Coral reefs are the flowers of the sea, surrounded by fascinating coloured fish with remarkable diversity. As the world's largest archipelago and positioned in the World Coral triangle area, Indonesia is blessed with at least 5.1 million hectares of coral reefs. Bali, as a province in Indonesia has two major coral reef natural habitats which are Karangasem and Buleleng spread across eastern and northern Bali. coral reefs are marine systems with one of the highest levels of biodiversity and they provide a variety of valuable goods and services. For instance, they protect shores and islands from the impacts of storm waves and surges. They also generate income for coastal communities from both tourism and commercially valuable fisher?es sustaining the livelihood of millions of people in Indonesia.

However, almost 65 percent of the reefs in Bali are now considered threatened from overfishing. Almost half are considered threatened specifically from destructive fishing practices. Bali?s coral reefs have been severely damaged in recent years due to use of bombs and cyanide by fishermen, excessively high water temperatures linked to global warming, and other stresses. Ocean acidification which is a chemical consequence of increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere caused coral bleaching.

The sources of damage to the reefs are many, but most important is the fact that, ?People actually had no awareness about the dangers if the coral reefs were damaged.? Community participation has been a key to coral conservation success. Therefore, my community, Earth Hour Denpasar created a national project named Coral Adoption. This has been an annual conservation project since 2013. Here, we invite individual, community, corporation and business sector to adopt a coral by donating certain amount of money. The adopters will get a coral, underwater coral documentation, e-certificate, GPS position of the coral, and newsletter about their coral growth and development in the first three months. When people become coral adopters, they will have the sense of belongings toward their coral. So far, we have transplanted 1150 corals from 300 adopters from all around Indonesia. And all of these corals show positive growth and become home of thousand fishes because we have local divers and fisherman routinely doing coral monitoring.   

Where are the corals transplanted? We choose place where corals really need to be rehabilitated. In February 2015 we have carried out this project in Serangan, Denpasar. Then it was held again in Les, Buleleng on October 31, 2015. And it felt so special to me because I was the coordinator for this project. Located in north coast of Bali, Les is untouched by the developed tourist industry in south Bali. Villages there still practice subsistence agriculture and fishing. This village has very massive and beautiful coral reefs but still under rehabilitation by many NGOs due to potassium cyanide fishing practice in 90s which damaged 80% of the corals.

Before coral planting, there were community sharing by Made Merta and Gombal Les of Mina Bhakti Segara Lestari and documentary film viewing of Pak Cipto Aji Gunawan's "Fish Don't Cry". Then at 10.00 am, the coral planting was started. Three coral species were transplanted: acropora, echinopora and porites. The artificial coral site was turtle shaped concrete. The tagging for coral made was made by water resistant water so, it's safe.

The sky was clear bright blue, perfect. The water was wavy though, we knew this wave will affect the visibility underwater and our working moves. As we worked on the swallow water with depth 10 – 12 meter, which is always affected by the wave. About 40 people took parts in transplanting the coral which was carried out in the beach. But only 10 of us who went down to water to put the transplanted coral in the sea. We were split into 2 groups, 4 divers carrying the transplanted coral to the sea and 6 snorkels monitoring the process above. This was tough enough since water was so wavy. Fortunately, everything was run well and we finished at 1.00 pm. The first monitoring will be held on 1^st December 2015. Hope they will grow well.