Who could resist a beach clean at 5pm on a Tuesday? Certainly not me!
About an hour before sunset on Nusa Lembongan, a small island just off Bali, I joined the team from French Kiss Diving and Project Rescue Ocean on their weekly Tuesday late afternoon beach clean.
Just 200 metres north of the dive school, 13 of us spent an hour combing the shoreline. The haul? Plastic bottles, glass, metal bars, fishing debris… the usual collection of things that definitely don’t belong on a beach.
Sadly, it was low tide, and one of the dive team explained that the ebbing tide had already taken a lot of the rubbish back out to sea. Even so, we collected a respectable pile in just an hour, all of which will now be recycled.
As always, I get chatting with people from around the world who are passionate about coral reef restoration as I am (after all you don’t get the nickname coralnerd from talking about the weather).
A topic that kept coming up is artificial reef structures. Most people love the MARRS reef star design that have become popular in restoration projects. I can understand why, they’re easy to make, easy to stack, easy to plant, easy to deploy and easy to scale. But once I explain my concern that the space beneath a star doesn’t really create the complex habitat of a natural reef, the conversation changes. Show a photo of a lionfish or a blacktip reef shark sitting underneath, waiting for small fish to swim by, and there’s usually a pause…
“You’re right… so how would you promote habitat instead?”
My reply, that’s the important question we need to get reef restoration projects around the world to think about: Size or quality of your reef restoration project? (Secret: quality response wins every time)
Reef restoration shouldn’t just be about creating somewhere for corals to grow. It should be about rebuilding the complexity of a functioning reef ecosystem, providing shelter, refuge and biodiversity, not simply somewhere that predators can wait for dinner.
I know I’m very controversial in my thinking and go against 99.9% or the marine science community. But If you’re actively involved in reef restoration, what would you do today to your reef star reef restoration site to provide habitat? Or do you prefer easy option, deploy a basketball pitch every few days and wait?