D
eptherapy’s long-planned, two-week marine biology course at Roots Red Sea was, yet again, cancelled due to COVID. Deptherapy approached Regal Dive to urgently find a COVID ‘green’ location in October that offered good diving. 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
42
