Kosrae – Mapping Caves and Coral Reefs – Part 2

In my last post, I promised to tell you about my participation in the coral reef monitoring project that is in full swing there. The government and several dedicated private citizens have moored 57 buoys at key dive sites around the island. These buoys serve two purposes:

• Boaters, fishermen, and divers can tie up to the buoy rather than using an anchor, which can damage the reef below.

• Provides a fixed—well sort of fixed—location that can be used with GPS and mapped with (you guessed it!) Civil 3D.

The buoy locations are then linked to Access databases that are kept up to date with information about the health, size, and locations of the coral heads below. The tricky part is locating the coral heads by using the buoy as a fixed point. This is done with a tape, a compass, grease pencils, and scuba gear.

Do you remember sitting in trigonometry class wondering when the heck you would ever need this knowledge? With GPS, CAD, etc., who needs to know trigonometry when the technology does it all for us? Coral reef monitoring is a great example of why you should pay attention in trigonometry class! No technology here—just hard work and a much-needed wake up call for this author.

I have modeled many sites, both above and below ground, with Land Desktop and Civil 3D in my day, but modeling coral reef heads that live 40 feet underwater was a first!

The only bad part was that I broke two toes on my left foot while I was trying to get photos of a pod of about 50 dolphins that suddenly appeared near the boat. In a six foot swell, I stood up, grabbed my camera, and ran for the bow to try to get a shot. About the time I got to the bow, the boat dropped down into a hole, came up on the next wave suddenly, and launched me about six feet into the air. I landed on my tailbone (ouch!), was thrown up in the air again, and landed on my left foot. Too bad I did not get video of that!

My thanks to The Kosrae Village Resort for the photos and the dive gear!

Comments

[Anita Brown]

Kelsey,
I'm a trigonometry teacher trying to show my students diverse ways people use trigonometry who are not engineers. Would you be willing to post something that I can show them describing what trig you used in the Reef exploration? I'd really appreciate it!