Staghorn coral and elkhorn coral were once dominant species on reefs in Oracabessa. Now a mere fraction of their populations survive.

Our coral restoration initiative started with a small scale restoration effort by Seascape Caribbean’s Andrew Ross which was funded by Golden Eye. The fish sanctuary eventually took over the restoration effort and over the years garnered funding support from United Nations Office for Special Programs, Counterpart International, Australian Direct Aid Program, Caribsave (DIFID), Seacology and the Tourism Enhancement fund to greatly expand the program, train spear fishermen as scuba diving coral gardeners and plant over 15,000 corals onto reefs inside the sanctuary.

We focus on the propagation of these corals because they form ‘thicket’ habitats that are important fish habitat. We see our program therefore as habitat restoration and an ecosystem based management measure.

The goals of our coral restoration program are to increase the amount of live coral in the sanctuary, and to maintain coral nurseries with samples of corals from the wild as a gene bank and reserve stock for ongoing restoration.