The coral reef restoration begins!

After the setting up of the snorkeling trail providing an improved snorkeling experience to guests and giving awareness about coral reefs biodiversity and conservation, “Unlock the sea” starts a restoration project of the coral reef!

 "Ecological restoration is the process of assisting a degraded, damaged or destroyed ecosystem back as close as possible to its original state in terms of structure and functions." (1)

A Hawksbill turtle swimming over the coral reef 


The global rapid decline of coral reefs due to natural and anthropogenic factors has led to the promotion of novel restoration approaches. One of the most promising and effective method is the “gardening” concept of active restoration, a two-step process: nurseries and transplantation .Small colonies or isolated fragments are farmed in in-situ underwater nurseries or reared first in ex-situ nurseries before being transplanted onto damaged reef areas when they have reached the adequate size (2,3).
The Seychelles coral reefs have suffered badly from the 1998 bleaching event with a loss of 90% live coral cover (4). The recovery has been extremely slow, with a mean coral cover of only 7.5% in 2005 (5), which has promoted active restoration efforts to assist natural recovery of the coral reefs.
Aishah, René and Chloé building the in-situ coral nurseries
The Fisherman’s Cove project is the first coral reef restoration project involving nurseries on the north-west coast of Mahé. The team is composed full time by Chloé and Aishah, who you may have seen on Cerf Island, and joined by interns and volunteers! The team has begun to build framed floating rope nurseries. This nursery design consists in a PVC frame with rope lines tied along, it is anchored to the substrate and maintained at a certain depth by buoys. The fragments will be attached to monofilament lines to avoid competitive algae overgrowth and fouling organisms thus promoting growth and survivorship of the corals. Coral fragments used are “corals of opportunity” which are fragments broken-off their colony by different causes (storms, snorkelers and  divers, boat anchoring …) that have a poor chance of survival if left loose in sand or rubbles (1). Importantly, these corals have survived the last bleaching events, thus representing good target for reef restoration purposes and to propagate in nurseries. Their transplantation will spread resistant genotypes and therefore enhance the resilience of the restored areas (6, 7).
The nurseries are almost ready to go in the water…Lets save coral reefs! To be continued!

 Written by Chloé Pozas-Schacre
A broken Acropora coral colony. Be careful with your fins!

 Sources:
(1)   Edwards, A.J., Gomez, E.D., Coral Reef Targeted Research & Capacity Building for Management Program, 2007. Reef restoration concepts & guidelines: making sensible management choices in the face of uncertainty. Coral Reef Targeted Research & Capacity Building for Management Program, St. Lucia, QLD, Australia.

(2)   Epstein, N., Bak, R.P.M., Rinkevich, B., 2001. Strategies for Gardening Denuded Coral Reef Areas: The Applicability of Using Different Types of Coral Material for Reef Restoration. Restoration Ecology 9, 432–442. 

(3)   Rinkevich, B., 1995. Restoration strategies for coral reefs damages by recreational activities: the use of sexual and asexual recruits. Restor. Ecol., 3, 241-251.

(4)   Goreau, T., McClanahan, T., Hayes, R., Strong, A.L., 2000. Conservation of coral reefs after the 1998 global bleaching event. Conservation Biology, 14(1), 5-15

(5)   Graham, N.A., Wilson, S.K., Jennings, S., Polunin, N.V., Bijoux, J.P., Robinson, J., 2006. Dynamic fragility of oceanic coral reef ecosystems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103, 8425–8429.

(6)   Rinkevich, B., 2015. Climate change and active reef restoration—ways of constructing the “reefs of tomorrow”. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, 3(1), 111-127.

(7)   van Oppen, M. J., Oliver, J. K., Putnam, H. M., Gates, R. D., 2015. Building coral reef resilience through assisted evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(8), 2307-2313.

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