A Month in the Indian Ocean

Coming off the high of .conf 2017 and the intense amount of work I've been doing for the last year or so, I decided to book a trip and get (mostly) away from the computer for a month to expand my mind in a slightly different direction. Thanks to the inspiration of Danielle here, on October 11, 2017 I embarked on a journey to visit an incredible organization called Reef Doctor in Toliara, Madagascar.

A lot of people have already asked me “Why did you go there?” I'd say that's a fair question, especially coming from people that I know strictly in a professional setting, where my profession has almost nothing to do with the ocean or conservation. So to help paint a picture of why I traveled this far and took a month away from my regularly scheduled Computer Security work, I’ll start out with a video I took of what some of the coral reefs look like right now in Madagascar. 

This dying reef probably isn't the lush and exotic wildlife you think about when you try and picture Madagascar. At least, it wasn't for me.

I pictured something more along the lines of this adorable Lemur that happens to also be endangered. I loved being in Madagascar though. It's one of the most gorgeous places I've visited, and the people were so welcoming and friendly. What's important about the video above, is that Madagascar doesn't look like it once did. It is losing a number of it's endemic species and beautiful landscapes.

What also might help paint a picture of why I journeyed here, is the Reef Doctor mission statement. It is inclusive of a number of different goals that are in a lot of ways all inter-connected.

To summarize: Reef Doctor obviously focus a lot on coral reefs (hence the name). They partake in research initiatives around coral reefs and fisheries, they work to protect and manage a diverse mix of habitats, and they work to grow and restore damaged coral reefs and the associated biodiversity. Reef Doctor focuses on many goals within the surrounding communities of Toliara. They realize that coral reefs are underwater, but that they aren’t in a bubble.

Reef Doctor focuses on many goals within the surrounding communities of Toliara. They realize that coral reefs are underwater, but that they aren’t in a bubble.

There isn’t just one thing that has resulted in damaged coral reefs around the world - there are a tremendous amount of activities in our world that affect our oceans every single day. Those activities include (but are not limited to) overfishing, pollution, global aquarium trade, and coastal development.

Unfortunately, a big part of the reason for the destruction of this reef and the destruction of wildlife habitats all throughout Madagascar, is the level of poverty there. As a result, Reef Doctor works to provide pathways out of poverty. They do this through the development of sustainable alternative livelihoods in rural communities that are in close proximity to the reefs in Toliara. They also work to empower marginalized women to promote gender equality. A lot of my fellow campers found out about my degree in Women's Studies so hopefully they understand how much I loved seeing this in the Mission Statement.

With such a wide range of goals, there was a lot of activities that I hoped to take part in during my month at Reef Doctor. I believe that I was able to truly complete a lot more than I had originally anticipated.

Diving

For starters, diving was a big goal of mine. I wanted to be able to get some more experience diving, and I was able to do that. I logged 22 dives on my trip to Madagascar and I spent a total of 15.4 hours under water. This was so exciting and exceeded my expectations. I know all of this very specific information, because even though I may have gone off the grid for a month, I wasn’t without one of my favorite things: data. Shame on you if you didn't see a Splunk dashboard coming. Here is a preliminary dashboard that outlines a healthy amount of information about my diving in Madagascar.

It was fantastic to be able to get this many dives in and start to compare some of them. I was able to gain some fascinating insights. I realized just how fortunate I am to be diving where the water gets as high as 29 degrees Celsius and averages 26 degrees Celcius. Some days I didn’t even bother with a wetsuit. If you’re at all familiar with the Northeastern United States, you’ll know that we don’t get quite that lucky ever. To give you some perspective, my dives back in the United States in September of this year, took place in water around 18 degrees Celsius. 

I also was able to start to visualize some of the knowledge around camp. For example, everyone raved about a couple of dive sites. Trano Ny Fay was one of the better ones according to a lot of divers, and after logging all of my dives and recording footage on my GoPro, I could see why that was the case. This reef was much further away from shore and not as affected by things like overfishing. The visibility tended to be better and we were almost guaranteed to see a lot of really great sea life there. Here is a video showing an example of the diving in Trano Ny Fay.

Reef Restoration

After successfully completing my refresher dive on my first day at Reef Doctor, it wasn’t long before I got to jump into a few different types of dives directly related to reef restoration and conservation.

