Help With Coral Restoration
When You're in Bali!
Give back to the reefs by spending a few days helping with maintaining and expanding our coral restoration sites.
Due to popular request, we have started our coral restoration volunteer program. While we prioritize giving coastal communities employment in coral restoration and eco-tourism, we understand there are a lot of visitors who are passionate about marine life and coral reefs, and want to give back to the planet if they have a few extra days in Bali, or are on a longer sabbatical.
As we are a small NGO, our donations and fundings need to go directly toward coral restoration and research. As such, we ask that volunteers pay for the costs incurred during their stay (accommodations, rental of scuba equipment, food, etc). We can help you in arranging for them.
If you are searching for a dive aboard or work-away opportunities where lodging and equipment are all covered, other organizations would be a better fit.
How Our Program Works
Our volunteer program is centered around our restoration sites in Nusa Penida, starting with a training course, then a build your own itinerary for volunteer days.
To ensure you have the proper training, we ask that you have taken or complete one of our prerequisite courses. These courses will teach you how to correctly identify common corals, take proper precautions to avoid damaging them or getting stung, recognize coral-eating predators for their removal —all crucial skills for maintaining healthy coral nurseries and reefs.
Prerequisite courses
- Intro to Coral Restoration: This course will enable you to assist as a citizen marine biologist with daily tasks like maintaining coral nurseries and restoration sites.
- Full Coral Restoration Cert: This comprehensive course allows you to help with the above tasks, plus more complex duties such as photogrammetry, advanced coral planting, and detailed monitoring tasks, thanks to your deeper knowledge.
After the training course, you can let us know which days you wish to volunteer. We can organize the shore or boat dives for the days with a certified team member to accompany you for safety.
What will you do during your volunteer time?
Typically, the tasks you will perform are those covered in your Intro to Coral Restoration course.
- Expansion of restoration site through coral planting
- Combing the restoration site and coral nursery for coral predators (Crown of Thorns starfish and Drupella snails) and removing them
- Cleaning coral ropes and nursery of algae
Full Certification graduates can tackle more complex tasks like helping with research transects, photogrammetry, etc.
Costs associated
Volunteer Requirements
To ensure the safety of our delicate corals and a rewarding experience for you, we require volunteers to be:
- At least 14 years old
- PADI/SSI Open Water Diver*
- Have completed one of the three prerequisite courses*
- Demonstrate good buoyancy control to safely perform coral restoration tasks.
* Don’t have these certifications yet? No problem! Go ahead and apply, and we can help you get certified before you start your incredible journey with us.
Can I volunteer if I haven’t done Scuba before?
The basic cert for Scuba is the PADI Open Water Diver. We can arrange for you to take this course before we begin the Coral Restoration training.
No worries. Go ahead and fill out the application form and we can coordinate for you take the certification courses before you start volunteering.
Why do I need diving insurance?
Since diving is most importantly about safety we require all volunteers and team members of the CCRRP to have diving insurance. For the relatively inexpensive cost of less than $100USD per year you can get full worldwide coverage. If you don’t have it already, we recommend getting the DAN Enhanced Membership along with their Diving Insurance Preferred Plan:
https://dan.org/membership-insurance/dive-insurance/
