Coral Cay changed my life!
Added to website: 10 April 2003
Jo Moulds tells how a CCC expedition changed her life as she went from a magazine journalist to Marketing Manager for Remarkable - one of the UK’s leading manufacturers of recycled products.. and all because of Coral Cay! CCC caught up with her.
How did it all start?
In 1999, I was 26 with four years’ experience as a magazine journalist so I decided to take time out to go travelling - the idea of spending the Millennium on a remote desert island sounded like a fine plan of escapism to me.
Why did you go a CCC expedition?
I had started diving a year and a half earlier with a London diving club and with a combination of a growing interest in UK environmental issues (my editor at the time was very eco-minded) and a passion for the marine environment from learning to dive, plus of course a desire to travel, all combined to make the decision to take part in a CCC expedition seem like a perfect idea.
What was your first expedition like?
After three days’ travelling in October 1999, I finally arrived on the CCC site at Taytay Bay, off Palawan in the Philippines. An initial 13-hour flight, another 2-hour flight, a 10-hour bus ride and a 3-hour boat ride through six lightning storms lighting up tropical islands the likes of which I had never seen before, was a fairly epic way to start CCC expedition life. We were met by Volunteers in the dark on the beach with torches shining in our eyes. Disembodied voices and warmer water than I had ever felt - I was used to diving off the coast of Plymouth - meant a fairly surreal introduction to the beauty of the Philippines.
What were the highlights?
Where do I start? I ended up spending four months on Cagdanao Island, instead of my planned three. By that time, I had logged over 250 dives, completed my PADI Divemaster, could name pretty much any fish and coral on the reef, had made friends for life, had become completely disassociated from Western life (I forgot I needed a pin number when it came to asking someone to take money out for me in the nearest town) and had learnt how to survive on a tropical island with rats and tree snakes in the roof, washing in water from a well, eating a diet of pork and rice with the occasional fish and rice if we were lucky and waking up each morning to the sounds of the rainforest. Our millennium night was a surreal highlight - spent doing an early twilight dive coming up under a sky full of a thousand stars, a bonfire on the beach and listening to the BBC World Service at 8am the next day reporting on the events along the Thames in London. It was a peculiar and magical way to bring in a new millennium.
What did you learn?
During my first expedition in the Philippines I learnt how much damage dynamite can do to a reef, the problems of locals trying to survive in a once-abundant fishing ground. The area was once called the “fishing pond of Manila”. The CCC expedition gave me the opportunity to dive previously undived and unsurveyed sites of major marine importance.
What did you do after your CCC experience in the Philippines?
I continued travelling through 2000 and spent a year in Australia (working as a volunteer diving in Arnhemland, where we were told we were better trained than most third-year student marine biologists!) and in 2001, the call of another CCC expedition was too strong. By then, I had completed my PADI Open Water Instructor in Fiji and a job offer came up for six months working at the Bonefish Lodge CCC site in Honduras as one of the scuba instructors.
What was your Honduras expedition like?
I arrived in Central America with very little idea of what to expect. A friend had mentioned “swimming with pods of up to 100 dolphins” and that was enough for me. The site, Bonefish Lodge, is no longer used but on the other side of Roatan Island, CCC are now using Sandy Bay that offers even better diving. The Bay Islands of Honduras are famous as an 18th century English pirate hangout and their descendants were our boat drivers. They still talk in “fathoms” and the culture of the islands was my favourite part of living in Honduras (and some pretty spectacular diving experiences too of course!).
The highlight?
During the six months I frequently swam with pods of dolphin (including baby dolphins included) and eagle rays, one of the most elegant creatures in the sea. I found seahorses on the reef on one dive, but the highlight was swimming with a pod of over 60 pilot whales, or “black fish” to the locals, which hadn’t been seen in the area for three years. We swam with them for over an hour, listening to their whale song and watching them lolling on the surface checking us out.. Whale sharks also pass by the Bay Islands but whale sharks and I obviously don’t go together. In two and half years’ I’m quite relieved not to have seen one!
How did Coral Cay change your life?
I can safely say that the experience of two Coral Cay Conservation expeditions has changed my life. Firstly, it was the best introduction to marine biology that you could expect without taking a university course. The dive experiences are beyond the realm of most “normal” travel experiences - you dive off the beaten track and come back with an awareness of conservation issues that will change the way you think forever. Obviously, it also led me off down the track of becoming a scuba diving instructor.
When I returned to the UK, I decided I wanted to see if I could work in the UK environmental sector. I had done my bit for tropical coral reefs for a while and wanted to find out what’s happening here at home. I found the company I work for now, Remarkable, whilst in the Natural History Museum gift shop. A pencil case made from recycled tyres, made in the UK, with a great design and the tag line “It’s a Remarkable environment”. I liked the sound of the company, called them up and ended up working for them. So, from journalist to Marketing & PR Manager for one of the UK’s most up-and-coming environmental producers of recycled products, this wouldn’t have happened without setting off on a Coral Cay expedition back in 1999. Life has changed, and I love it!
Coral Cay Conservation uses Remarkable pencils on all its expedition sites. Each pencil is made from one recycled plastic cup. Remarkable pencils saved 3 million cups from going into UK landfill sites in 2002.
For more information on Remarkable, visit: www.remarkable.co.uk
