Communities and also visitors to corals will be made aware about the global environmental concerns.
Inovative Financial Mechanisms
N/A
Significant Participation of Indigenous Peoples
N/A
Policy Impact
N/A
Replication of project activities
This work will be continued and willing to start in several new localities in east coast. The transplanted colonies as well as the associated invertebrates will continue to be monitor during the next 5 years through the WRCT regional office members and volunteers. The colonies will also be examined for reproduction during this period. We are planning additional transplantations with more species in order to continue to deepen our knowledge and to collect more information, allowing us to create a new technology and methodology available for costal managers and decision makers to use.
Capacity - Building Component
Training programs will be done to build capacity on various income generation industries.
Notable Community Participation
Under the reef keeper program they involve in monitoring the pollutants to the reef by any means. Several CBO will be formed to carry out the work as well.
Emphasis on Sustainable Livelihoods
WRCT staff will help the communities to create alternate livelihood industries and also distributional and marketing mechanism.
Project Results
8. Results
The first phase of the project is successfully completed at the end of September 2011. However, project researchers and community groups who are involved in the project are still carrying out their work. The financial support for the project continuity provides from profit income of dry fish small scale industry and ecotourism which are started during the project period. WRCT think continues monitoring for health condition of the reef is very important.
? To date
In total of 1square kilometer of coral habitats has been restore in the project areas which involve the planting and raising of 1200 coral nubbins. The process of introducing new coral species (extinct species from the sites) has begun with 300 coral nubbins and those nubbins been raised in coral nurseries to plant in the future.
? Time Line
WRCT estimates that with assistance replanted coral nubbins should have re-grown enough to offer significant reef protection within 10 years. However the trained village members are doing their ecotourism activities inside the reef. Except WRCT staff villagers are also monitoring for physical debris and threats on the site. Still the area is demarcated by lines, buoys and ?WRCT flags?. The re-establishment of reef offers permanent solution as long as the areas are no over exploited or degraded and providing nursery grounds for marine organisms.
The most important outcome of this project is that the new concept of the Gardening Coral Reefs was found to be an applicable technique that can replace direct transplantation methods. Using this method changes the scale at which rehabilitation acts can be done because of the ability to generate a huge stock of new corals that can be used for this purpose and that without any harm to natural reefs. Using this method allows the use of whole colonies, instead of coral fragments, which substantially increases the corals' ability to acclimate in the damaged areas, and has additional ecological impacts due to the spatial complexity of a colony as compared to fragments.
The second important outcome of this project is the fact that by using this method, not only the coral community is rehabilitated, but the whole carrying capacity of the habitat is increased due to the new ecological and spatial niches added to the site. This allows reef associated invertebrates and fish to colonize the new space, and thus, the number of fish and invertebrates living in the restored area increases. Consequently, by using the gardening method not only the coral community is reinforced, but the whole associated coral reef fauna.
A third important outcome of this project is that by synchronizing the transfer of the new nursery-grown colonies from the nursery to the degraded reef with the reproduction season, their contribution to the restoration of the coral community at the site can be doubled. The new transplants liberate planulae, sometimes in larger numbers than the natural colonies at the site due to the good physiological condition after growing in idyllic conditions at the nursery, and thus further enhance the coral community at the restoration area.
