[Coral-List] Last 3 days to apply for upcoming - REEF BUILDING WORKSHOP

[Franziska Elmer]

Dear Coral list,

As much as I agree that restoration may be fruitless if we do not address stressors that lead to reef decline in the first place, I  also 100% agree with Austin who stated that pointing this out whenever someone is posting about reef restoration on coral list is not helpful. Mainly because often no solutions on how to adress these stressors are given. Can we as a community collect examples and case studies from places that addressed these stressors successfully? Because not doing restoration and artificial reefs is not an option right now. Many reefs need restoration efforts or artifical reef additions to fullfill their functions. So we need to find a way that reef restoration can be successful, and that is by finding ways to address the underlying causes of reef decline and sharing them between us and with our local governments and decision makes. We need to do restoration AND address these stressors.

As for land based run off, last year we had Healty Reefs Roatan share with us a great success story on how they got better waste water treatment on their island, with coral reef professionals taking a lead on this. Please have a listen at minute 23 of their presentation at Global Coral Reef Week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtuHss32iFI
Do we have more examples of success stories like this? Can we share them here? Is anyone working on collecting these into something like a best practises guide?

I think we can tackle the problems surrounding reef restoration with a  "YES, lets do this, AND lets also address..." attitude instead of shutting down ideas by saying "NO, dont do that, BECAUSE...". Maybe reef restoration will be the perfect way to sell cleaning up land based run off to local governments and decision makers.

Best,

Franziska Elmer, PhD
www.franziskaelmer.weebly.com