After finding a suitable site in a seagrass bed and obtaining approval from local, state, and federal agencies, the next step was to figure out how we were going to deploy ~300 kg of limestone over three 12-by-12-meter plots. Firstly, we needed to identify six areas with similar seagrass density and mark six 12-by-12-meter square plots with ~2 meters of visibility. We did this by using our friend Pythagoras and good old navigation with a compass.
Our second task was to test how to deploy limestone efficiently enough to cover the area of the plots in a reasonable time frame while still being homogenous. We received various opinions from several folks that included diving and boating officers, laboratory managers, and students. Deploying from the boat is not accurate enough so we decided it must be dispersed near the seafloor by hand using divers. A large bucket of 8 kg over a 4 x 1 m area was first tried out - still way too uneven. We had to scale down even more.
The final try was dispersing a jar of ~1.5 kg of limestone over a 1 x 0.75 m quadrat. It worked. The only logistical issue... this must be done 192 times for one plot. The divers have a lot of work to do as we estimate it will take around 10-15 hours underwater by two divers. Lucky the water temperature is still a balmy 14 °C.
