Nananu-i-Ra CoRal REstoration Project

I first visited Nananu-i-Ra island in Fiji as a backpacker in 2002. My plan was to stay for 3 days but it quickly turned into 3 months. I was lodged at Macdonald's beach cottages and the owner, Maxine became a dear friend.  I fell in love with the island and the snorkeling right outside your bure door! I have since been tied emotionally to the island, taking friends and family there on vacation, I was then married there and over the years taken my children there. It is an island close to my heart.  

I met Jan Arone who also had a strong connection to Nananu-i-Ra. She had been the head of Pacific Harbour School and over the span of 20 years, had annually taken her students to Nananu-i-Ra to do field studies there. She is hugely passionate about the island and the environment. She wanted to give back and initiated a coral restoration project on Nananu-i-Ra, we had all seen how the reef had been degraded there over the years, as many of the reefs in Fiji have been. She brought on board a coral expert Victor Bonito of Reef Explorers, who also had a connection to this special island. 

Victor did a recon visit to the island  and set a plan out for us. He worked with his team to collect fragments of coral that were tolerant to the rising water temperature. We then spent a weekend setting up the nursery. This involved attaching live coral fragments to concrete disks and setting them onto racks that were positioned in the safety of the bay. 

6 months later we went back as a group to check on them. This is were Victor introduced to the snail the Drupella that feeds on the coral polyps and can do a lot damage. He also talked to us about the crown of thorns starfish and the damage they can do to coral reefs. He taught us to spot the signs of these corallivores. 

A year after the first visit we went back to check on the corals which had now grown and we out planted them onto the reef. We then restocked the nursery.

We have managed to do 1 more out planting and restocking of the nursery before we were in lockdown due to the COVID virus. 

We are all excited to get back up there to continue this project. 

See below some photos from the project and how you can support it.