In August 2017 we started the first large-scale coral reef restoration project in Colombia in San Andrés and Providencia. The project seeks to preserve the tourism, fishing and coastal protection services that coral reefs provide to the inhabitants of the archipelago through the implementation of strategies that promote natural recovery and the construction of resilient reefs as well as offering a source of economic income to local communities. The project corresponds to Phase 2 of the "Bigger, More Effective: Undertaking Large-Scale Coral Reef Restoration in Colombia" initiative by Corales de Paz. The flagship strategy of the project is Coral Gardening, which consists of the rehabilitation of coral reefs through the massive cultivation of coral fragments in underwater nurseries and their subsequent transplantation in deteriorated reefs.

 

 

In the first stage of the project, nine (9) nurseries were built (5 in San Andrés and 4 in Providencia) and a stock of 13,453 fragments of nine (9) different species of coral was generated, including Deer Horn corals, Acropora cervicornis and A. palmata, that are critically endangered. With this result, the history of coral gardening in Colombia has been rewritten. Twelve months after its first sowing, average fragment survival rates above 80% are observed, percentages within the reference values ​​found for the cultivation of A. cervicornis in the Caribbean. Between September and October 2018 a pilot was conducted where 500 colonies grown in nurseries were transplanted in coral areas of San Andrés and Providencia.

 

 

Corals of Peace began its work in San Andrés and Providencia, Colombian Caribbean and now it has begun to expand to the Maldives and Seychelles, and soon to the Eastern Tropical Pacific.