This trip was by far the longest and most productive trip. We did so many exciting activities. One of the activity we did was making cement blocks for the artificial reef structure. The process of making the cement block goes like this, first, we have to put together the mold for the cement block. The mold is made out of pieces of metal that look just like the piece of a puzzle. Then, we gathered the sand and pebbles from the beach and put it the mixing machine. Next, we add some water into and the machine then, add the cement and add some more sand, and pebbles and mix it until the cement paste is ready. One it is ready, we poured it into the mold, we use the cement to fill half of the mold and put a PVC on each with chains circling the pipes. Next, we fill up the cement to the brim of the mold and smoothen the cement out and leave it out to dry. The concrete became somewhat hard, we used some nails to mark on them Below are some photo of the process of making the concrete blocks.
Another activity we did was making clusters. A cluster is a triangular-shaped structure made from bamboo with frayed ropes hanging on to it. In order to make clusters, we learned to tie different knots, splice ropes and trying the bamboo together. The clusters that are made are a replacement of the plastic marker buoys. The cluster will be used to mark the location of the artificial reefs that Marine Conservation Cambodia (MCC) will implement, while also provide a habit for the juvenile fish since the frayed ropes will attract algae to grow on them.
As always, beach cleanup is never excluded from any trip. During this trip, we did a lot of breach-clean and use the trash we had collected to make something beautiful. Now that LMRT has our own bunker, we decorated the steps with bottle caps along with many other creative projects we did with the trash we had collected.
During the trip before the trip before the previous trip we practiced doing transect surveys, and for this trip, we did our first three official transect surveys before we deployed our artificial reef. During the surveys, we saw some new species that need identification. We finally logged our first data! Then, on the day before we leave the island, had our reef deployed, the reef that LMRT will be surveying. The reef we deployed by MCC’s staff, while we watch them go through the whole process. Along with the reef we had a cluster floating on top of it.
This trip was an amazing experience for me. I can’t wait to go back to the island and check out how the cluster is going.