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New Restoration Partnership for Dominican Reefs

- Announcement
SECORE International and the reef restoration organization FUNDEMAR have formed a new partnership to conserve and restore coral reefs in the Dominican Republic.

Their five-year cooperation includes sharing of information, as well as testing, strengthening and implementing the most effective, scalable coral reef restoration strategies to give Dominican coral reefs a future.

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Photo: Coral reef in the Caribbean Sea (Paul A. Selvaggio)

 

Coral reefs in the Dominican Republic have undergone widespread change over the past century, driven by coastal development, pollution, overfishing, the introduction of invasive species, and increasing ocean temperatures. “Our coast is ringed with coral reefs in highly variable condition. Some are still healthy and show coral coverage of more than 60 percent, others have degraded dramatically so that their coral coverage is less than five to ten percent”, says Dr. Rita Sellares, Executive Director of Fundación Dominicana de Estudios Marinos (FUNDEMAR).

FUNDEMAR started its coral restoration program in 2011, working closely with stakeholders from local hotels, dive centers and communities. Together they run eight coral gardens, focusing on reef restoration based on fragmentation technologies. Since 2015, FUNDEMAR has also been leading the establishment and implementation of larval propagation programs in the Dominican Republic – a project that will now be up-scaled with the help of SECORE International.

“FUNDEMAR is a perfect partner for the Global Coral Restoration Project. It has a multidisciplinary team of biologists, ecologists, and educators capable of acting with scientific rigor. Very beneficial is Fundemar’s network of highly motivated local and international volunteers that help the organization to mobilize its knowledge, resources and efforts”, says Dr. Dirk Petersen, Founder and Executive Director of SECORE International.

Beginning in 2019, FUNDEMAR plans to perform field trials in the Dominican Republic of larval propagation technologies and methodologies developed by SECORE and its partners. They hope this is the first step in growing their larval propagation program to meet the coral restoration needs of the Dominican Republic. “SECORE’s strategy of up-scaling coral reef restoration through sexual coral reproduction is exactly what we are looking for – and we can’t wait to learn from SECORE and start working with its new restoration tools such as the floating larval rearing pool and the new seeding units”, Rita Sellares adds.

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Photo: FUNDEMAR scientists Ana Carolina Hernandez (white shirt, left) Rita Sellares (white shirt, right), and Andreina Valdez Trinidad (right) are helping to install the first prototype of SECORE's floating larval rearing pool on Curaçao. This photo was taken during a workshop on coral reproduction and reef restoration, hosted by CARMABI and SECORE in June 2018 on Curaçao (Aric Bickel)

 

This year, FUNDEMAR staff and partners are participating in SECORE’s Coral Restoration Capacity Building Workshops. Simultaneously, FUNDEMAR will conduct spawning observations of potential target species on the Dominican reefs, followed by SECORE site visits to assist with the site selection and program setup later this year. In the long run, the goal is not just to increase the number of species used for restoration and the coral settlers outplanted, but also to ensure that coral reef restoration activities become an integral part of local coral reef management plans. Recently, FUNDEMAR has become an active stakeholder in the management of the new Southeast Marine Sanctuary, located at the Eastern tip of the Dominican Republic.

For more information about FUNDEMAR, check their website. More information about SECORE’s Global Coral Restoration Project is provided here.

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