Nursery Construction
The most technical aspect of creating a Red Mangrove nursery is the actual construction of the site. Red Mangrove roots must be kept constantly wet for the plants to survive. This means elevation in regards to tides is critical.
The first step was to survey a site to build the nursery. We choose a spot at the Cayman Sailing Club that was already slated to be cleared and used for boat storage later so that we would minimize our environmental footprint. We choose leave a strip of plants along the waters edge because it contained Red Mangroves already and we wanted to preserve them.
A DEO employee donated their personal bobcat for a day to clear the site for dirt removal and leveling. We used the small bob cat first to make sure we preserved Red Mangroves at the canal edge.
The next step was the actual digging of the nursery pond. A large bucket was used to scope soil while mantaining as level and as firm of a bottom as possible. After the work, the entire pond was lined with heavy guage plastic so the rooted pots don't attach to the soil below. Red Mangrove trees are hardy...but they do not tolerate any disturbances to their fine root hairs. (This is one reason the hurricane killed so many Red Mangrove trees...the storm litterly shook the roots of the trees to death!).
The community donated over 150 pallets to create working space for mangrove potting work and to line parts of the nursery to create the exact height required for red mangrove propogule germination and growth.
The nursery pond was lined with heavy guage plastic and pallets were placed in areas that were too deep for the pots to level the bottom to a degree not possible with the heavy machinery. A walking plank was made to make access easy and a canal was cut to make use of a floating deployment raft possible so the pots could be minimially handled. A small entrance to the canal was due and regulated by a wooden damn so the nursery water elevation could be controlled during the various stages of work. For example we have high water levels for floating the pots into place and lower levels during germination of the Red Mangrove propogules.
A 40 foot container was shipped from Florida with over 850 Red Mangrove "planter" style Reef Balls, tarps, tables, tools, volunteer supplies, fertilizers, nursery shading materials, plastic nursery lining, protective gear and volunteer support supplies. The container also included Reef Ball molds and tools for continued production. Not an inch of space or weight limitations were wasted! Just the unloading time took hours and hours of hard labor by the volunteers.
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