EcoReefs News

Recent news, articles and updates about EcoReefs projects.

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Reprinted from MPA News Vol. 5, No. 9 (April 2004)

MPA Perspective: When Is Coral Reef Rehabilitation an Appropriate Use of MPA Funding?
by Mark Erdmann, Bunaken National Park (Indonesia)

Over the past few years, a range of coral reef rehabilitation techniques has been developed, many involving the placement of three-dimensional hard substrate forms (including cement, rock and ceramic) in areas of degraded reef. Although the science of reef restoration ecology is truly in its infancy (and hence a steep learning curve is to be expected), these methodologies have tended to draw a negative response from reef ecologists, who often compare them to the many ill-conceived artificial reef projects of the past - including dumping of used tires to create "reefs" that aggregate fishes. These skeptics maintain that reef rehabilitation is expensive and drains resources that would be more prudently dedicated to better management of intact reefs, and that it is best to allow natural reef recovery processes to run their course in degraded areas.

While these criticisms certainly have merit and should be carefully considered by MPA managers on a case-by-case basis, I strongly believe that there are situations where reef rehabilitation (defined herein as efforts to enhance natural reef recovery processes in areas that have suffered severe degradation, with the end goal of returning the reef to its natural condition prior to damage) is an appropriate intervention...

...One case study is Bunaken National Park in Indonesia, where blast fishing has been largely brought under control but large areas of rubble field remain (many blasted nearly 20 years ago). Two stakeholder groups have shown strong interest in rehabilitating these rubble fields to increase productive reef area: village fishers eager for enhanced fisheries yields and dive operators hoping to spread effort among more dive sites and thus raise the diver carrying capacity of the park.

Completed in mid-January 2004, the results to date have already been impressive. The ceramic "snowflakes", designed to mimic a branching coral thicket, immediately attracted large numbers of both schooling and sedentary fishes to the previously barren and lifeless rubble field. Benthic recruitment to the modules has been rapid, with coralline algae, bryozoans, vermetid worms, tunicates, and hard coral recruits now covering the modules. Perhaps most encouragingly, over one hundred coral fragments transplanted to the EcoReef modules (by simply wedging between the ceramic spines) have shown 100% survival, with nearly two-thirds of the fragments cementing to the modules and laying down new tissue over the ceramic in the first two months. Additional transplantation is scheduled for May 2004...

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Reprinted with the permission of MPA News

Reprinted from Rodale's Scuba Diving, January/February 2004

China Syndrome: Ceramic Snowflakes Jump-Start Reefs
by Bucky McMahon

While earning a Ph.D. in integrative biology at Berkeley, Michael Moore witnessed the obliteration of Pacific Reefs by dynamite fishing. "In some places there had been no recovery at all," says the 38-year-old entreprenuer. "This got me thinking about the eco-requirements of jump-starting the process..."

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Reprinted with the permission of Rodale's Scuba Diving.
Copyright © 2004 Rodale's Scuba Diving magazine.

Reprinted from NRM Headline News, January 31, 2004

January, 2004, Manado -- Manado Tua Villagers and NSWA Dive Operators Cooperate to Install EcoReefs

Over the course of three weeks of mostly heavy seas and bad weather, villagers from Manado Tua Island in Bunaken National Park worked in close coordination with NRM and 13 dive operators from the North Sulawesi Watersports Association to transport, assemble and install 620 ceramic EcoReef modules as part of a coral reef rehabilitation program funded by the Seacology Foundation of California (www.seacology.org). Seacology awarded the EcoReefs grant (worth over $20,000) to Manado Tua II village in recognition of the villagers’ strong commitment to preserving their reef systems and the fisheries that depend upon them by setting up a series of five "no-take" sanctuary zones around their island. The villagers requested that Seacology fund a reef rehabilitation program for a roughly 1 hectare stretch of reef that was once the most productive fishing area on the island before blast fishers leveled the reef over 15 years ago. Sadly, there has been no natural recovery in this vast rubble field, though the placement of the 620 EcoReef modules will hopefully stabilize the substrate, provide an immediate shelter for reef fishes, and promote recovery of this reef area into a productive fishery area once again.

