At the heart of the UNDP-funded coral restoration project led by Eco-Sud in Mauritius’ Blue Bay Marine Park is a team of local community partners, many of them women, who have become active stewards of their lagoon. Since 2024, they have prepared recycled spider frames, collected healthy coral fragments from sea-based nurseries, and restored life to degraded reef patches through marine-cement attachment and frame-based out-planting. More than 20,000 coral fragments from Acropora, Pocillopora, Galaxea and Pavona now form the foundation of recovering reef gardens. To give transplanted corals the best chance of survival, the project used habitat suitability modelling to pinpoint where each type is most likely to thrive.
During the transplantation phase, which started in December 2024 and is still ongoing, monitoring revealed a major challenge: intense fish predation by corallivorous species had become the leading cause of early coral mortality. This opened space for community-led problem-solving.
Together with community actors, we observed patterns, identified high-risk areas, and co-designed cage trials and restoration zones.
This journey shows how blending local knowledge, inclusive participation and ecological modelling can create a powerful, adaptive pathway for reef recovery – revitalising coral ecosystems and community ownership of Mauritius’ lagoon.
Figure 1 and 2. Community partners-built coral protection cage to test the hypothesis that out-planted coral mortalities are caused by intensive fish predation. An exposed spider-frame with predated and mostly dead coral colonies of Acropora and Pocillopora can be observed in front of the cage.
