Intro to Conservation (5 Days)
This 5-day course introduces you to the world of tropical marine ecology and conservation through morning classroom sessions and scientific data collection dives. You will learn new survey techniques to monitor the changing health of our reefs while learning how to analyse the recorded data, resulting in final reef health assessments, to provide a taste of a day in the life of a conservationist.
Topics discussed will be the threats that these ecosystems face and the conservation efforts employed to mitigate biodiversity loss. This course is perfect for those with a keen interest in the environment, conservation, and scientific data collection methodologies but with limited time.
Upon completion of the course you will have an understanding of the important role that reefs play on a local and global scale and how we can monitor and mitigate ecosystem collapse. Using a variety of survey techniques you will be able to determine the health of a reef and produce an environmental status report from the data that you collected while knowing you have taken active steps to increase the health of the reefs on Koh Tao through data collection and Dive Against Debris.
This course is open to Advanced Open Water Divers or higher certification and costs 10,000 THB.
Contact us if you are interested in booking this or any of our conservation courses.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
This course lasts for 5 days and begins with classroom sessions at 8am each day followed by lunch and afternoon dives related to the classroom content.
- In-depth lectures provide the basis for active science dives where you will learn fish and coral identification and learn to perform scientific survey techniques to aid understanding of coral health, species populations, and reef composition.
- Classroom topics will include: Reef Biology, Ecology, and Identification; Threats to the Reef and Biogeography; Survey and Transect Theory; Human Impacts on Marine Ecosystems; Solutions (such as artificial reefs and Marine Protected Areas)
- Dive activities will include: Fish, Invertebrate, and Coral ID; Reef Health and Composition Surveys; Water Testing; Marine Clean-up Dive
