So yesterday was Earth Day! 🌱🌏
Thank you to the several asks I got about it - didn’t forget, I promise!
Got to spend the day doing other work (which let’s be honest, isn’t really work because I got to spend an entire day diving and eating snacks alongside some really awesome folks, what more could a little happy squid ask for?) with one of our organisations that Tracy Industries has partnered with.
Lots of the third sector work that we do, particularly in our environmental capacity, is with smaller grassroots organisations, and our core philosophy remains that we support and empower local initiatives and work, because who better to say what needs done than the people who it affects most?
Restoring our coral reef after the decimation caused by human activity is hardly unique to TI, and we are really proud to be building on the decades of work done by visionary conservationists before us. No work gets done in a vacuum and it’s as a community that conservation is strongest. Particularly for this project, the work of Dr Helen and Robbie Shelby in the initial implementation of artificial reefs and I am really thankful for their input on the design of our mini reefs.
(Particularly grateful to Dr Shelby for humbling me in the initial planning meetings by telling me our new epoxy plan was “frankly the most absurd idea” she had heard 🫶🏻)
Working in ecologically fragile areas like this means a lot of careful planning and development, a lot of dive time, a lot of commitment by the teams and lots of hard work by hand. I chip in a day every couple of weeks, which is nothing compared to the 24/7 work that the teams on the ground actually do.
But the results we have seen have been incredible, both with coral growth and life on the reef expanding, and so yesterday saw the installation of our biggest reef yet! 🙌🏻
Bonus: being watched by the local supervisor who was somewhat unimpressed with my talents with a spanner 😌
