Corals are very slow growing animals, increasing their skeleton by only 1-3 cm per year. Anchors dropped from boats in reefs areas can destroy hundreds to thousands of years of coral growth in only moments, as happens all too often. This careless and senseless practice comes about in two ways; Ignorance, or lack of alternatives. We try to address both.
For years we have been working together with other dive schools through the Save Koh Tao Group, The Thai Navy, The Department of Marine and Coastal Resources (DMCR) and others to install and maintain mooring lines around the island in any areas where boats commonly visit.
Furthermore, we have worked to implement marine zoning and construct ‘no-boat’ zones in some of our shallow or most diverse reef areas. In 2013, we assisted on a very large project led by the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources to deploy 45, 8-ton concrete bases around the island for all boats to use, which you can read all about here.
In our program, students learn how to properly install and maintain mooring lines using local methods, including:
Choosing anchor points and using artificial anchor points