Coral Restoration in the Dominican Republic

As we all now know, Covid-19 Pandemic brought drastic changes to our daily lives, and also for the Planet and its natural environments. Due to reduced human activities as results of global wide lockdown measures, nature was able to rest from humans, news came quickly about nature taking over its space, its state, and scientist scramble to measure this unprecedented event. As we knew that corals and fish were not going to show mayor changes in just a couple of months, we decide to measure water quality around tourist areas of our country during lock down (when humans were not around), and compare it to open water and also to past water quality studies (when humans were around). Results showed that the oceans were able to clean themselves as quickly as in 1 month, showing how resilient nature can be, and that if we let natural resources rest for a bit, many good changes can come.

But climate change is still around, and despite almost no humans were in our coasts, we had the hotters summers ever recorded, which made the oceans warmer than ever. As expected, many corals suffered bleaching (expelling their symbiotic algae, which given them about 90% of their energy intake), and never recovered, resulting in mass mortality in most if not all of our coral nurseries.

It is time to rethink how we fix nature: either by actively restoring it, or perhaps finding new ways to just let it be, without us.

We inform you that this project will be de activated, and a new strategy will be posted soon on this incredible venue for collaboration, GlobalGiving. We thank each and every donor in a very special way, and we hope to see each of you, side by side in our new strategy coming out soon.

Sincerely,

Ruben Torres