Al Yasset Island Reef Ball Demonstration Project
This is a demonstration of Reef Ball technology including the construction and deployment of 5 Reefs (Mangrove Reef, Hammor Reef, Arrow Reef, Cresent Reef and Pinacle Reef) consisting of over 350 Reef Balls in 6 different sizes and 4 different styles and planted with propagated local imperiled corals including Porites,Favia.Pavona, Psammocora, Anomastraea, and Acropora species. Black mangrove plantings occured on the island and are being augmented with an offshore reef (Mangrove Reef). One reef was designed to enhance grouper (hamour) populations (Hamour Reef). One reef was designed in an arrow formation pointing to Mecca (Arrow Reef). (Pinacle Reef) enhances a natural pinacle that serves as a spawning site for island fish stocks. (Cresent Reef) is easily accessible from a beach area. This project to be awarded the 2006 Reef Ball Foundaiton Project of the Year in the category of "Best Monitoring" due to the commitment of the contractor to hire a professional undewater photographer, Werner Mischler, to photo document the entire construction, deployment, coral propagation, coral planting and coral plug monitoring phases of the project.
Note: Coral Propagation monitoring pictures moved to main categoary "Monitoring"
The local ferry which transports cars, trucks, supplies and people to Al Yasset Island was used for 4 days to deploy 5 separate reefs. Since some of the reefs occured over areas with some existing coral, divers had to be in the water for every drop of the Reef Balls to ensure corals were not damaged during the deployments. Two of the reefs required very precise placement to create specific bottom layouts of the Reef Balls including the shape of an Arrow pointing to Mecca. This drops required multiple anchors on the barge and a constant attention to barge positioning. Other deployments, over sand only bottoms, were conducted to demonstrate efficiency and including dropping multiple Reef Balls with a special automatic release hook known as "the wanger." in a high speed manner. The variety of deployment styles were choose to demonstrate several options for Reef Ball deployments. Floating style deployments were not used since the barge resource was available.
The Island owner also sponsored a Black Mangrove planting project and we therefore sited a reef off the location of this project to help establish a connected reef/mangrove ecosystem. These photos document the owner's project.
Maps have been temporarily disabled while we wait for security clearance for posting...we are sorry for this inconvience.
This project has been awarded the 2006 Reef Ball Foundation Project of the Year in the Monitoring category. This folder contains monitoring photos of the coral propagation and planting project plus photos of the Reef Balls as they develop. This folder will be updated often as photos are received from the project's professional photographer, Werner Mischler.
View of the President's residence and beach. (Stiched together from 3 photos).
