Many scientists believe we are at the stage where no part of Earth, from rainforests to ice caps to oceans, is free from human impact. It has been labeled the ‘era of mass extinction’, largely caused by humans. My PhD research explores how we, as individuals and as a society, can care more about the ...

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Reef Renewal Foundation Bonaire is excited to announce to have received a grant provided by the IUCN through the BEST 2.0+ Programme funded by the European Commission, to further support the project “Larval propagation: an innovative technique to scale-up Bonaire’s reef restoration program” in partnership with SECORE International. Larval propagation techniques The project, which will ...

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Coral "stress hardening" Corals are vulnerable to multiple environmental stressors including nutrient pollution and rising ocean temperatures. In some cases, experiencing environmental stress can increase a coral’s ability to tolerate later stress exposures. Coral “stress hardening” (exposing corals to moderately stressful conditions with the goal of increasing their stress tolerance) has the potential to increase ...

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Reef Renewal Internship For the first time in over a year, the Reef Renewal Foundation welcomed two interns back to help the effort again. In this blog post, they would like to share their experiences from the past three months while working with us. Cheyenna has just graduated from coastal and marine management in the ...

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The goal of our monitoring protocol is to assess the success and efficacy of the coral restoration effort through the collection of data like survival, coral condition (tissue health, disease, bleaching, predation, etc.) and growth. Our coral restoration monitoring methods, like traditional methods, have focused mainly on the survival and growth of individual outplanted coral ...

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In a moment when responsible and sustainable tourism are greatly valued, Reef Renewal Foundation Bonaire (RRFB) is pleased to announce the addition of Divi Dive Bonaire and VIP Diving to the list of dive operators that are supporting the island reef restoration effort. Divi Dive staff getting ready to install coral nursery trees VIP Diving ...

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We are Anne Top and Sander Heijnens, two students from Wageningen University and coral lovers. After having read all about corals in the books, we thought it was time to go into action and investigate more about it for our Master thesis. So here we are on Bonaire, for three months, doing an internship with ...

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Jong Bonaire and Reef Renewal Foundation Bonaire have joined forces to educate and train Bonaire’s next generation of reef protectors. As part of this new project, four students from Jong Bonaire received training to learn coral nursery maintenance, coral propagation, and outplanting techniques. Jong Bonaire students learning how to hang and tie corals on nursery ...

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The coral-associated microbiome: potential for a probiotic? Coral reefs worldwide are under threat. Over the last 30–50 years there has been a huge decline of the world’s tropical corals. Global warming, pollution, overfishing and other types of stresses have all contributed to a decrease in health and survival of coral reefs. In order to counter ...

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Serena Hackerott - Ph.D. Candidate at Florida International University Since the 1980’s, Caribbean coral reefs have declined due to a variety of stressors including coral disease, nutrient pollution, overfishing, hurricanes, and warming temperatures. If corals are unable to keep pace with the changing climate, many reefs are predicted to disappear within the next few decades. ...

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