“On Indonesia’s Nusa Penida, a local community takes coral restoration into its own hands to preserve their coral reef for future generations.” Article featured in Ocean Geographic Magazine.
Coral reef restoration is a popular subject at the moment with many projects sprouting all over the world. One of them caught our attention. In Indonesia, a coastal community of 26 young locals took the matter into their own hands and decided to fix their own damaged reef where they grew up, swam, and fished as young kids. Throughout their lifetimes, they have seen the local coral colonies slowly disappear, while the fish have gotten smaller, and some species have completely disappeared. Suddenly, there were no more Napoleon wrasses, large sharks left the area and giant clams were distant memories.
To the untrained eye, this place seems abundant with marine life. That’s the problem of so-called shifting baselines. The eye gets used to it, and if you haven’t seen what it looked like before, you won’t be able to notice the changes. But for people that grew up here, the change in marine life is striking.
