Ocean Cleanup with a Twist - May 1, 2020

We are well overdue for an update! So much going on. The first piece of big news is that we have successfully resolved all of the remaining charters for our 2020 Summer season in the Caribbean. We were able to have the upcoming guests agree to re-book with us in the future when COVID is behind us, which means that we are not tied to a specific date and that if it is still a nuisance next year, we will just defer the charters to a time when the horizon is clear. With all of that settled, it’s a lot easier to just relax and take each day as it comes. Dirk is still doing his online Math course. That wraps up in a couple of weeks but then he will continue to work through the Summer as Avenues gears up for the next academic year.

We completed our physical exams for our Divemaster course, so now PADI just has to process our paperwork and we will be official. So that is huge.

We have continued our recent PADI AWARE project of cleaning up the sea bed in our anchorage here in Leinster Bay, but with a twist. Whenever we bring debris from the bottom and place it on the boat, we find that little critters have been living inside the aluminum cans or lost snorkels. Previously, we had been tossing the residents back into the water and hoping they make it to the bottom, but there is a layer of hungry blue runners under the boat and they are snacking on all of the juveniles that we have been trying to save. So, we have started our own little nursery for these little guys on board and we are going to hang onto them until we can find a more suitable home for them on the reef where we hope they are less likely to get gobbled up by a hungry fish. They are very vulnerable when we put them back into the water from the boat as they have to drift 40 – 50 feet to the bottom, and they are completely exposed the whole way down. This way, we will take them in the dinghy to a shallower area where they can hopefully nestle in to the sea grass, rocks and sand and be safer.