Gaby has brought from Panama a February edition of the newspaper Tiempos del Mundo with a front cover story on Saya 2002: 'Primera Isla Artificial Construiran en el Oceano Indico' (First Artificial Island Will Be Built in the Indian Ocean). The story is headed with a picture that looks like something from a 1950s 'World of Tomorrow' magazine: a giant nautilus shaped structure made from biorock with solar panels rising from the sea.
What we are actually planning to build will, of course, be on nothing like this scale. But it is still ambitious in the circumstances. The steel structure will be a three-legged and some 20 metres (65 feet) high. In 11 metre (36 feet) low water on the Saya bank, the tower that rises from the legs will have clearance of around 9 metres (29 feet). It should be able to withstand 4 metre waves.
Solar panels mounted on the top will generate current for accretion. During the nights when there is no current brucite, a softer compound that accretes together with calcium carbonate during the day, will dissolve away, leaving only a gradually growing 'exo-skeleton'. Corals will then be attached.
Tom continues to battle through paper and shuttle between offices in order to try and clear the shipment of equipment for a coral nursery destined for the marine park authority.
Later, he talks about some other efforts at coral restoration. "There are people literally throwing broken bits of some of the acropora species off the back of a boat into water where they think the conditions are right. A guy in Fiji calls this low-tech reef restoration, and refers to our approach [using mineral accretion technology] as high-tech. I have to laugh. What we do is low-tech. What they do is no-tech!"
"This approach gets 're-discovered' every few years", Tom continues. But the fact that pieces of coral can be fixed or will sometimes settle by themselves on suitable substrate, fuse and start to grow is not news. "Charles Darwin knew this in 1830s and he never went into the water! It was common knowledge at that time - so much so that he saw no need to make a specific attribution in his account.
"But it will only work is very clean water [which is almost never the case where coral restoration is needed]. Otherwise the coral will all die. Another problem is that you can only do this with a few species, and these happen to be ones that are very sensitive to rises in temperature. So they are likely to die anyway because of global warming. Nevertheless, the number of people doing this is increasing".
Evening BBQ at the Scout camp. Peter Goreau marinades spare ribs in chili sauce and does us proud. It is agreed that we will set a Thursday deadline to leave for Saya, on the assumption that the Orphee and the Ceres will be here in time.
Our options in case of a medical emergency at Saya are limited. Gaby, Roman and Caroline have useful training. Others also know quite a bit. There is a hospital with a decompression chamber in Victoria on the island of Mahe, four hundred miles or some three days sail from the site. And it's possible that a light plane with a small decompression chamber on board could be flown to Coetivy island, the nearest Seychelles territory about 300 miles away to collect an injured person
A continuous supply of pure oxygen can prevent serious injury and even save a life in the event of nitrogen narcosis (sometimes a result of incorrect diving technique). The expedition has brought a dedicated bottle that will hold some 15 minutes supply. It's hoped that we may also be able to fill one of the big 20 litre tanks at the hospital. But their oxygen generating machine, the only one in the region, is kaput.
Out of kindness, they fill the tiny bottle we've brought. The doctor in charge there says he would take a minimum of two fifty litre bottles of oxygen on our kind of expedition. Obviously is the minimum he would take. He recommends no decompression diving, only two dives a day, no heavy work between dives and no alcohol.
Roman says that if we are lucky one of the allied warships patrolling this part of the Indian Ocean might drop us O2. But it looks as if we will have no working short-wave radio - the standard means for communication at a distance at sea - on any of the three boats, only VHS with a max range of 30 to 50 miles and the satellite phone. The important thing, we agree, is to understand the risks, and to work within limits wherever possible.
Caspar Henderson
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