Projects for General Surveyors

The students will be met at the Colony Hotel on the Isla de la Juventud on the Friday start date of the expedition and during their first week will be trained in diving and an introduction to some of the reef fish and corals likely to be encountered. During this first week, the group will be based at the Colony Hotel, with day trips out on one of the dive boats going to the Punta Frances MPA or working on the manatee surveys. Since everybody needs to be trained in reef ecology before joining the survey teams in week 2 there will be an evening lecture course on reef ecology in the hotel. 

For those learning to dive, the dive training course will be the PADI Open Water dive training course which consists of theory sessions, confined water dives, completed in shallow and sheltered water, and 4 or 5 reef dives to a maximum depth of 18m. During this course there will be evening lectures on how to identify reef fish and coral species.

Those that arrive already dive trained will join the manatee monitoring teams and will also complete additional training in how to complete benthic surveys and assessments of fish communities using stereo video.  There will also be training in how to identify benthic and fish reef species.

Those that are not keen on learning to dive will follow the same itinerary as the trained divers, but the in-water practicals will be done by snorkelling.

It is possible to complete the theory, and even confined water elements of the PADI Open Water training course, in advance of the expedition (please contact your local Op Wall office) so that the dive elements of the course can be completed within the first part of the week, and the remaining time training in how to complete benthic surveys and assessments of fish communities using stereo video and how to identify benthic and fish reef species.

During the second week the teams will be split into groups of 15 students, each of which will rotate between helping with the manatee surveys (2 days), helping on the shark project and video and benthic surveys of the reefs (2 days) and helping with the analysis of the video and photo data and sample collection (2 days). During the manatee surveys the students will be living at the Colony Hotel, but working on the manatee research boat helping with the transect and point counts for manatees, collecting environmental data (e.g. water temperature, salinity at different depths, etc.) and assisting with the side scan sonar surveys of the mangrove channels. The groups doing the shark surveys and video and photo surveys of the reefs will be based for 2 days on the Felipe Poey ship.

During the 2 days spent on analysis of the video and photo data the students will once again be based at the Colony Hotel.  The group will be required to identify each of the fish on the video by freeze framing and confirming the species, with identification guides where necessary.  The length of each of the fish will also need to be measured using the specialised software.