What is the best method to restore the degraded coral reefs?

Indonesian’s coral reefs have known have the highest coral diversity in the world with 18% of world’s coral reefs situated in this area. Unfortunately, destructive fishing, overfishing, sedimentation, pollution have put these resources in a great danger that lead to major degradation.

Reef restoration is one of the answers to foster the recovery of the degraded reefs. However, there are many techniques offering many advantages and in the same time also have disadvantages. The confusion on which technique best for the reefs restoration were answered by few student from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. They studied 6 reefs restoration techniques; Do Nothing, Tire Reefs, Coral Nubbins, Rock Piles, EcoReefs®, and Biorock® with blast-damaged reefs at Bunaken National Park, Indonesia, as the case study. They combine Multi-Criteria Analysis, literature study, scenario development, stakeholder analysis, and expert opinions from Europe and Asian countries. The criteria considered in the study were maximizing the ecological sustainability, increasing the social acceptability, and generating the economic growth.

This study concluded that the best technique for reefs restoration was shared between EcoReefs®, that proved more ecologically sustainable, and Rock Piles that is more socially acceptable. On the contrary, the Do Nothing and Tire Reefs alternatives were the least viable options. Due to some limitations, this study suggested that relevant stakeholder and expert involvement were still required for further decision and policy making.

Further information, please download the full report here.