After dive operators donated boat and staff time to transport over 900 boxes of ceramic components to Manado Tua on 15 December, the villagers set up two enormous outside workshops to assemble the snowflake-shaped modules. Men, women and children worked side by side for 3 days to assemble and epoxy the modules. On 17 December, the dive operators braved foul weather to return (with a number of interested guests) to transport the assembled modules to the rehabilitation site and install them underwater. During the installation, the villagers held a special church service to bless the reefs, followed by a gala feast together with the dive operator staff who were volunteering time to install the EcoReefs. Approximately 60 divers donated several hundred hours of dive time to install roughly half of the modules before foul weather forced the boats to return home. NRM Outreach staff escorted a group of radio, tv and newspaper journalists through the heavy seas to document the event, which was covered on a number of news shows. Unfortunately, the weather prevented the Vice Governor of North Sulawesi and other politicians from attending the event.

Over the course of Christmas and New Year’s celebrations, several dedicated dive operators continued to make opportunistic runs to Manado Tua through the large waves to install additional modules, but the weather prevented many from participating. Finally, on 10 January, NSWA operators showed up again in force to complete the job and install the remaining 190 modules. The Vice Governor will preside over a special ceremonial event to inaugurate both the reef rehabilitation and another Seacology-funded project, the Bunaken Village community landing dock, in early February.

While the Manado Tua villagers have pledged patience in allowing 3-5 years for the rehabilitation project to increase coral cover and fish abundance in the area, many dive operators were astonished to see the rapid colonization of the EcoReef modules installed on 17 December. Over the three week period before the second "installation party", the EcoReef modules acquired an algal and coralline algal fouling community and were already sheltering a large number of young herbivorous fishes, who were busily grazing algae off the modules as divers worked around them. Villagers will help monitor the progress of the EcoReefs in conjunction with a Packard Foundation grant to The Management Center’s Natural Equity group to monitor the economic and conservation benefits of the Manado Tua rehabilitation program over the next three years. NSWA dive operators are also cooperating with this study to help assess the per-hectare value of Bunaken’s reefs (in terms of dive tourism and fisheries) and thereby determine if large-scale reef rehabilitation is cost-effective and overall beneficial to local economies.

Mark V Erdmann
North Sulawesi Provincial Advisor
NRM III/EPIQ/USAID

October, 2003, Berkeley -- Seacology funds community-based coral reef restoration and education project in El Nido, Palawan Province (Philippines).

Reprinted from Seacology News, October 2003

El Nido Foundation and Seacology team up to rehabilitate Philippine reefs:

"In response to the area's decline fish populations and degraded coral reef, ten El Nido villages are establishing no-take zones totalling approximately 2000 acres. In exchange Seacology is providing 600 EcoReef modules to faciliate reef restoration"

Seacology is the world's premier nonprofit, nongovernmental organization with the sole and unique purpose of preserving the environments and cultures of islands throughout the globe.

Reprinted with permission of Seacology. Copyright © Seacology 2002.

August, 2003, Palo Alto -- Packard Foundation awards $165K to examine the economic and biological benefits of large-scale EcoReefs rehabilitations.

The 2003 Grants for Conservation and Science Program of the David and Lucille Packard Foundation awarded $164,840 to Natural Equity to examine the efficacy of large-scale EcoReefs coral reef rehabilitations.

Project: "The Economic and Conservation Benefits of Coral Reef Rehabilitation: A Case Study for MPA Management, Bunaken National Park, Indonesia"

The overall goal of the project is to examine the efficacy of large-scale reef rehabilitation as a conservation tool. Specific objectives include:

1. Measuring the success of large-scale EcoReef installations as a tool for rehabilitating damaged reef habitat and depleted fish stocks.
2. Developing analytical frameworks for understanding and expressing the economic value of reef restoration in terms that can easily be understood by policy-makers, developers, marine protected area managers communities, and the tourism sector.
3. Identifying options and conditions for successful large-scale reef rehabilitation in other MPAs.

Natural Equity and EcoReefs will implement this project the next three years.

Natural Equity creates direct incentives for long-term conservation by appealing to individual interests.

