Tougher than average - but rewarding. In Jan and Feb the trade winds blow hard and we couldn't always get the small boats out thru the shallow pass. No one has mapped this reef, GVI will be doing that, too. With good weather you get 2 dives in a day 6 days a week. GVI is very safety conscious as help is many hours away and they get divers with a range of skills from just finishing their OW to DM and above.
GVI is serious about the science. If you are assigned to monitor hard coral there are 4 exams, 2 written - 95% to pass and 2 in-water - 100% is a pass. It took us a number of weeks just to get skilled enough to collect data (weather didn't help much). Expect to fail a few times. Everyone does.
I had certain expectations going in, I wanted to get in lots of dives, see a beautiful reef and amazing marine life, you know, like on TV. I soon realized that I was expecting to be on dive vacation in a way, and I wasn't. Monitoring a reef is challenging diving. Floating neutral standing on your head and classifying exactly what you see every 25cm along a 30m transect, writing it all down in Latin and getting done in less that 30 minutes is work. Your buddy will be doing coral colonies right behind you; measuring max height and length of any hard coral colony bigger than 10cm and recording species, type of disease (if any), % old and new dead, predation and other stuff which I'm sure I've forgotten.
Your not a tourist. And it feels great not to be a tourist.
cheers - rp
