In order to limit the temperature rise, concrete steps must be taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Dutch government has made international agreements to realize this and it does not sufficiently comply with it. Urgenda, along with nearly 900 co-plaintiffs, sued the State in 2013, forcing them to realize the goals they agreed on. Veran and Frank are also co-plaintiffs because climate change is deadly for coral reefs and the survival of many hundreds of millions of people depending on coral reefs and other living beings on Earth. We can build as many reefs as we want, but if the temperature continues to rise, our efforts are useless.

Urgenda has won the previous court case and the appeal, and then the State appealed to the Supreme Court to ask whether the judiciary can decide on government policy. The Supreme Court ruled on December 20, 2019 that the judiciary is authorized to do so. The ruling is based on European Human Rights. “The government has a duty to protect its citizens from dangerous climate change.” We are very pleased with the clear ruling of the Supreme Court! View the ruling of the Supreme Court here, there is even a summary in English for the many international press attending the ruling, see at 21:45 min. The Supreme Court explains very clearly that the judiciary has the right to force the Dutch government to adhere to agreements and to protect its citizens. It is up to the government with which policy they want to achieve the goals. The Supreme Court makes it very clear that the government must have reduced greenhouse gas emissions with 25% by the end of 2020 compared to level of 1990. Read the entire ruling here, it is in Dutch, the official English version will be available half January.

Urgenda, and 700 other organisation, has made a 50 points plan to reduce greenhouse gases. They want to work together with the Dutch government to reach the climate goals.

The responses to the verdict are very different, from “Great!” and politically coloured answers such as: “Supreme Court? This is the CO2 Council full of D66 (left wing) people!”. But whatever political preference you have, climate change concerns all of us. There is global and scientific consensus that climate change is caused by humans and that the consequences are very serious. There is international agreement that action must be taken to combat further climate change. What legal consequences this ruling has for other situations that the Dutch and other governments must protect its citizens, is still unclear. The fact is that citizens have the right to life and a safe future, which the governments must guarantee.

Luckily there are already many people who are doing their share to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Together we can create a better living environment, and healthy coral reefs as the foundation of life in our ocean.

For English see at 21:45 min

Here are some responses in international media:
BBC
Fortune
NBC News
The Guardian
The New York Times

The post Historical decision by Dutch supreme court appeared first on CoralGardening.

And Indonesia is a country full of such events !!

At the end of May we (Frank and Veran) left packed and sacked from our beloved Koh Tao to another island, an island called Bangka. It is located in Indonesia, just north of North Sulawesi. A small island, full of jungle, with 1500 inhabitants in three small villages, where most of the transport goes over water because there are no roads (and therefore no cars)! It is also surrounded by beautiful reefs and rock formations under water.

We have been on the island previously to orient ourselves, to talk to the owner of one of the resorts who was interested in repairing (parts of) the reef in front of ‘his’ door, to get a feel for the size of the damage caused by dynamite fishing, and what we could do for possible recovery, and of course, education.

What we found gave us energy and inspiration! A very nice project for CoralGardening to deal with, in part because it was possible to train local people in the field of coral conservation and repair, and partly because of the opportunities we saw further in Indonesia in the area of sustainability.

After extensive consultations about the visa possibilities and several visits to the Indonesian embassy in Singapore, we were ready – 6 months as a volunteers in Indonesia. We would have to extend the visa a few times on the spot, but that was all well-arranged in accordance with the guidelines of the Indonesian government.

After arriving at Bangka we immediately hit the jackpot! A big fundraiser with a nationally “world-famous artist,” a dinner with the mayor of one of the major cities in North Sulawesi, and a clean-up dive in which the artist also took part enthusiastically. Wonderful unexpected Indonesia !!

Then we commenced with the project – building, diving, researching, drawing, designing, preparing, giving information, and sharing knowledge with divers, etc etc. That there were a great many mosquitoes and the internet reception was not very good, but we were doing beautiful things !!

So you can imagine our great disappointment when we were told in July that our visa would expire at the end of that month. Further extension was not possible despite the information we had previously received.

