Crown-of-thorn collection day, 1st of June, 2008
By Frida Lanshammar, CHICOP
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| Photographs: Anders Knudby |
Volunteers, organisers and representatives from Zanzibar TV as well as the Swahili Coast all met up in front of One Ocean Divers at 09:30 on the 1st of June. A total of 28 participants were present representing the IMS, Dept of Fisheries, One Ocean Divers, Bahari Divers, and Chumbe Island Coral Park. The people were divided between three boats and went to three different reefs near town and a total of 721 COTS were collected.
The IMS boat with divers from IMS and snorkellers from Chumbe as well as two volunteers went to the shallow and nearby Bawe reef where they collected a total of 52 sea stars in less than 2 hours. The boat from Bahari Divers included a diver from the Dept. of Fisheries and the film crew from ZTV and they went to Murogo reef. That reef did not have many COTS at the moment so they only found 10. The third boat, from One Ocean Divers, went further away from town to Nyange reef where there were hundreds of COTS. The group of 7 divers only managed to cover around 50 meters of the reef, but collected as many as 663 COTS. They are reporting that there are still plenty of sea stars on the reef and it is recommended that another collection dive is organised on that reef soon again. An overview of what was collected where can be seen in table 1.
| Table 1. | |
| Site | # COTS |
| Bawe reef | 52 |
| Murogo reef | 10 |
| Nyange | 659 |
After collecting the COTS they were buried in a deep pit on the beach in front of Starehe Club. The Director of Menai Bay gave an encouraging speech and a group photo was taken before the day event was finished.
Support for this IYOR activity was provided by the Coral Reef Targeted Research & Capacity Building for Management Program (CRTR: www.gefcoral.org) to the Institute of Marine Sciences in Zanzibar
