Global Underwater Divers (GUE) recently installed a Project Baseline marker at the Bimini Road by the Bimini Islands. As readers of this site may recall the markers are used to pinpoint specific areas to revisit over time in order to determine any evolution of the areas with particular interest in the state of health of the environment – whether positive evolution, no-evolution or negative evolution.
For this specific area there’s recent and ongoing concern about the dredging that is currently taking place nearby to the North of the site and how this will effect the surrounding water, the corals and the wildlife in the area.
As can be seen from the images, the dive had pretty poor visibility and milky conditions, which is very unusual to the usually beautiful waters of Bimini which usually affords wonderful visibility with blue hues rather than milky conditions. The worsened visibility no doubt is due to the dredging taking place and the effect of sand being disturbed and misplaced to such and extent that the entire water column becomes filled with sand particles that travel where-ever current takes it.
The huge, and not to be underestimated, problem is that the sand eventually will settle on top of natural corals, which in turn often “suffocate” from this and quite often die.
The coordinates for this specific marker are N 25º46.101’ W 79º16.618’ and the depth is about 15-20 feet deep. Dive took place June 10th 2014.
As always, Project Baseline encourages anybody who is diving to engage in these ongoing efforts to monitor the state of health of the waters. The best way to document the further evolution of these areas is to take photographs of the exact same locations as well as video. In addition making any notes and naturally documenting the time and date is of great help.
Any information and observations that you as a reader diving there will be welcomed.
The images and reporting in this post was kindly supplied by Blake Carmichael.