Placencia Mooring Masters: Sprung into Action
Placencia Mooring Masters (PMM) is a voluntary community organization comprised of marine tourism stakeholders & community members, our mandate to help protect Belize's Reef through the installation of anchor mooring buoys to prevent permanent damage to the reef caused by dropped anchors and their dragging chains.
Well, Spring is now upon us and in readiness for the lots of boats expected out in the greater Placencia waters over Easter PMM sent out a crew on March 31st for three days of intensive cleaning, inspection & installation work. This team of volunteers was comprised of five crew Erwin Westby (TDI course director) – crew leader and site coordinator, James Leslie (Dive Master & boat captain) Ed Carr (Snorkeler) drill pump operator & boat captain, Dale Godfrey (Dive Master) & Tulu Villanueva (Dive Instructor) being trained on drilling and installations.
This month’s mission was to clean & repair installed buoys as part of the quarterly scheduled maintenance, also to install two anchor mooring buoys at Frigate Caye (formally Little Morris Caye) which would also give hands on training to our newest volunteers.
These anchor mooring buoys are recommended to be used as "daytime moorings" and can also be used for securing boats while snorkeling at the caye. Users of the buoys will notice a new addition to PMM installed anchor buoys, where possible there are patches of yellow marine grade reflective tape on the mooring buoy to assist in making the buoys visible to boaters and 8" bright yellow buoys attached to the pick-up lines, these were purchased using funds from the Project Aware grant awarded to PMM in November 2008.
The buoys on the pick-up lines should assist boaters to see more clearly the pick up line in the water which we hope will reduce the amount of prop chop to pick-up lines. They will also aid boaters by helping them to determine the direction of the current as boats should always approach buoys from Down-Wind/Down-Current. Please BE AWARE of surroundings at all times always be on lookout for lines, snorkelers, divers, buoys and other boats, remember SAFETY first when at sea. As always we are extremely grateful to “The Moorings” for donating the use of a fueled catamaran as live aboard for the crew base while out conducting this work.
The live aboard saves PMM allot of time which would be wasted & fuel that would be used if the crew had to return daily to Placencia while conducting maintenance off the buoys installed under the Placencia Mooring Buoy Project. In addition we’d like to thank the following businesses and people for their support & donations which made this trip possible. Ed Carr for donating his boat to be used as the working site boat. SEA Southern Environmental Association for the loan of the manta hydraulic drill used to install manta pins in soft substrates such as sand & rubble.
Also Avadon Divers for the donation of 20 dive tanks to be used during the 3 days maintenance and installations. Joy Tours for donation of dive gears for the divers. The Placencia fisherman's coop for their continuing support donating ice. Also a huge thank you to Elena Cuellar & Andria Villanueva owners of Frigate Caye for donating the funding needed for this trip. Last but certainly not least to our volunteers, who all worked very hard to achieve over the 3 day period to have six dive sites & eleven anchor mooring buoys fully operational, 2 of these were also the new anchor mooring buoy they also installed.
Also during March as part of PMM's mandate with Coral Reef Alliance (CORAL) to support & assist Local Marine Protected Areas (MPA) PMM assisted Southern Environmental Association (SEA) with the reinstallation of some anchor mooring buoys & cleaned buoys already in situ at Laughing Bird Caye (LBC). Whilst the crew was at LBC they used the opportunity to reinstall the PMM dive site buoy on the LBC dive wreck, Miss Pamela.
Dive operators are reminded that this site is rated for dive boats 25 tons fully loaded or less. Also note that the PMM dive site buoys are not designed for long term anchoring and are to be used as a tool to safely drop & pick up divers at these dive sites. Dive site buoys are to be made available to all dive operators by disengaging ASAP after your divers are down or collected, to allow other dive boats access to the buoy. We respectively request that dive operators respect this.
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