Coral Transplants

Coral Transplants were one of my favorite types of days for a couple different reasons. For starters, it generally meant we did two dives at a time. For the first dive, we would locate and collect corals of opportunity. This meant diving down with a bucket and plastic bags to store corals in temporarily. These corals were generally healthy, but broken off from larger reef structures. Once we collected a sufficient amount of corals, we would surface with them and swim back to the boat.

After surfacing, we would exchange our tanks for a new tank and prepare for the second dive. Our second dive involved transporting the collected corals to one of our artificial structures (such as the swim through or the "turtle" shown below). We would attach the corals to the structure using zip ties and then over the coming weeks, watch them grow and attract new life. As you can see from the chart above, 5 of my dives were Coral Transplants. 

Coral Cleans

Coral cleans were a second type of dive where we were responsible for cleaning algae off of the coral that had been transplanted. This was relatively straight forward. To complete this, we would simply visit the same structures shown above, but this time we would scrub them using nothing more than a tooth brush or a scrub brush. This was great experience for diving as cleaning some structures was somewhat technical in nature.

I would say one of the only really difficult parts of this process, was dealing with this damsel fish that became very attached to the structures. He was extremely protective of his territory. Luckily for us, no divers or damsel fish were harmed during the making of this video.

Indicator Point Outs

Probably my favorite dive type of them all was the “Point Out” dives. These dives were meant to prepare divers at Reef Doctor for a set of exams to prove their knowledge of identifying various "indicator species" around the reef. An indicator species is one that is a sign of a healthy reef. These species tend to feed solely on healthy coral, and so if they're seen around a given reef, then it's a sign that reef is doing well.

Of course I was only at Reef Doctor for a month, so being on point out dives for me were my chance to see some of the fish or other species that are indicators of a healthy reef and get a first hand look at how to identify them, but without the intention of going on to record my findings. That task was reserved more for interns and staff. The more of these dives that I did though, the more I felt like the knowledge of how to identify a Hard Coral or a Zoanthid was being solidified. I would say that by my eleventh point out dive, I knew my way around the reef pretty well and, though not required, even managed to pass an exam first try!

I had the help of some of the staff, interns, and even my co-volunteers to both teach me new information and reaffirm some of the knowledge for me. Shown below is Danielle (left) helping a volunteer named Clara (right), identify some Hard Coral on one of our first dives. 

You can also see Danielle pointing out some amazing Soft Coral in this video below.

In addition to pointing out coral, we also took place in Point Out dives for various species of fish and invertebrates. An example indicator invertebrate would be this “Burnt Sausage” sea cucumber. 

We also looked for indicator fish, like this pair of Meyer's Butterflyfish.

Or even this elusive Big Red Octopus that was hiding extremely well.

We of course found plenty of species that weren't exact indicators of a healthy reef necessarily, but that were still really cool. Take, for example, this puffer fish.

Artificial Reef Construction

One of the highlights of my diving experience at Reef Doctor, was that for my very last dive, I had the opportunity to visit the artificial reefs that were constructed in the bay. It was really wonderful to finish my diving at this location because I could tangibly see that some of the projects going on at Reef Doctor, were having an impact. Sure, these artificial reefs aren't booming with corals just yet. The good news though is that there are at least some corals naturally occurring already, and the site is attracting a whole lot of sea life.

Sustainable Livelihoods

There are plenty of examples where Reef Doctor helps to create sustainable livelihoods. Some of them I didn't have the chance to get too involved with, and others I did get to partake in helping out with, but unfortunately don't have much footage of. I'm sure a lot of my fellow campers would love to see the footage of me helping with Seaweeding and flipping that pirogue on my first day, but thankfully that doesn't exist. For a look at some of the projects I didn't get to help out with or for ongoing updates, check out the facebook page for Reef Doctor and how well the most recent Sea Cucumber sales went.

As for specific examples of sustainable livelihood projects I did get to see, here is Seb with a Sea Turtle that was brought in by some local fisherman.

Reef Doctor, tries to dissuade local fisherman from killing Sea Turtles. They have an excellent Tag & Release Program. What this means is that local fisherman can bring a Sea Turtle that they find to Reef Doctor, and get paid for doing so. This enables Reef Doctor to tag and release the turtle for research and (hopefully) saves the turtle from being killed by fisherman in the future. This also hopefully persuades the fisherman to save sea life in the future by giving them a new source of income. It was scary that I didn't see a single Sea Turtle while diving. Their numbers in this area have plummeted significantly.

