An estimated 25% of all marine life, including over 4,000 fish species, depends on coral reefs at some point in their life cycle. But as global temperatures rise, the asphyxiated corals bleach faster than they can recover, triggering severe downstream consequences to ecosystems and people.
Ocean heat waves cause stress for sensitive corals. Even a rise of just one degree Celsius for only four weeks can trigger bleaching in a coral. If ocean temperatures stay high for eight weeks or longer, the coral cannot recover and begins to die. Half of the world’s reefs have already been lost, and they may disappear completely by 2050 without action.
The ocean kids
Ocean conservationists and marine biologists are working overtime to mitigate the catastrophic situation. And with the support of community groups like the Coral Gardeners, a collective of young ocean advocates intent on protecting the oceans, reef restoration is slowly building itself into a global movement.
The Coral Gardeners are led by Titouan Bernicot, who grew up on a small atoll in French Polynesia, where his parents cultivated Tahitian pearls. From a young age, he was fascinated by the underwater world, learning to swim before he could walk, surrounded by sharks and expansive coral reefs.
For Bernicot and his friends, the coral reefs and dazzling blue waters of the island of Mo’orea were a playground where they spent as much time as possible free-diving and surfing. But their carefree existence changed when they were shocked that their local reef was bleaching beneath their feet, dying from increased ocean heat and pollution. They decided that they could not allow their beloved reef to disappear.
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An aerial view of the Coral Gardeners team at a coral nursery in Mo’orea, French Polynesia
In 2017, at only 18, Bernicot founded Coral Gardeners, which has grown today into an association determined to revolutionise ocean conservation through reef restoration efforts, awareness activities and innovative solutions.
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Bernicot inspects a recently cut piece of coral which will be further fragmented and placed into a coral nursery
Bringing a new approach to raising awareness and inspiring younger audiences, the Coral Gardeners have the reef conservation company's largest social media presence. Their videos and images have reached over 200 million people in just over five years, with over half a million followers on their Instagram accounts. Their stunning imagery and informative videos are geared towards a young audience looking to the future of conservation and hoping to spark passion around ocean protection.
Coral Gardeners founder and CEO Titouan Bernicot inspects a coral nursery which attracts an array of marine life
As part of their reef conservation efforts, the Coral Gardeners help to rejuvenate the reefs through coral planting. Based on the advice given to them by experts and scientists, they clip fragments of coral to cultivate in coral nurseries for over 12 to 18 months before out-planting them back onto nearby reefs using marine cement. “We are not all marine biologists but have spent thousands of hours under the surface. We see, observe, and learn things,” says Bernicot.
Coral Gardeners have about 10,000 corals growing underwater in six nursery sites scattered across French Polynesia. Today, they have reached their initial goal of 30,000 corals planted, doubling the number of plantings in the preceding five years.
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Using the latest techniques and technologies, they continuously monitor the health and growth of the corals. Titouan can already see the tangible impact their gardening has had on the reef as colours and life return.
Digitising reef restoration
The Gardeners’ passion and ambition have garnered international support, including from Rolex, who for nearly a century has supported individuals and organisations harnessing science and technology to solve the Earth’s environmental challenges.
“It’s an honour to join the legacy of people from the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, following the path of inspiring scientists, explorers, and Sylvia Earle. It makes me want to get into the water and do more,” he adds.
The extra funding has enabled the team to work with software company CG Labs to explore a more integrated and intuitive way to mine and share information with the community. They are developing a new platform, ReefOS, to connect the reef to smartphones and computers to monitor the work they are doing more efficiently. Their engineers are continually working together to optimise and scale up coral reef conservation in an open-source, collaborative, and effective way — a philosophy of continuous refinement that resonates with Rolex.
The artificial intelligence system combines hardware and software to document every growing process aspect. This includes underwater cameras that help identify fish species as they repopulate the reef, 3D mapping of reefs and outplant sites to improve monitoring, and developing an app to pool data across restoration sites.
Bernicot says: “The idea of CG Labs is to develop tomorrow’s solutions for scientists and coral reef restoration practitioners. It’s important to use modern tools to speed up our work. I would love to connect conservation projects like the [oceans are] connected.”
The aim is that this technology will scale up reef restoration around the world. The organisation plans to open branches globally and empower local communities to become gardeners and protect their reefs through field training and guidance.
This year, the Coral Gardeners will open up a branch in Fiji and work with community leaders, fishermen and surfers to build the right reef restoration and conservation programme. The initial site visits with scientists were successful, and all partners are excited to see where the gardeners’ approach to conservation can take them.
