Coral Gardening & Restoration

Date: October 16, 2024

Project Goal

To support conservation and restoration of the marine ecosystems of the PBPA and to increase community support for (Ecosystem Based Management) EBM by improving awareness and engagement.

Project objectives

Objective 1

Increase capacity for coral reef restoration by 75% by 31 September 2020 by increasing the number of coral trees from one to a minimum of four units expanding the area of the coral nursery, and out-planting a minimum of 500 corals to nearby natural and artificial reefs

6 Activities under Objective 1:

Host training and planting workshop for C-CAM staff, fishers and other volunteers in coral out-planting
Expand physical aspects of nursery site
Collect corals for expanded nursery site
Plant corals in expanded nursery site
Monitor/maintain expanded nursery site
Record activities through videos and photography and use them on social media

Objective 2

Engage a minimum of 100 Portland Bight fisherfolks from at least six of the eight PBPA beaches in the marine EBM awareness or implementation activities.

6 Activities under Objective 1:

Design coral reef restoration and ecology education and awareness programme
Implement education and awareness programme
Host special meeting of PBFMC on reef ecology, reef restoration and artificial reefs
Host special meeting of PBFMC on the features EBM

Challenges

Impacts of COVID-19:

Number of persons who can gather in one place for meetings and field work
Reduced funding which affected staff time
Closure of PBDC – venue for meetings and training sessions
Need to make space COVID 19 ready for meetings/training (additional cost)
Poor weather impacted field work

Solutions

Hybrid sessions – face to face & online sessions

Field work with C-CAM team only