Small, Native Communities Making Changes

~The local Nywaigi people, who live in Mangalla, realized that centuries of cattle farming on their land (or wetlands) had caused pesticides, fertilizer, and sediments to leak into the wet lands and then out to the GBR and smother corals. They have since started a conservation project to prevent this; they moved the farms farther inland and got rid of invasive plant species that kept the marsh from filtering water heading toward the GBR. Also, the newly healthy wetlands provide a buffer for the reef.

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Educating Locals on How to Help Their Coral Reefs

Organizations such as Rare are working in third world countries with communities that lack in environmental knowledge. They have worked in Indonesia to help restore the coral reef and fish populations. At first glance it may seem as if rare is working with them just to help the people with food, but they have taken part in many projects that are purely “eco-education.” In Indonesia they did actually establish new ruled in the communities they worked with. Overfishing in the community was leading to a change is the ecosystem of the coral reefs, which then hurt the fish population even more. The only negative consequence of restoring the coral reefs is that once restored there will not still be volunteers there to enforce the rules. The newly thriving coral reefs will entice many fishers, and the lack of law enforcement could result in the entire conundrum of overfishing happening again. But, trusting that this does not happen, this method of giving locals a new environmentally friendly mindset has proven to be very effective.

Organizations that focus on teaching small communities how to protect their coral is useful as well. One such organization is RARE. They have reached out to 56 countries and over 10 million people in order to help communities become more ecologically friendly. They had helped Indonesian communities by teaching them about over-fishing, in turn helping to prevent coral reef’s ecosystems. One community they visited was Triton Bay, in which they established 4 no-fishing/ interfering zones, educated people on what the zones were, and stopped 35% of people who were not following the rules on fishing in the community. Since then, fish populations have re-established the fish and coral population

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Small Tourist Locations Making Eco-friendly Choices

Hotels/eco-lodges are working towards educating their guests on making sustaiable choices to help support coral reefs around the world. For example, the Outrigger Konotta Maldives Resort is working towards recovering the coral that has been affected by coral bleaching on its grounds. They have implemented classes for guests at their resort who choose to dive on how to protect the reefs. They also have metal structures in the water on which they take broken, once dying coral fragmenrs and attatch them to the metal framwork to allow it to recover with soy based wire. The metal structure also doubles as a place for fish to live and clean themselves.

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Implementing New, Environmentally Friendly Fishing Practices

While passing new regulations that are enforced is helpful, it is an overall long process that involves a lot of legal work. Companies involved in the fishing industry can do their own part to help protect coral reefs. Some are installing electric motors to reduce carbon emission, which helps prevent climate change, then coral bleaching lessens, and the fisher benefits. A large cycle, but with enough companies taking part in it a change could be made. Using lead-free tackle prevents lead from getting into coral reefs, which poisons polyps. The easiest solution would be to litter less, for trash is easily snagged on coral which can prevent the coral from receiving enough sunlight and suffocate surrounding sea life the fishing industries needs.

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