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Coral Gardens Snorkel Reef Providenciales Turks & Caicos Islands

RATs week 4: Coral Gardens

In week four of our new  Reef Action Team (RATS) team, the weather was once again beautiful enough to go out on an excursion. We were fortunate enough to be able to work with Jackie Walker, a naturalist at Amanyara resort, and Don Stark, the chairman of the TC Reef Fund. We travelled with them to Coral Gardens, a swimming reef on Grace Bay beach, to clean the coral protection buoys (which, actually, Ms. Rankin helped them install some time ago).

We buddied up and were each given scrub pads to use on the coral protection buoys. Our teams of two then snorkeled out to a buoy of our choice and scrubbed them relatively clean. Every team cleaned several buoys as we worked our way around the whole area before swimming back to shore.

Back on the beach, we discussed the importance of keeping them clean, as well as a little bit on turtle tagging. With a small amount of time left, we swam back out and enjoyed the sights of the reef – hoping to find a turtle! We swam over the sea grass and it wasn’t long before we came across a turtle; we checked if it was tagged (it was). We saw plenty of exciting things on our second time round including: lionfish, trumpet fish and many other tropical fish.

This week was great fun!

Anna Reckhorn (Yr7)

British West Indies Collegiate
Providenciales, Turks & Caicos Islands

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