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.

Coral reefs around the world are in great danger. We already lost more than 50% of them, and the list of their threats keeps on growing. Their survival is greatly jeopardised, but a group of villagers on Nusa Penida, a small touristic island southeast of Bali, together with a local NGO called Ocean Gardener decided to start fixing up their reef which got damaged by large tourist pontoon moorings and boat anchoring.

To turn around the fate of their coral reef, the village first decided to revoke the pontoon license. It was then moved to another location, while fixed moorings were installed for diving boats. This was followed by the formation of a ‘Kelompok’, an association of villagers, and a coral lover group named Nuansa Pulau to educate and protect their reef. Led by their charismatic elder Pak Nyoman Karya, and together with different associations, including Ocean Gardener, they started to plant thousands of corals on their reef as part of their coral restoration project.