Snorkel just a few metres off the coast of Mnemba Atoll and you enter another world. Parrotfish crunch on coral, moray eels peek from crevices, and schools of yellow snappers move like a single organism.
A City Built by Tiny Architects
Every reef you see was built, polyp by polyp, over thousands of years. Corals are animals — colonies of tiny cnidarians living in symbiosis with photosynthetic algae called zooxanthellae. The algae feed the coral; the coral gives the algae a home.
Break that partnership and the reef turns white. Bleaching events like the one in 2016 killed roughly a third of the corals we monitor around Mnemba.
The Pressures
Reefs are under pressure from warming seas, destructive fishing practices and coastal development. Even a single anchor dropped on live coral can undo a century of growth.
Runoff from land carries sediment and nutrients that smother corals and fuel algae overgrowth. Fixing the reef often begins with fixing the coastline behind it.
Our Coral Nursery
Our coral nursery programme grows resilient fragments in protected lagoons and outplants them onto degraded reef sections. We favour heat-tolerant genotypes identified after the last bleaching event.
Volunteers can join outplanting dives during the calm season, learning underwater gardening techniques used on reef-restoration projects worldwide.
The Reef and You
Every visitor to our aquarium helps fund this work — and takes home the knowledge to protect reefs wherever they travel next. Choose reef-safe sunscreen, keep your fins away from the coral, and never buy shell or coral souvenirs.
A healthy reef is a living rainbow. Let's keep it that way.
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