00:00At least once a month, these volunteers go on a mission to conserve corals in Goa.
00:09After loading the boat with diving gear, they are off to the sea.
00:14Welcome to coastal impact dive.
00:18So it's going to take us about 45 minutes to get to where we are going.
00:22There are some islands in Goa called Grand Island and St. George Island, that's where
00:25we are going.
00:26It's slightly to the south west from here.
00:34The first stop is to find the location of coral beds that he and his team previously
00:39transplanted.
00:41Venkatesh Chadu left his Kashi banking job in Hong Kong to run a scuba diving centre
00:48and then he founded Coastal Impact, an NGO that is helping increase the coral cover
00:54in Goa's waters.
00:56Almost 60-70% of our oxygen comes from the oceans.
01:01Healthy oceans generate oxygen and that's what comes up and that's what we are surviving
01:06on.
01:07So every, each and every human being on this planet directly is surviving because of the
01:15coral reefs.
01:16Because coral reefs, even though they represent only 0.01% of the entire ocean bottom, they
01:25support almost 25% of all organisms which live in the ocean.
01:30So they are a very, very important ecosystem.
01:34Coral reefs also protect us from giant waves, they act as a breakwater basically underwater.
01:39When they are running parallel to shore, they break down the waves and they minimise the
01:45impact on land, therefore they also stop erosion.
01:52As Venkatesh has now identified and marked the location, it is time for others in the
01:57team to dive.
01:59Alright guys, basically today we are going to do the fifth data point and maintenance
02:07of the coral nursery.
02:09Jeremy Josh is a marine biologist and volunteers with Coastal Impact.
02:14So the species we study here, the species is called Turbinaria mesenterpina and it grows
02:20in these form like flowery plates and they form a lot of ridges and cracks and crevices
02:28for young fish to live in.
02:31And additionally, this species is highly resilient to low light levels, high turbidity and high
02:37nutrient levels, especially the species found in Goa.
02:40So we hope to study that species more and it can be looked at as a possible target species
02:45for restoring reefs in other locations.
02:49The team takes on different roles and maintains international underwater protocols.
02:58Coastal Impact uses the innovative method of coral transplantation, a relatively new
03:04technique.
03:05So we picked up fragments which were already broken, either because of waves or boats carelessly
03:11dropping anchors because they don't know what is down there.
03:14So the pieces were broken but they were still alive.
03:17So we take one of these kit bags down with us, we put those pieces in it, we tie it to
03:24the boat with it still in the water so we don't bring the coral out.
03:28And then we go down, we cut it into small pieces, put it on the tiles so the tiles are
03:32prepared first on the table and then we put the fragments down.
03:37And then you have to come up, mix the epoxy, which is a blend of two different compounds.
03:44So we mix it and within 15 minutes you have to go down and fix it, otherwise it hardens.
03:50So that's how the whole process takes place.
03:53The micro-fragmentation process helps the transplanted corals to grow and for their
03:58behaviour to be studied.
04:00These kind of species grow faster when they are smaller.
04:03That's the whole idea of us trying to see how fast these small corals can grow.
04:08And that data, we can sort of use that to project maybe when this species would grow
04:15somewhere else or how the reef would come back from an event like bleaching, for example,
04:22a mass bleaching.
04:23If you have recruits the next year, how many years would it take for the reef to come back
04:27to the previous situation it was in?
04:30Despite the temperature being really high, 31-32 degrees that the water gets is quite
04:35high for corals to survive.
04:37Despite all that, corals here are quite resilient and we have seen bleached corals recover the
04:43next season.
04:44Volunteers form the backbone of this effort as awareness and resources are still very low.
04:49Sharvani Pinge and Vignesh Shanbhag are spouses who have been volunteering with Coastal Impact
04:54for a few years.
04:55We have some of these tools, like we use just brushes or even toothbrushes or whatever is
05:01available with us to kind of scrape off the algae, the mold and everything that has accumulated
05:07and make sure the corals are clean.
05:09We measure the corals in periodic intervals so we can estimate and we can understand how
05:14the corals are growing over a period of time.
05:16So we use the scales or sometimes even a one-year calipers.
05:21Does the volunteer work help their relationship?
05:23Yes, it does.
05:24We get to spend time doing the things that we love.
05:27It's like a cause that is close to our heart that we are following, that we are doing something
05:32about so it makes us feel good about ourselves.
05:35We get to spend time, we are physically active, we are also contributing some to the environment
05:40so it's a win-win all around.
05:44Diving is cost intensive and Venkatesh Charlu has been trying out new ways to raise money
05:49for his efforts.
05:50So I figured why don't we just put the corals up for adoption.
05:54It's a novel thing, it's a brilliant gift for anything like anniversaries, birthdays, whatever.
06:01So we decided to put that up and what we do is we generate paperwork which gives them
06:07a tax break also from the amount that they are spending on that.
06:11This is still largely a labour of love that Venkatesh Charlu and his team of volunteers
06:16aim to expand as only a handful of organisations are involved in similar efforts.
06:24We need to fight for them because they are the voiceless victims of what we are doing
06:30on land and by and large nobody gets to see that because it's all out of sight, out of mind underwater.
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