Coral Reef Restoration & Conservation In Mexico

Thank you for your continued support of our coral reef research project in Mexico. 

Your contributions support vital work in conserving the Mesoamerican Coral Reef System. A reef that stretches over 1000 km along the coasts of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras.   This reef system supports more than 500 species of fish and 65 species of stony coral.

Climate change, compounded by issues such as overfishing, pollution and the impacts of coastal development affect the health of the coral reef system. It's vital that we take action to restore the health of the reef.  

One of these actions is coral reef restoration via coral reef nurseries.

We have worked with our partner Inapesca to transfer the Coral Estrella Montaña (Orbicella Faveolata) from our coral nursery to the reef. 

To do this, we remove the coral trays from the nursery and clean them up. Next, we clean an area of the reef to plant a cement dome, and finally, we plant the coral fragments in the cement, which eventually will grow over.

The coral fragments  grew in our nursery for 6 months and finally reached a size where we could move them out into the ecosystem to grow into larger colonies.

The method of coral fragmentation we and our partners use is a 5 step process:

1)  We take a section of a healthy coral from a large, strong wild colony.

2) We move coral to a controlled lab environment to be fragmented, this increases the speed of which the coral can grow.

3) The coral fragments are kept in a lab to heal and begin growing.

4) Fragments are moved to a nursery near the area they will be planted.

5) The fragments are moved into the reef ecosystem to grow by themselves.

Its rewarding to be part of this process with our partners and we look forward to monitoring the success and reporting to you.

In June we took the time to enjoy World Reef Awareness Day. It was an opportunity to reflect on how vital the ocean’s coral reefs are, as well as how fortunate we are to get to experience them every day!  

We appreciate your support and recognise that your donations can make projects like the coral reef nursery effective.

Thank you,

The Mexico team