CORAL REGENERATION PROJECT / UWC EAST AFRICA
28 March 2023
.png)
2022-2023 RUNNER-UPS
The Coral Regeneration Project is an existing service project on the Moshi and Arusha campuses at UWC East Africa, which aims to preserve and rebuild the coral reef and marine life at Fish Eagle Point near Tanga on the Tanzanian coast. This area of coastline has been significantly affected by dynamite and drag-net fishing resulting in large areas of broken or dead coral. The project aims to raise funds to finance the building of coral nurseries and artificial coral domes, which students submerge in the ocean during outdoor pursuit trips, providing a place for coral to grow and safe shelter for fish and other marine life to live and thrive. The team believes that restoring the coral will lead to an increase in the fish population and encourage greater biodiversity, thereby providing food and livelihoods for local communities.
Project team member, Felice, explains how much hard work has gone into making the project a success:
"One thing that I have learnt from this project, is that someone can do anything if they really want to. As a group, we have been pushed to our absolute limits. If we weren’t moving 300-800kg coral domes out into the ocean and diving them down, we were cleaning the coral domes 16 metres down, to ensure a clean environment for marine life. Waking up at 4:30 AM to benefit from the high tide and move the raft out into the open ocean, which I never would have done back home. All this has become really something amazing for me.”