Coral Colaboration in action
Last week, Marine Conservation Costa Rica were invited to a meeting for designing a new protocol for the restoration of coral reefs in Costa Rica. This is an exciting move for us as throughout Costa Rica there is a push to help protect our reefs and being at the forefront of that with our project is a privilege.
The meeting was held at the Marine Park in Puntarenas. Here I met with the heads of SINAC, MINAE and other coral scientists in Costa Rica. What an honor, I got to meet some of the scientists in person. These are some incredible people whose work and scientific papers I have been pouring over.
Raising Coral gave an in depth outline of the protocol. They are an amazing organization based out of Golfo Dulce in the Southern Pacific of Costa Rica, and have been working in coral restoration for the last 3 years. Raising Coral have been really helpful with guidance to us, especially at the beginning of our project.
After their introduction we added other methods and techniques that were relevant to our areas of Manuel Antonio and the conditions that we face here.
For example, on the Central Pacific Coast we have a lot more water movement and are using a table structure to give the corals stability in the water. The tree planting methods would not work well here. this as good as it will be added to the protocol.
It was a long but exciting day. And as always, great to collaborate, share ideas and difficulties with other scientists. This is after all, what science is all about.
Written by Kat