Mangroves for Fiji Baby!!!!

Nursery

The past week we've doubled the amount of propagule tables! We've progressed from 6 tables to 12 tables, 9 already installed in our resident mangrove nursery, 3 in the process of being built. This has allowed us to further organize and create more space in our nursery. In doing so, we've been able to develop paths running up and down our nursery, covered in sand to help absorb any excess water. We've also started hacking away at the grass (using machetes, hoes, rakes, shovels; really anything that works) of the newly extended area to be able to plant more propagules. This week, sadly due to a shortage of plastic bottles, we started planting some propagules directly into the ground to prevent them from drying up and dying. We will later transplant them into plastic bottle pots, once we get enough of them- which came much sooner and ampler than expected!

Above; Propaglue tables in the nursery

Below; Planting propagules in the nursery

Plastics

Over the last week, due to the spread of the word that we would gladly collect any plastic bottles and pay 3 cents per bottle, we've now collected over 1200 plastic bottles. Our fellow neighbours, Uprising Resort, rose up to the occasion and donated 800 plastic bottles. The rest of our bottles came from Vunibau village, where we went on Thursday for our community day. After presenting presentations on plastics, we proceeded to go around the village collecting plastic bottles from homes and picking them up from the ground for around 2 hours. In that time, we amassed 391 bottles! This not only results in a cleaner environment and many propagule pots but also in 11.73 FJD towards the village youth fund.

Above; Plastics collected from Vunibau village 

All this collective work and plastics will keep us very busy and happy saving the environment one mangrove tree at a time! We love Mangroves for Fiji!!!

Sabine Baily, 19, Washington USA