Coral Cay Conservation Tobago - Settling In

Four weeks ago I arrived in Charlotteville, Tobago to begin my 4 month contract as the scuba instructor for the Coral Cay Conservation project here. Coral Cay Conservation are a British non profit making organisation that have several marine and forest projects around the world where they have been invited to monitor and survey habitats. The surveying is done by volunteers who pay to come and learn to dive (if they don't already) and survey the reefs or forest. Each marine project has a scuba instructor to teach the volunteers and local scholars who don't already dive.

Apart from teaching open water to divemaster courses my responsibilities also include maintaining and fixing equipment, dive logistics and planning and helping with the general running of the project base. It turns out this is a lot of work for one person!

I have already taught EFR and Rescue for 3, Open Water for 3 and Advanced for 2. And I have 5 people to train to divemaster level in the next few months. Should be interesting.

The base here is an old holiday cottage right on the sea in Charlotteville, Man o' War Bay on the North East side of the island. There are bedrooms for 14 people with bunk beds in each and a small amount of storage space. We also have a living area, kitchen and outside deck. Breakfast is at 6am, lunch at 12pm and dinner at 6pm. Meals, cleaning and other chores are done by everyone on a rota basis. A typical day starts with breakfast followed by kitting up for the morning dive and chores. The first dive goes out at around 7:30 – 8am and sometimes a second wave goes out after the first gets back if we have more than 8 people diving. After lunch we dive again and after each dive any data is entered and any training/paperwork completed. Days are full with often something going on after dinner as well. Saturday night we try to relax and party and Sunday is a day off where breakfast and lunch are DIY but we have extra chores on Sundays to deep clean the base each week.

 

There is a house reef out front but I haven't yet seen it as hurricane Tomas hit here pretty hard in October and the whole bay as been pretty silted out. It is now starting to clear so I am very much looking forward to getting out there and seeing if there is any reef left after the battering it got and the 2 months of silt cover.

Charlotteville is a small fishing and holiday village with a few small dive shops and beaches. Everybody knows everyone else and says hello to everyone as you walk through the village. It's a pretty friendly place and now we are settled in and the very intensive science training is done for us we should have an enjoyable few months here.