November, 2002, Berkeley -- Seacology funds large-scale reef restoration project on Manado Tua Island, Bunaken National Park, North Sulawesi (Indonesia).

Reprinted from Seacology News, November 2002

Manado Tua Island is a towering extinct volcano fringed with picturesque reef drop-offs and capped with a rainforest at its summit. The island's 3,200 inhabitants form a very tightly-knit community of farmers and fishermen who cling tenaciously to their Sangir cultural traditions. Large sections of Manado Tua's coral reef have been reduced to rubble fields due to blast fishing activities that took place over a decade ago. With Seacology's assistance, Manado Tua villagers will install EcoReef modules, snowflake-shaped ceramic modules that are design to mimic branching corals, providing shelter to fish and providing a surface for larval corals to build a new reef. In return, villagers will expand their current "no-take" reef zones to include five acres of reef containing the EcoReef modules.

Seacology is the world's premier nonprofit, nongovernmental organization with the sole and unique purpose of preserving the environments and cultures of islands throughout the globe.

Reprinted with permission of Seacology. Copyright © Seacology 2002.

Berkeley Science Review, Fall 2002/Vol. 2 No. 2 , "Environment"

Constructing Coral
by Sneha Desai

The world's reefs are disappearing. How do we stem the tide?
Hundreds of colorful fish dart chaotically in and around a canopy made of millions of branching fingersof pink, green and brown coral. Above the surface, a man in a small wooden boat throws a homemade overboard. It arcs through the air and hits the warm blue water. A moment passes, then a fountain of water sprays up. In the silence that follows, a few fish carcasses float th the surface, while many more sink to the ocean floor, blanketing a crater in the shattered coral reef...

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Reprinted with permission from the Berkeley Science Review, Copyright © 2002.

October 15, 2002, Washington, DC -- United States Patent awarded for EcoReefs® reef restoration modules.

Patent No. 6,464,429 "Artificial Reef Module for Coral Reef Restoration" to Michael D. Moore, filed February 23, 2001.

ABSTRACT: The artificial reef module for coral reef remediation of the present invention includes a central body having an upper settling plate, a middle settling plate, and a lower settling plate. Extending from the central body is a plurality of primary tines which further include a plurality of secondary tines extending from them. The primary tines include the supporting tines, the stabilizing tines, and the space filling tines. The branching of the tines closely replicates the appearance of natural branching coral. Over time the individual artificial reef modules for coral reef remediation would slowly degrade and allow the tines to break off. This degredation closely approximates the fragmentation that occurs with natural branching coral.

Reprinted from Conservation in Practice, Summer 2002/Vol. 3 No. 3 , "Tools and Techniques"

EcoReefs: A New Tool For Coral Reef Restoration
by Michael Moore and Mark Erdmann

Karang Palsu, or fake coral, was the best term we could find when trying to describe a new artificial reef system to local community members in Bunaken National Park, Indonesia. We were asking their permission to conduct a 3-year pilot project to restore local reefs damaged by blast fishing. The building blocks of this restoration technology are spiny, snowflake-shaped pieces of ceramic that interconnect to mimic natural reef thickets of branching Acroporid corals, typical pioneering species in barren reef areas of the Pacific...

Click here to download the complete article in PDF format

Reprinted with permission from Conservation In Practice.
Copyright © 2002 Society for Conservation Biology.

Reprinted from NRM Headline News, Issue 33, October 31, 2001

October 18, 2001, Manado -- EcoReefs installs its first demonstration reef in Bunaken National Park, N. Sulawesi (Indonesia).

The innovative ceramic artificial reef system will be regularly monitored to measure how rapidly fish and corals recruit onto the structure. Well received by local diver operators and reef conservationists, it is hoped that this demonstration will pave the way for future large-scale reef remediation efforts within the Park.

June 22, 2001, San Francisco -- EcoReefs launches at the Second Symposium on Marine Conservation Biology, San Francisco State University.

More than 400 conservationists, researchers, and policy specialists attended this four day meeting to discuss future directions for conservation and restoration of global marine resources. Hosted by the Marine Conservation Biology Institute.