Artificial reef restores village fishing grouns in Bunaken

Artificial reef restores village fishing grouns in Bunaken

Mark Erdmann
Contributor
Bunaken, North Sulawesi

Throughout this country and Southeast Asia, the illegal practice
of blast fishing has destroyed vast areas of once productive
coral reef areas.

Homemade explosives are effective in killing large schools of
fish with a single blast, but unfortunately also destroy the
delicate coral framework that serves as shelter for coral reef
fishes.

Repeated blasting of prime fishing grounds quickly reduces
reefs to rubble fields that support very few fish and often show
no signs of recovery, even decades after the blasting stops. The
constantly shifting coral rubble smothers any new coral colonies
and largely prevents recovery.

Fortunately, the science (and art!) of reef rehabilitation is
beginning to make headway in "jump-starting" the natural recovery
process for those reef areas where management has brought blast-
fishing under control, but legacy damage remains.

Villagers from Manado Tua Island in Bunaken National Park here
recently received a generous grant from the Seacology Foundation
of California (www.seacology.org) to become the world's first
large-scale demonstration site for the new EcoReef reef
rehabilitation technology.

EcoReefs are snowflake-shaped modules made of nontoxic,
microporous ceramic and designed to mimic branching coral
colonies. The modules are anchored in clusters into rubble
fields, where they act to stabilize the substrate and provide
immediate shelter for reef fishes.

Over time, the modules are colonized by corals and other reef
animals that will eventually overgrow the ceramic modules,
creating a natural reef that supports productive reef fisheries
once again.

The Seacology Foundation awarded the EcoReefs grant (worth
over US$20,000) to Manado Tua II village in recognition of the
villagers' strong commitment to preserving their reef systems and
the fisheries that depend upon them by designating a series of
five "no-take" sanctuary zones around their island.

The villagers requested that Seacology fund a reef
rehabilitation program for a roughly 1 hectare stretch of reef
that was once the most productive fishing area on the island
before blast fishers leveled the reef over 15 years ago. Over the
course of three weeks of mostly heavy seas and bad weather,
Manado Tua villagers worked in close coordination with USAID's
Natural Resources Management Project and 11 dive operators from
the North Sulawesi Watersports Association (NSWA; see website at
www.bunaken.info) to transport, assemble and install 620 EcoReef
modules.

Beginning on Dec. 15, 2003, the villagers set up two enormous
outside workshops, where men, women and children worked side by
side for three days to assemble and epoxy the modules. On Dec.
17, the dive operators braved foul weather to return (with a
number of interested guests) to transport the assembled modules
to the rehabilitation site and install them underwater.

During the installation, the villagers held a special service
to bless the reefs, followed by a gala feast together with the
dive operator staff who were volunteering time to install the
EcoReefs. Approximately 60 divers donated several hundred hours
of dive time to install roughly half of the modules before large
waves forced the boats to return home.

Over the course of Christmas and New Year's celebrations,
several dedicated dive operators continued to make opportunistic
runs to Manado Tua through heavy seas to install additional
modules, but the weather prevented many from participating.
Finally, on Jan. 10, NSWA operators showed up again in force to
complete the job and install the remaining 190 modules.

While the Manado Tua villagers have pledged patience in
allowing three to five years for the rehabilitation project to
increase coral cover and fish abundance in the area, many dive
operators were astonished to see the rapid colonization of the
EcoReef modules.

Over the three-week period before the second "installation
party", the EcoReef modules were colonized by various algae and
were already sheltering a large number of young herbivorous
fishes, who were busily grazing algae off the modules as divers
worked around them.

Villagers have been excitedly monitoring the progress of the
rehabilitation site, which they consider to be a marine
"community bank account" that will provide fish resources for
their grandchildren -- provided they carefully protect it from
further disturbances.

Photographs and video of the Manado Tua rehabilitation project
will soon be available for viewing on the EcoReefs website,
www.ecoreefs.com.

The writer is the North Sulawesi provincial advisor to USAID's
Natural Resources Management Project.