Grenada

Deptherapy’s long-planned, two-week marine

The two-year marine biology programme is funded by the Armed Forces’ Covenant Fund Trust (AFCFT), who agreed to change the objectives of our grant to allow an expedition to occur this year. The Board and beneficiaries of Deptherapy are extremely grateful to the AFCFT and our strategic partners, the Invictus Games’ Foundation, for allowing us to change our plans at the last minute.

Grenada was identified as the ideal location and a frenzy of activity took place to ensure the expedition happened. Sadly, a couple of days before departure, Tom Oates, who was to lead a two-day reef survey at the end of our stay on the island, contracted COVID and was unable to travel.

Presently, under Grenada’s COVID rules, you have to have a PCR ‘fit to fly’ test within 72 hours of your outbound flight and apply for a Pure Blue ‘COVID’ passport, plus an ‘on arrival’ PCR test, followed by quarantine until the result comes through. Our on-arrival test results were back within 24 hours.

After Deptherapy’s long-planned expedition to Egypt was cancelled due to COVID travel restrictions, the organisation needed to find a suitable ‘green’ alternative – and Grenada ticked all of the boxes, as Richard Cullen explains

Photographs by Stuart Green

BA arranged for a dedicated check-in at Gatwick and we were given priority boarding. This is essential as many of those with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder do not like being in crowds and, for wheelchair users, getting them on the plane first is essential.

We were staying at The Pure Blue Bay Boutique Resort and they arranged for us to be ‘fast tracked’ through the airport, which was much appreciated. A day of quarantine was spent by a pool that had been specifically set aside for us. Aquanauts Divers is located within the resort and therefore there are no long journeys to the dive centre, just a chilled stroll after breakfast.

Grenada has suffered badly from a lack of tourism due to COVID and our arrival was a major event. Grenada is well known for the warmth of its welcome. Our experience of this ‘Spice Island’ was one of happiness and joy.

There were strong currents running during much of our stay, which meant that we unfortunately could not get out to the wreck of the ocean-going liner, the iconic Bianca C.

Aquanauts was taken over by the Geer family in 2021 and is very much a family affair, with dad Tom, daughter Tiffany and son Tyler on the boat with us most days. Tom and Tyler are Handicapped Scuba Association (HSA) trained. There is a real buzz on the boat especially when captained by Bruce, who is a character you will never forget. Bruce seems to have 360-degree vision when SMBs and divers are popping up everywhere. Aquanauts’ boats are ideal for getting divers like Corey into and out of the water. Due to two beneficiaries having to drop out of the expedition, we selected the two ‘best divers’ as identified by instructors from the August RAID Open Water 20 course. These two beneficiaries were incredulous at their rapid promotion to what they both described as the ‘expedition of a lifetime’.

One of them, Gary Daye, said: “I was expecting to wake up and find it was all a dream, open water in August, to Grenada in October, just unreal. I did three dives to 35m; I took part in a two-day reef survey. That is the stuff of dreams. I have my own mental health issues to deal with but having the opportunity to dive with Corey, who at 21 has been living with paraplegia for three years, revelling in his diving, made me focus on the positives.”

Day one we dived the wreck of the Veronica L, and our second dive was a drift along a reef called Dr Groom’s. We were running RAID Advanced 35, RAID Deep and RAID

Nitrox courses, so there was lots of work for the students establishing SAC rates. In the evening a reception was organised for us by True Blue/Aquanauts and a pleasant evening was had by all. Day 2, our first dive was on the wreck of the Tyrrell

Bay, a US Coastguard vessel that was sunk as a diver attraction and artificial reef. There was a strong current but each course carried out their work with instructor Sharon, supported by Deptherapy beneficiary Tom Swarbrick supervising Keiron in completing the remaining parts of his

RAID Advanced Wreck Course that he undertook in Malta. The second dive of the day was on the Purple Rain reef, lots of aquatic life, including lionfish, which Exploring the is an invasive species in the Caribbean Sea. holds of a After lunch, the team ran some workshops for shipwreck the beneficiaries, these included one focusing on basic equipment maintenance, additional quizzes for the Nitrox course, followed by an interactive session on the T Formula, Surface Air Consumption (SAC) rates and dive planning. It also looked at PPO2. Day 3 saw three dives, firstly the Shakem, a cargo ship that sank because its cargo of cement bags shifted during a storm. A strong current saw us ascend the mooring line at the end of the dive looking like sheets in the wind. The second was on the Quarter Wreck, a wreck which had been cut in four, a great drift with lots of soft and hard coral. The Lighthouse Reef was the highlight of the day, lots of big stingray and nurse sharks. Away from the reef there was a very

strong current and SMBs were popping up everywhere. In the evening we ran a 50-question diving and general knowledge quiz, the winner being Nick Lindsay, who won a Chilly’s bottle. Day 4 began with us visiting the wreck of the cargo ship, Anina, but very strong currents - which would be a major factor all day - prevented us diving the wreck, so we headed to Spice Island and Dr Groom’s reefs in the morning. After lunch, it was a short boat journey to Shark Reef. What we experienced was a drift dive that many described as stronger and longer than the dive known as the Kuredu Express in the Maldives. Turtles and sharks were briefly glimpsed in this high-speed drift. The team were very impressed with how Advanced 35 students Nick Lindsay and Gary Daye coped with the dive and held their safety stop while deploying a DSMB in challenging conditions. Quality training pays dividends.

Day 4 we split the team, with the ‘deep’ team completing two 30m plus dives and the remainder reef diving. The first dive saw the ‘deep’ team dive to the Rum Runner wreck at about 35m while the other team dived the Windmill Valleys. The second dive saw both groups on the Black Forest reef, but with the deep team carrying out another 30m-plus dive.

On our return we changed into our Deptherapy T-shirts for a meeting with Petra Roach, the CEO of the Grenada Tourist Authority, and Emil Edwards, who is the Sales Manager for the UK.

Day 5 was a non-diving day and we were honoured by a visit from the Grenadian Minister of Tourism, Dr Clarice Modeste Curwen. The Grenadian Government are really supportive of our work and she presented us with a book about Grenada. The Minister also asked if we would be prepared to work with local communities to show that even with the most-challenging disabilities, you can achieve.

In the evening we had a Zoom link with Tom Oates in the UK - he gave a presentation about the target fish for our two-day reef survey and how we would achieve our objectives. Tiffany from Aquanauts was with us. Jason Court then worked out the teams and allocated specific tasks to be completed.

After a recorded interview with Now Grenada, we started our reef survey that would last our final two days. The sea was fairly choppy but we made our way out to the Marine Park with its memorable sculptures, then to Flamingo Bay to conduct the Reef Survey.

There was lots of aquatic life activity on the reef and after laying a transept line, data recording began. This included video recording conducted by Corey using a GoPro. As Corey has paraplegia, he has to use his arms to propel him through the water. He required both hands to use his GoPro. This meant Deptherapy’s ability to adapt and overcome came to the fore. Tom Swarbrick, one of our ambassadors, propelled Corey through the water, thus allowing him to video the reef and manually record data.

The report on the health of the reef will be written by Tom Oates and presented to the Grenada Tourist Authority and the Royal Geographical Society, with a foreword from our Vice President Paul Rose.

All too soon, our ten-day expedition was over and it was time to return home, leaving our amazing new friends at the True Blue Bay Boutique Resort and Aquanauts Grenada behind. Until we meet again… n