Coral gardening tourism in Vanuatu

Transcript

A new eco-tourism venture aimed at reversing the effects of climate change on coral reefs has been launched in Vanuatu.

Coral gardening, or mariculture, involves snorkeling to reattach broken pieces of coral to damaged reefs, which eventually grow into full size coral colonies.

A Secretariat of the Pacific Community technical advisor in Vanuatu, Christopher Bartlett, says the project was launched last week at Worasiviu Village on Pele Island.

Dr Bartlett says it gives tourists a chance to take action against climate change, with the funds raised by those participating going towards other climate change projects.

CHRISTOPHER BARTLETT: Throughout the Pacific, you've got communities that are getting very involved, very engaged in adaptation in many sectors, agriculture, livestock, forestry. But I think in the marine sector it's particularly difficult to do something real, do something where communities feel like they are affecting change or enabling adaptation. So the idea behind the coral garden was to take advantage of kind of the natural potential for coral reefs to regenerate vegetatively, they can reproduce both sexually and asexually. And to allow coral reefs the opportunity to grow in places that you want them to.

Climate change has severe impacts, people are noticing severe impacts on coral reefs from bleaching and ocean acidification, as well as storm damage, sedimentation from rain run-off et cetera, and I think coral reefs are one of those first indicators that you see that there are real, serious problems in the environment. So this was a way that we could let communities feel like they're doing something positive. The day was about youth, women, men going out and collecting coral fragments that had been broken by storms, or currents or waves, and then bringing them into this coral garden location, so we put beds down. This activity was primarily intended to engage tourism.

MARY BAINES: So tourists will be able to come and snorkel and put their own piece of coral down on the bed?

CB: The coral garden, or these beds, that were put underwater, are in quite shallow waters so five metres, four metres, so tourists can actually snorkel down and attach their own fragment of coral onto the coral garden bed and it's kind of their living souvenir that they'll remember the rest of their lives, they feel like they came and left a part of themselves here in Vanuatu. And of course they leave some money behind. So there's two options, you can do the coral planting on your own and then pay a small fee, or you can sponsor someone from the village to go out and do some coral planting for you. And then the money that's generated through that eco-tourism activity then can go for further climate change adaptation activities. So the things that aren't really particularly exciting for tourists like doing reef surveys or setting up coral monitoring or setting up fish aggregating devices, the coral planting income can then support those other activities, so it is a way to pull together the climate change adaptation aspect, the environmental awareness and education aspect and this tourism income generating aspect, all towards better climate change future.

MB: Has this kind of venture be done before?

CB: Coral mariculture is a technique that has been practiced widely around the world and usually, people would practise coral mariculture to rehabilitate or regenerate, the experience though is that it is quite expensive and it's also impossible to regenerate an entire reef. So this activity is very much geared towards eco-tourists. So we're not expecting the entire reef is going to be fixed by this coral gardening but it is definitely a way that we can get tourism involved and then again generate revenue.