Indonesia – land full of unexpected events 

We did everything we could to try to make sure we could not stay longer, but – just like in Thailand – the Indonesian government tightened the rules for the deployment of volunteers and was adamant. There was no alternative but to pack our things. The structure, in the shape of a Dugon, that we have built, was handed over to the people of the resort, so they can deploy it during Coral Day. With pain in our hearts we say goodbye to Bangka and Indonesia.

We are now back in the Netherlands and, after a sad period due to the death of Frank’s mother, a few visits to a doctor due to a persistent arm injury, and several catch-up moments with friends and family, we are in for a few weeks of rest. During which we going to look where our next project might be and which partnerships we could possibly enter into.

If you have ideas or connections that may be of interest to us, please let us know !!

The post Life is also appeared first on CoralGardening.

In May 2016 we took a giant leap, we gave up our house, and moved to Thailand. To start a new project is not easy. Things may go differently than expected, things might go wrong. Other things take much longer than you anticipated. On the other hand, you get help from unexpected sources and the most wonderful people!

Thanks to many donations, sponsors, and volunteers we built an artificial reef on Koh Tao! Here is an overview of what we accomplished together.

The CoralGarden is built in Hin Wong Bay south, the GPS location is: 10°06’04″N – 99°50’59″E

The artificial reef structures of the CoralGarden are deployed on an empty patch of sand in Hin Wong Bay. There was not much marine life in this area, though there are healthy coral reefs nearby.

It total we created ten flowers, one pair of hands, and one tree. We gave each of the flowers a name based on the top portion of the flower. Between the flowers and the natural reef, we deployed bottle nurseries, to create a path for fish to migrate to the new habitat. The flowers and tree are designed for marine life and as structures to accommodate the transplantation of corals. The hands are made for divers, to practice their buoyancy control. Here the map of the CoralGarden:

We have learned a lot during the building of the CoralGarden. In 2015 we deployed a test flower in Hin Fai, which was connected to the Biorock structure of NHRCP, to test new ideas about how to use new materials. This flower is doing great, but the conditions in Hin Wong Bay are completely different. So a couple of flowers were having a difficult time. We had to alter our design to deal with the rough weather conditions and different bacteria in the soil.
Do you want to see the CoralGarden we realised together with you?

See here the CoralGarden

Donate to CoralGardening to be part of our new project!

Video of CoralGarden, coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
to see the video as soon as we release it.

The post Our result: the CoralGarden appeared first on CoralGardening.

Here a good video about dynamite fishing from National Geographic:

Bangka island is really small and remote, there are no cars, no ATM’s and no 7-eleven’s. We are staying at Mimpi Indah Resort, build between the forest and the ocean. The place to work behind the computer is a little bit different from ours on Koh Tao. On Koh Tao there is high speed internet every where. Here is slow and depending on the weather. We will be less online for instance on social media and email.

This is the new workspace at Bangka Island. The one we used last year is in use for the purpose it was designed for. Samati, the man with the golden hands, is rebuilding one of the Mimpi Indah boats. The first materials for the restoration of the reef are delivered. We have started to create the dugong structure.

The post Tears in my diving mask appeared first on CoralGardening.

Suara Pulau educates local communities about the importance of coral reefs and restores coral reefs around Bangka Island. They organised a fundraising event to raise money for the Marine Protected Area on Bangka Island, and Kaka was present for three days to generate more awareness.

The first evening there was a meet and greet diner with Kaka Slank at the Tasikoki Wildlife Rescue Center in Bitung. The whole fundraising dinner was vegan and really delicious. Afterwards Kaka gave an intimate acoustic performance.

The city of Bitung wants to build an artificial reef together to attract more divers. Kaka Slank and the Suara Pulau team went diving to the place where they think a new reef can be build. There was a lot of Indonesian press with us on this trip. We found the dive a lot more quiet.

The same evening there was a talkshow about the importance of a healthy ocean and what action Suara Pulau and Bitung’s government are taking. Kaka gave a concert and here we noticed how popular he is in Indonesia. Everyone wants to make a selfie with him!

The next morning we had breakfast at the house of the mayor of Bitung, to talk more about the artificial reef. Afterwards some fans were allowed to go diving with Kaka Slank on the house reef of Mimpi Indah on Bangka Island.

