Transporting transplanted corals.

This project aims to establish coral nursery for future coral rehabilitation in the north coast of Sumbawa City. To realize it, the objectives of this project are to:

Coral transplantation.

(1) raise youth knowledge and skills about coral nursery through hands-on training,

(2) identify adaptive corals in the nursery for future rehabilitation

(3) explore fishers’ perception about the established nursery and ideas for future collaborative management through visits to coral nursery and discussion.

Fixed nursery methods will be used. We will construct rope nursery, tray nursery, and A shaped nursery at both sites at three different depths based on the depth variation in the planned rehabilitation site. The transplants will be derived from “corals of opportunity” (natural fragments on the reef that have a poor chance of survival) or fragments removed from intact colonies at the reference site or similar reef. Maximum ten percent of a donor colony may be removed. Photos will be taken before and after fragments are taken from a donor colony.

Monitoring will be conducted once every two weeks at both sites. But data will be collected once every two months. We will collect data on growth and color. The growth will be measured using ruler. The color will be identified using coral health chart. In addition, corals will be photographed with scaled white and black frame. We will identify which coral grows fastest and more adaptive in the degraded sites. We will compare the coral performance in the nursery in both sites.

In each monitoring session, we will invite two to three fishers to visit the nursery and followed by discussion on fishers’ perception about youth initiative on coral nursery. Whether they think it is useful, giving hope, or useless. We will also explore ideas from fishers about how youth and fishers can collaborate in coral rehabilitation program to benefit fishers and conservation.

Youth will produce film and brochures about why, how, and where youth are making coral nurseries.The film will be used for advocacy to the government. The brochures will be circulated to fishers around the project site so that wider fishers become aware that we are trying to make coral nursery and requesting their cooperation to not put their boat anchor and use poisonous substance at particular sites. Household approach will be done in giving the brochures and explaining the information.