way to settle a new reef?

Freediving and settling a new reef

Environmental assessment

When it comes to installing any artificial reef, the first step is to assess the environment. There are multiple reasons not to skip this step. Of course you want to make sure that the reef would survive in this environment. Thus, the water should be clear enough for light to arrive to coral colonies. An easy way to measure this element is to look for a natural or artificial reef near by. If there is, the location is then suitable. If there is not, a shallow dive can be made on different days to make sure that the surface is visible. An even easier way to measure this parameter is to see the bottom of the ocean from the surface. Once this factor is confirmed, the next step is to know the pollution factor. In which season is there the most trash? Are there hotels nearby? If yes, where do they release their dirty water? Then measures need to be taken, at high tide and low tide, from the surface and from the bottom. The final step for assessing the environment is examining where the coral props can be found. Ideally, the corals should be grafted from a nursery or an aquarium. That way, no damage to the environment is made. Another way is to take damaged corals found on the ground, and graft them to the structure giving them a second life. After deduction, the best way to judge an environment and to make measures is Freediving without any doubt.

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Sinking structures and filling them

Once the environment is evaluated and that structures are built, they need to be transported on location (ideally from the beach), then sunken. A “green way” is to use kayaks and to install the structures on the bottom of the sea. Dumping them on the sandy bottom and then adjusting them at the right emplacement is a good technique, as long as there are no divers under. If the structures are made of concrete, Freediving cannot be used. Is it a weakness though? Not necessarily because concrete-like structures need a lot of attention and process before immerging. Those are the most expensive structures to produce and to put in the right spot. They require also the use of monstrous tools like excavators or cranes (7). To reinforce the colonization at all levels of the reef, it is necessary to fill the structures with rocks that can host the food chain’s first link. Because they are delicate and can be grafted with coral props, it is a good idea to grab them one by one and to drop them gently into the structure. Because there are so many depth changes (around 50 rocks per structure), Freediving is essential to this step.

Grafting coral props

This step is where the most delicate work is done. The trick is that you need to grab the coral piece to be able to graft it on the structure. Corals are sensitive creatures, and if you touch them with your fingers you kill the polyp. Grabbing them with the hand closed would then be like shooting yourself in the leg. This is why it would be better to have the corals in a box and grafting them one by one on the structure, without moving them too much. This is probably the only step where scuba-diving is more appropriate than Freediving. Though it is possible with Freediving, it is a lot less relaxed and precise work.

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Synthesis

In this part, we will synthetize what we found earlier. We deduced by writing this paper that Freediving was the most appropriate method for completing most of the tasks.

Tasks / Method Freediving Other (scuba diving…) Environmental Best method to get broad Making precise measurements assessment view of the ecosystem on the sandy bottom might be easier with scuba diving Sinking Appropriate technique If there is long in-water distances structures because structures are not to cover, maybe it is easier to heavy so it is easy to place use scuba diving them in the water Filling structures Without doubt the best way to - perform this task. Many changes of depth are required Grafting coral Not recommended Suggested method would be props scuba diving, as it is a precise, long and thorough task to accomplish Monitoring Easy, quick, almost free of Scuba diving: more precise but natural reef charges and efficient way to slower. Can cover less ground assess and clean the reef in the same amount of time Monitoring Easy, quick, almost free of Scuba diving: more precise but artificial reef charges and efficient way to slower. Can cover less ground in assess and clean the reef the same amount of time. Easier to remove competition for coral (i.e. with a toothbrush) RESULT On 6 tasks, 5 define 1, maybe 2 tasks on 6 should Freediving as the best be performed with scuba method to accomplish the diving. job

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Conclusion

We must protect this world. If mankind continues to develop rapidly without stopping, nor taking nature into consideration, there will not only be environmental degradation, but a complete extinction of coral reefs. Unfortunately, the clock cannot be turned back in the process of evolution; extinguished species will be lost forever. It is imperative that a solution to this problem is found. With the implementation of artificial reefs, the cleaning and monitoring both artificial & natural reef, we might be able to reverse the process of degradation, or at least to stop it. With the previous research, we concluded that Freediving was an efficient method to complete most of the tasks involved. What is particularly nice about this sport is the ease of scheduling, implementation and accomplishment. Indeed, little equipment or personel is required. As long as the sessions are regularly happening, the reef will only improve. We only need the motivation of involved people, or more simply allowing them to see that they have the power to make a change. Anybody could be helpful. Being a certified Freediver could only be a greater benefit, as you learn how to be safe and respect the environment in the class. Already taking a trash bag out of the sea is an accomplishment. It will thus neither suffocate corals nor turtles. As a conclusion, I would say that with little involvement from individuals and some support from governments, the situation could improve a lot more quickly. It is indeed a big asset for them, as it is helping to replenish the sea.

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References

(1) blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/06/13/losing-our-coral-reefs/

(2) www.msc.org/healthy-oceans/the-oceans-today/fish-as-food

(3) Porter, J.W.; Fitt, W.K.; Spero, H.J.; Rogers, C.S.; and White, M.W., “Bleaching in reef corals: Physiological and stable isotopic responses.” Proc. National Academy of Science, USA 1987, 86, pp. 9342-9346.

(4) www.coris.noaa.gov/about/what_are/

(5)dataintheclassroom.noaa.gov/Documents/Ocean%20Acidification%20Teacher%2 0Guide.pdf

(6) www.Freedivers.net/documents/Training%2020%20Safety%20Rules.pdf

(7) www.nytimes.com/2008/08/19/science/earth/19ship.html

(8) Handbook of Ecological Restoration: Restoration in practice, Volume 2, Oct 28, 2002 by Martin R. Perrow and Anthony J. Davy, pp. 184

(9) Handbook of Ecological Restoration: Restoration in practice, Volume 2, Oct 28, 2002 by Martin R. Perrow and Anthony J. Davy, SUSAN CLARK INTRODUCTION

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