A Seychelles-based environmental non-profit is spearheading a project to build Africa’s first on-land regenerative coral aquaculture facility, paving the way for innovating coral reef conservation and restoration in the region.
The Assisted Recovery of Corals (ARC) – located at Amitie, Praslin Island – will act as a coral bank to preserve the genetic diversity of corals in the country, according to non-profit Nature Seychelles.
“We need to grow corals in a protected environment,” Nirmal Shah, chief executive at Nature Seychelles, told Carbon Pulse. “Our aim is to get them used to heat gradually, so they resist or withstand temperature changes, and become more resilient.”
In 2010, Nature Seychelles started the first-ever large-scale active reef restoration project in the region on Praslin Island using “underwater nurseries”, where they planted and grew around 60,000 corals on over 5,000 acres.
However, as climate change has caused an increase in storms and underwater currents, ocean warming, and coral bleaching, the organisation decided to move its restoration work to the land to mitigate the effects.
The project will apply micro-fragmentation techniques, which entail breaking corals into tiny pieces and cultivating them under optimal conditions to foster their growth.
According to a recent study, degraded coral reefs can recover at an “incredible” pace, and after just four years of management they can grow at the same speed as healthy ones. Yet, they tend to be poorer in biodiversity compared to natural reefs.
In light of that, Shah told Carbon Pulse that Nature Seychelles is also planning to collect larvae and grow them in the facility in a bid to promote sexual propagation through a natural process known as ‘spawning’.
“This is the key to diversity,” Shah said. “By doing so, we’re not dealing with the same genes all the time, and we can boost diversity in the ecosystems.”
“Our approach is unique. We are doing more focused and concentrated scientific work on these corals rather than just cutting little pieces and throwing them underwater.”
FUNDING ISSUES
The ARC facility is funded with a $135,000 allocation from the Adaptation Fund-UNDP as a part of a larger $1.2-milion grant for coral reef restoration activities and research.
Additionally, the project received a contribution of over $148,600 from the global shipping and logistics company CMA CGM, and an allocation of over $55,700 from the Seychelles Conservation and Climate Adaptation Trust (SeyCCAT) for building a public education area.
The money pledged by the SeyCCAT is part of the Seychelles’ recent debt-for-nature swap, which enables a country to get its external debt partially cancelled in exchange for the debtor government’s commitment to pay for environmental projects.
In the Seychelles, as well as in Belize, the mechanism aims to play a positive role in establishing marine protected areas (MPAs) by providing financial support to the government.
However, according to Shah, the allocation isn’t enough to face high running costs and supply delays caused by the war in Yemen.
“It’s a very small amount of money for this kind of facility,” he told Carbon Pulse.
But Shah is sceptical about the nascent biodiversity market’s role in mobilising private financing through conservation and restoration programmes in the country.
“Everybody keeps talking about carbon and biodiversity markets, but I think our market is too small for these things to work,” he said.
Instead, Nature Seychelles hopes bilateral collaboration with Australia and the US will yield additional funding for the project in the future.
By Giada Ferraglioni – giada@carbon-pulse.com
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