Hello dear readers, and get ready to hear from our resident marine biologists, Ashlynn and Laura.
We have planned a wide marine project looking at the impact of tourism (read-snorkeling tours) on the beautiful coral reefs of Koh Pha Ngan, and other animals on the reefs. The central part of the project are the corals. Corallivores (ie. those among us who feast on coral), such as the sea snail Drupella, are Ashlynn’s expertise. Laura focuses on the rich and colourful variety of fish on the reefs.
On other reefs all over the world (such as the Red Sea in Egypt) and other islands in the Gulf of Thailand, tourism has been linked to many changes in coral reefs and the animals living there. Most of these impacts are negative. We are interested in seeing the possible impact of tourism on the reefs and our target animals, and are looking into COREsea’s (Center for Oceanic Research and Education - South East Asia) mountain of data they have already collected to investigate any long term trends.
We are slowly getting into actual data collection and we couldn’t be more excited! The data for this marine project is collected by our wonderful team of SCUBA divers. They have received much praise from local professionals, and have also learned and developed tremendously during our preparation for data collection. The coral and corallivore surveys we have practiced many times under the watchful eye of our research collaborator COREsea and we feel confident in our skills to take clear coral pictures and keep a watchful eye on the corallivores. For the coral survey, we are taking pictures of the seafloor along transect lines, and then classifying the substrate in the pictures in the lab. This includes memorizing a lot of coral species! Our corallivore survey is done by divers tallying corallivorous invertebrates underwater. The divers will also take notes on what substrate/coral Drupella snails are found on, their diameter and the size of their aggregations.
Diving!
bottom row: Giant Clam, Dylan, Drupella
On the other hand, planning and executing the fish survey has proved very tricky. Turns out that it’s actually hard planning a research project in your flat in Glasgow before you’ve even seen the sites on the other side of the world, in Thailand! Still, we are adapting the best we can. We have changed into COREsea’s SCUBA method of fish survey instead of Laura’s snorkelling method (which led to a lot of tangles and desperation). For the fish survey, the divers will be tallying fish from specific families. We are trialing a method of identifying 19 fish families, but if that proves a bit too tricky, we’ll take it down a notch and go for 7 families instead.
We are absolutely loving the dives we get to go on every day, exploring the reefs of Koh Pha Ngan with a group of COREsea’s crew and interns. Laura is writing this blog as today’s diving team is heading out and setting up their dive equipment. The group is massive and it seems like all the cool kids want to do marine research these days!
Best fishes,
Laura and Ashlynn
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