Since July 2018 I have initiated an action called the Thousand Mooring Buoy Project.

The main purpose of this project is to prevent coral reef destruction from anchor damage. Through this project I will install recreational mooring buoys at as many snorkeling and dive sites around Indonesia, which today estimated at around 800 spots. I will mainly use eco-friendly mooring systems such as helical anchor, manta anchor or halas anchor. These proven embedment anchor systems has been used at various reef protection projects around the world.

Background

Coral Reefs need our help and simply restoring the reefs doesn’t solve the problem of the constant damage and abuse that they suffer.

Anchor damage is the most preventable form of damage caused by humans. There is very little doubt that mooring buoys placed in coral areas reduce the amount of coral damage caused by anchors in these areas, in most cases by more than 80%.

Mooring buoys are also an important management tool in that they are useful in controlling the usage of certain areas by somewhat restricting the boat usage at the dive sites and encouraging boats to move to another site.

Highlights

•Protecting the ocean with immediate result

•Stop coral destruction and unregulated anchoring

•Enable seagrass and coral restoration

•Protecting the ocean with human as the primary subject

•Educating the public about the importance of a healthy ocean ecosystem in our life

•Emphasizing on the empowerment of people that lives in coastal area that depends their livelihood on the blue economy

•Creating direct benefits to local stakeholders from diving tourism through community development

I have obtained an approval in principle to deploy mooring buoys at 10 marine national parks around Indonesia, as these national parks are popular snorkeling and diving destination. Being popular, these parks receives very large number of visitors every year, thus increasing the risk of reef destruction from anchoring.

I fund this project through aids from diving communities, individuals as well as sponsors. At the moment I already have funding to procure around 350 sets of mooring systems out of 4,000 that I need. I still need funding aid to support deployment and procurement for more mooring system. This action will be a long-term project, with my initial plan is to accomplish deployment of at least 500 mooring buoys at popular snorkeling and diving sites by first quarter of 2019.

For further information and donation kindly e-mail me at [email protected]