Ecosystem Restoration Caribbean Netherlands Project #67081

Giving Tuesday 2024 - Coral Restoration in Bonaire

by Reef Renewal Foundation Bonaire

Project Report | Sep 22, 2025
End of Summer Update from Reef Renewal Foundation Bonaire

By Perri Rappaport | Fundraising & Planning Associate

Thanks to the generosity of supporters like you, Reef Renewal Foundation Bonaire has had an incredibly impactful few months. From breakthroughs in coral breeding to ongoing large-scale outplanting, your support is fueling real change for Bonaire’s reefs.

This year’s spawning season was especially exciting. Our team successfully collected coral spawn from three species — Pillar corals, Staghorn corals, and Boulder Brain corals. For the first time in Bonaire’s history, we were able to collect both sperm and eggs from the endangered Pillar coral. This milestone is not only a first for our island, but also a critical step in securing a future for this vulnerable species.

Pillar corals, often called the “canary of the reef,” have suffered severe declines on Bonaire due to SCTLD and back-to-back marine heatwaves. Today, only a handful of scattered colonies remain — too far apart to reproduce naturally. Without intervention, this species faces functional extinction here, just as it has in Florida and other parts of the Caribbean. Your support is helping us rewrite that story.

Beyond coral breeding, our team has also been expanding restoration efforts at our newest outplanting site, Petrie’s Pillar. Since opening the site, we have outplanted nearly 5,000 corals, giving degraded reefs a chance to recover and thrive.

Together, our coral breeding and outplanting efforts highlight the importance of a multifaceted approach to reef restoration. With your continued support, we are not only increasing coral abundance, but also safeguarding the genetic diversity that will help reefs adapt to a changing ocean.

Links:

https://www.reefrenewalbonaire.org/

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Jun 6, 2025
Spring update from RRFB

By Perri Rappaport | Reef Restoration Technician

Thanks to your generous support, we’ve been able to expand our coral restoration efforts in meaningful ways — increasing our outplanting capacity, advancing our coral breeding program, and organizing a community-wide event that brought even more people into the heart of our mission.

We’re thrilled to share that we’ve successfully completed our outplanting project at Punt Vierkant! Over the course of multiple dive days, our dedicated team of staff and volunteers outplanted nearly 900 corals at this nursery site. Even more exciting, we’ve launched a brand-new restoration site at Petrie’s Pillar, where we’ve already restored more than 2,000 corals to the reef!

In a major milestone for coral restoration on Bonaire, RRFB observed grooved brain coral spawning during a night dive and successfully collected eggs and sperm from 14 colonies across four locations. From this, our team produced over 236,000 genetically unique coral larvae in a temporary land-based lab — a hopeful sign for the future, especially after two difficult years of widespread coral bleaching and Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD). With so many healthy coral colonies now scarce or too dispersed to reproduce naturally, this achievement marks a critical step forward.

On Sunday, June 1st, we also hosted our 7th annual ReeFiesta, bringing together more than 200 community members, including divers, snorkelers, dive shop instructors, RRFB staff, and sponsors, to celebrate World Reef Awareness Day. The day began with a series of guided coral restoration dives and snorkel tours across 13 nursery sites around Bonaire and Klein Bonaire, involving over 120 participants. Following a morning presentation on RRFB’s work and the importance of reef health, the celebration continued into the evening with food, drinks, a raffle, and coral-themed trivia — a perfect way to honor the ocean and the community working to protect it.

Thank you for being an essential part of this journey. With your continued support, we’re making real progress toward a healthier, more resilient reef ecosystem for Bonaire and beyond.

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Feb 12, 2025
RRFB's Giving Tuesday 2024 Fundraiser

By Caitie Reza | Communication and Development Officer

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