The fundraising event was a great success. Thank you Ulva, Owen and Kaka that we could be part of this event. For those who want to know, Kaka is a very humble and friendly person. And a question to the real Marco Borsato: do you want to be the ambassador of CoralGardening?

The post Meeting a famous unknown guy appeared first on CoralGardening.

With dozens of promoters of, state of the art diving gear, underwater photography, mermaid swimming lessons, ocean artists, providers of live-a-boards and much more, it was the place to be for anyone interested in diving or being professionally involved. So for CoralGardening it was the perfect opportunity to catch up with our committed partners, colleagues and of course (potential) volunteers. With our decorated kidscorner, we educated the youngest generation about the beauty of our oceans, it’s beautiful coral reefs and numerous species of fish. Because the sad fact is that if people continue to exploit the ocean in this way, their children will probably see more plastic than fish in the ocean.

It is good to see that there are more and more people who understand the importance of healthy oceans and that this theme is also more topical in Asia than ever.

Next to coloring the ocean and admiring how amazing marine life can be and deciding which (single-use) items don’t belong in the ocean we also played several games, kids could design their own new reef and make their own reusable bags. Thanks to mainly Singaporean based volunteers the presence of CoralGardening on ADEX was a huge success!

The post Moving towards a Plastic-Free Future on ADEX 2019 Singapore appeared first on CoralGardening.

In the marine conservation world there are discussions going on about what the best ways are to regrow coral reefs. There are different methods and different conservation projects use them with various results. We aim to use the methods that have best long-term and sustainable results.

Coral reproduces itself in two ways:

• Sexual reproduction
• A-sexual reproduction

Both ways occur in nature or can be manipulated by humans.

Sexual reproduction is the natural process of spawning and coral larval settlement on (newly created) substrate. We humans can intervene with this and can collect during spawning the sperm and eggs and bring them to a laboratory. There coral larval can settle on an artificial substrate. After reaching a certain size the coral is transplanted (with the artificial substrate) to a nursery or straight on the reef in the ocean. Every sexual reproduced coral has new DNA.

If a larvae is settled to a substrate (in nature or in laboratory) it starts growing its first coral polyp. This polyp reproduces itself a-sexual, it clones itself and thus the polyp grows into a colony. One colony consists of many polyps which have the exact same DNA. It typically takes corals 25 to 75 years to reach sexual maturity. When it is sexual mature it releases gametes with sperm and eggs during spawning. The sperm and eggs from the same colony can’t fertilize to form a larvae, because they are from the same mother colony. They need to find egg or sperm from a different coral species.

There are two methods to use a-sexual reproduction as a method to regrow coral reefs.

1) The first method is fragmenting a mother coral colony. This involves breaking a healthy coral colony in many small fragments and connect these fragments on an (artificial) substrate. The fragments will grow on this substrate and start to reproduce themselves a-sexually, With this method you can convert one coral colony into hundreds or even more new colonies. This method generates new colonies in a quick way, because the colonies don’t start from one single polyp, but from a small colony. Most of the time branching coral types, which are fast growing, are clipped to smaller pieces. The downside from this method is, that the growth spurt declines after some time and returns to normal growth rates. More importantly this method creates mono culture. Every new colony has the same DNA as the mother colony, so they can’t reproduce themselves with these new colonies. Also they are vulnerable to the same diseases. This method is mainly used for growing corals for aquariums.

2) The second method is to go around a natural coral reef and look for broken-off pieces of coral. These pieces of corals are broken off by storms, marine life or human disturbance. The pieces (of a certain size) are collected only if they appear alive and healthy, without signs of disease, and if they are not yet overgrown by algal turf or sponges. These corals of hope are connected to the artificial reef and start reproducing themselves asexually. The result is only a few corals from the same colony are attached to form a new reef, one creates more biodiversity by collecting different species. Different growth forms of corals, like plate, foliose, encrusting or even brain coral, if you find one that is broken, can be placed on different locations on the artificial reef. The downside of this method is that it is more time consuming to find the coral pieces, instead of breaking one coral colony into many pieces. Also it takes more time for the slow growing species to form an abundant reef.

CoralGardening only uses the method of collecting broken-off pieces and connect them to artificial reef structures. When we find natural recruits on our structure we are extremely happy. If you want to now more in depth about these methods, just download this document.

