2010 has been an extraordinary year on Koh Tao. Very warm sea temperatures couple with flat, calm seas and intense sunlight has lead to severe stresses on our corals. Most of the coral bleached, a good proportion of them are currently in a state of recovery and unfortunately a few have died.

In light of these events the people of the Save Koh Tao Group, together with the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources and scientists from the Prince of Songkhla University have embarked on an ambitious project to regenerate the coral population of our small island.

Eco Interns, Instructors and Divemasters all got involved to help construct the coral nursery tables

Coral nurseries are being developed in large numbers around the island, on a semi-industrial scale allowing for the propagation of small coral colonies. Nurseries operate like cuttings in a garden. You can take a small colony of coral, plant it in a coral nursery bed, up out of the sand, away from harm, where it can proliferate and clone itself to make the colony grow larger.

Once these colonies have grown to a sufficient size they may be returned to natural reef areas in desperate need of some rehabilitation due to external stressors.

Eco Koh Tao and Crystal Dive teamed up with university scientists today to assemble and deploy the first batch of 6 coral nursery tables in Mae Haad. We managed to get the tables underwater and assembled and even transplant a few corals onto them. We will be collecting corals of opportunity over the coming few days to fully populate our nurseries and try to return the surrounding 

Thank you to the many people who helped on this first of many days of work both on the surface and underwater.

Return to News