Equality

In addition to diving, I was fortunate to be able to assist with one part of the Mission Statement that I mentioned earlier, Equality. Empowering marginalized women is one of the goals of Reef Doctor. So to give you some idea of how they’re accomplishing this, I’ll give a fun example from November 2, 2017. Shown below is a picture (from left to right) of myself, Chris, and Rozvan who all went to Ifaty village together with Karin, a staff member from Reef Doctor. We went to meet with a Women’s Group in Ifaty Village to work on one of the Women’s Group’s projects.

There are a couple of goals here. For starters, in general, women who participate in this group will have both a dedicated space and time to work, as well as the feeling of accomplishment and ownership of various projects within the village. Second, this project aims to create a more environmentally friendly means of generating charcoal which is heavily relied on in Africa. This project was affectionately titled “poo balls”. The reason being, that we were assisting these women in creating a charcoal made with a mix of 50% actual charcoal, and another 50% Zebu waste. Shown below, is a picture of the women creating this alternative charcoal. 

Hopefully this project will be successful and reduce the amount of charcoal being generated in Africa as deforestation for charcoal is a real problem. We also hope that it is successful, because there is plenty of Zebu (and Zebu waste) in Madagascar. We even had some Zebu transport our dive gear for us. 

What Can You Do To Save Coral Reefs?

I can't stress enough how I feel very fortunate that I was able to take this trip and visit a country as remote as Madagascar in order to work on some very impactful conservation projects. I want to call out a couple of points though that may not have come out clearly in this article.

Cost of Conservation

Sure, in order to travel to Madagascar to perform the work that I did in this part of the world, you will need to save up for a plane ticket and figure out a number of other logistics. But one very important fact that was re-enforced for me on this trip is that I didn't necessarily need to do that. You can help save our oceans by doing your part, without a lot of costs involved. Even basic decisions like being more conscious of what you purchase, what you eat, how much trash you generate, and how you dispose of your trash will go an extremely long way and don't cost you anything extra.

Lead From Where You Are

The poverty that exists in Madagascar is not the only problem facing our oceans. Sure, in this very specific part of the world, it's one factor that is affecting coral reefs in a number of ways. But keep in mind that our oceans are all connected. If you look around on the internet you'll see plenty of statistics about how much trash American's generate and also how little American's recycle. I won't reiterate them all here, because I haven't seen the data behind most of them. A lot of them give an estimate of billions of disposable plastic water bottles being used every day. While I'm sure that is true, I don't know if it is 35 billion or 100 billion so I won't perpetuate any false statistics. What I can tell you for certain, is that while walking down the beach in Ifaty one day, Danielle and I found an "IHOP" coffee mug washed up on the beach. We were both taken aback by this. We were in one of the most remote parts of the world that we've ever been and we found distinctly American branded trash. If that doesn't scream "American is part of the problem" I don't know what does. So if you want to help save the ocean, start right from the basic things you do every single day and try to inspire those around you. Also keep in mind that there are organizations all across the U.S. that work towards environmental goals that I would encourage you to get involved if you need some guidance on where to get started. The World Wildlife Fund and The Nature Conservancy are two that I can think of off the top of my head.

Watch Netflix

Coral reef restoration obviously isn’t limited to being the topic of a Netflix documentary, but if you really aren't inspired yet, aren't sure where to get started and you want some more perspectives, or just don't believe the stuff I'm telling you, then I'd recommend a couple of documentaries that have inspired me recently.

Racing Extinction:

Chasing Coral:

For me, coral reef restoration was my entire life for the past month. I was just 1 km away from some of the best diving in the world, and some of the most magnificent (and degraded) coral reefs I’ve ever seen. For you and me going forward, coral reef restoration and conservation is attainable from wherever we are.

For you and me going forward, coral reef restoration and conservation is attainable from wherever we are.

That’s the most important fact I learned on this trip. No matter where you are located, you can be doing your part to improve the state of reefs all over the world.

If you've made it this far through this article, thank you for taking the time to read. I'll get off my soapbox for a bit, and head back into posting about the Security world. If you have any questions/comments/concerns, please reach out!