chole coral nurseries

Introduction

Chole Coral Nurseries is the first of a number of small-scale projects that we are presently developing in partnership with our friends in Africa.

It is located on the island of Mafia, on the southern coast of Tanzania. This is a remote and incredibly beautiful area, of palm-lined white-sand beaches, azure lagoons and rich tropical reefs.

Although the area immediately around Chole Bay is protected by a marine reserve, beyond its borders the coral reef has been severely depleted by a combination of bleaching events and over-fishing. The situation was exacerbated during 2020, when the Covid pandemic obliged many islanders to forage for a living.

The project is run by Jean de Villiers and Anne de Villiers, a husband-and-wife team who have worked in conservation for decades and who have been resident on Mafia Island since 2002.

Based out of the quirky treehouses of Chole Mjini Lodge, these guys are seriously committed to conservation and philanthropy, having established important projects deal with everything from whale sharks to youth unemployment.

In 2021, Jean made us aware of a pioneering new project that they have started, establishing coral nurseries in order to repair and re-establish reefs in the area.

The method is to tie small nodules of coral to ropes, which are then anchored to the sea bed inside the lagoon. These corals have been growing at an extraordinary rate, doubling in mass every 4-6 weeks. The mature corals are then relocated to sites within the main reef.

At the moment the project is small, with only a handful of staff working to plant and nurture the corals, but given even a modest injection of cash, Jean is confident that he could replicate it many times over, up and down this coast.

The main negative from a carbon offsetting point of view is that coral is simply not as efficient as trees at sequestering carbon. In other words, the carbon offsets from this project are considerably more expensive than those from tree planting.

We therefore recommend this project to organisations which are looking to buy a decent amount of carbon credits, where perhaps 5-10% of that expenditure can be deployed here to great effect.

Please get in touch if you are interested. We would be more than happy to put you in direct contact with Jean for a more detailed explanation.

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Get in touch

We are coming to the end of our presentation here on the website. The next step is for you to reach out and get the ball rolling. We very much look forward to hearing from you!