The post Coral Transplanting Methodology appeared first on CoralGardening.

We will host activities in the Kids Zone and advice parents, consumers and business on preventing more plastic soup ending up in our ocean which harm our beautiful coral reefs.

You can find CoralGardening at booth KZ02, between the stage with photo and video zone and the swimming pool.

The post Meet us at ADEX 2019 appeared first on CoralGardening.

Since building artificial reefs is our main objective, we don’t want to spend too much time to process the footage afterwards into a beautiful video. That’s how we ended up at Paralenz. This action camera was designed by and for divers. The most unique selling point of this camera is that it adjusts the colour balance to the depth that you dive. For the less experienced divers, a small explanation: Water absorbs sunlight, so visible colours disappear as you go deeper. The first colour that disappears is red, that’s why everything in the water seems to become more blue. Photographers solve this by using flash light or by manually adjusting their camera to the depth where they are at that moment. That is how you get all the colour in the picture. You can also edit the photos on the computer afterwards, in a photo editing program or special designed programs such as Picture-Fix.

Adjusting the colours of video recordings is a lot more complicated. Paralenz has solved that challenge very cleverly. They have an automatic colour correction built into their action camera. The camera measures how deep you are under water and adjusts the footage accordingly. You don’t have to do a colour correction afterwards to create a nice video. This saves you a lot of time when making a video with the raw footage. More about this later.

The operation of the camera is different from the other action cameras. The video or photo mode is selected using the selection ring. Starting the recording or taking the photo is done by the button on the top of the camera. You have to get used to it, but after a while you have a good feel on how it works and it is very handy. The design of the camera is also very cleverly done. It is made in the shape of a torch and you also hold it that way. A lot easier than the average square action cameras. You can also hold it a lot more stable this way.

Something most divers will probably not do, but what is ideal for our work, is the ability to put the camera in your sleeve of your rash guard / wetsuit. I leave the wristband on my wrist, turn the camera around, put it in my sleeve, so that I have both my hands free again. I do what I have to do and as soon as I’m done, camera comes out of the sleeve and I film the work I did.

The only disadvantages of action cameras is of course that you don’t see what you are filming and these types of cameras are intended to make overview footage. You get to see a lot in the picture. That is also the case with the Paralenz. This is of course great if you want to film that whale shark that comes along. Only we are usually focused on small pieces of coral or coral fish. And there the Paralenz surprised me positively! It surprised me how close you can get to your subject and that you still have very nice footage.

And then of course the most important question: “How are the video images you make with the camera? Are they indeed as beautiful as the advertising films show?” I can only say: “Yes!” As a non-professional videographer I have incredibly beautiful footage. The disadvantage is that I now have too many video and photo recordings, which takes more time to select what can be used for the video. ”;-)

I am not an experienced product reviewer, but most reviews always ask the question: “Do you recommend this product?” I say: “Yes!” The footage are incredible and the organization behind Paralenz is also extremely helpful. If you have questions, they will answer you very quickly. Several divers who saw my footage have put Paralenz on their shortlist for a new camera.

Have fun diving and filming.


Subscibe to our YouTube channel to see out latest video’s.

The post Paralenz in action appeared first on CoralGardening.

With a trusty team of enthusiastic volunteers, we managed to educate countless visitors about the CoralGardening vision, and the three pillars thereof; Educate, Protect, and Restore. There was once gain a well attended workshop about CoralGardening, where in addition to children, many parents were creating artificial reefs out of clay! We received multiple entries for a new slogan in addition to ideas for a new t-shirt, and, most importantly, we welcomed more than 60 new members into our CoralCommunity!

The project on Bangka Island attracted a great deal of interest (more about this in the coming newsletter), both from possible volunteers and from divers who would like to take a course on coral reefs (particularly regarding restoration). And as if that was not enough, Veran gave a well attended presentation highlighting the work of CoralGardening during both days!

As a result of the many enthusiastic meetings, a goodly number of people have decided to support CoralGardening on a monthly basis. You can also contribute: be our Buddy and donate a monthly amount for a healthy ocean, for all of us, and especially for future generations!

It was an exceptionally successful installment in the history of CoralGardening, Thanks to all who made it possible, and

See you next year!!

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