Coral restoration by and for local communities

Hello,

"A huge beach with colorful rocks (corals) coming out of the water. During low tide we could walk to the rocky pools in the sea and just stick our hand in them to catch big parrotfish."

When you ask the grandparents of local communities what Diani Beach looked like when they were young that is what they will tell you.

Diani Beach, Kenya, has one of the most beautiful pristine beaches in East Africa. In 2019 REEFolution Foundation was approached by local stakeholders in Diani. They had growing concerns about the decline of the coral reefs and fish, the fast amounts of seagrass washing ashore and the slowly disappearing 15km pristine beach. They fear their livelihoods are at stake.

Nowadays fishermen have to go to the open sea, risking their lives to try to catch enough fish for their families.

Diani Beach. You can see brown rocks sticking out of the water, these are the coral skeleton remnants of what once was a colorful coral reef. Also, one of the resorts has built a sand attenuation barrier to regain some beach.

In 1997 a coral bleaching event killed 66%-80% of the corals on the South coast of Kenya. Only protected areas showed recovery, Diani was not one of them.

But this can change, by mimicking REEFolution’s successful coral reef restoration project in Shimoni we can also restore the coral reefs in Diani.

A pilot project started in 2020

We trained local community members to become REEF Rangers. They restore coral reefs, raise awareness among local communities and educate school children about coral reefs.

The project proved successful on a small scale and we are upscaling the project. This led to the creation of the Diani Reefo Divers project.

It started with one coral tree nursery of 60 saved coral fragments and we now have 1200 coral fragments ready to be outplanted to the degraded reef.

Education

Local community involvement is key to establishing locally managed and protected marine reserves for coral recovery.

To bring coral reefs to local communities and classrooms we created a special open-source VR dive experience. Which is compatible with any smartphone or tablet.

We like to restore 1460m2 by outplanting 6000 corals on cages, but we lack the funds for the materials and dive operations.

With €60.000 we can bring 1460m2 of coral reef back to life and we prove that the coral reefs in Diani can be restored, showing local stakeholders the benefits of a healthy reef. Enabling protection and restoration of coral reefs along the whole 15km beach of Diani.

Do you like to help us too?

Donate to save this wonderful marine world on which so many Kenyan communities depend.

For €10 we can grow 5 coral fragments.

For €37,50 a REEF Ranger can restore coral reefs for a week.

For €90 we deploy a cage with 18 coral fragments.

For €150 you can adopt a coral tree nursery for one year. Which provides 100 coral fragments per year.

For €1000 we can train a local community member to become a REEF Ranger.

Thank you so much!

ps.

We offer the same Reef Ranger training for any person who likes to put their dive skills to good use. Visit our website for more information.