REEF REBORN

Final Narration Script

The seas surrounding the enchanted island of Bali are home to the world’s most exquisite and diverse coral reefs.

For centuries these reefs nourished the Balinese… and over the years, attracted divers from around the world.

Like a living dream, the richness of the Balinese culture was reflected in the beauty beneath her seas.

But in just a few short years… the dream was shattered.

“Two more blasts went off in quick succession and as you can see there’s half a dozen boats there on the horizon”.

SYNC: “It’s certainly true the fishermen are wiping out the fish, but what’s worse is they’re killing the reef at the same time.”

SYNC: “I was crying in the water, because I was so touched by it. So uselessly, so many fish have died.”

SYNC: “And just in a matter of a very short time the whole top of the coral reefs there were turned into rubble and there was nothing left.”

In response to the reef’s destruction, an ingenious new technology is being tried… and coral arks are being built.

WOLF SYNC: “This is going to be at first an artificial reef, which gradually at the end of the plans turns to be a natural reef.”

SYNC: “First phase of a dream…yes, definitely (Laughs).”

Can the coral ark project save the coral reefs of Bali? It is the first tentative step… but as Mahatma Ghandi once said, ‘it is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.’

REEF REBORN Into the Unseen World

In the Hindu faith of the Balinese, the spirit realm is called the ‘Unseen World’… a place of demons and deities, where spirits journey to their next re-birth.

But, surrounding Bali, there is another ‘unseen world’… the world beneath the sea… traditionally a place of fear, it remains largely unknown - and unseen.

On the north coast, where the magic mountains meet the sacred sea, is one of the holiest sites in Bali.

In Balinese culture… to be in harmony with the environment… is as important as being in harmony with God.

Overlooking *Pemuteran Bay, the ancient *Pulaki Temples pay homage to God… and to the environment.

Indonesia is a nation of over 7,000 islands, but Bali is it’s most famous… attracting visitors from all over the world. Pemuteran, in the northwest corner, is the least developed part of the island, a long way from the bustling development in the south.

A Balinese nobleman, *Bapak Agung Prana, came to Pemuteran with a vision of developing a new style of resort - with an emphasis on conserving nature, and creating harmony with the environment.

PAK PRANA SYNC: “ And the tourism industry, needs the environment and the culture to be preserved. Conservation is a must. Nobody will come if there is no culture or environmental conservation.”

Inspired by Pak Prana’s vision for conservation, Rani Morrow-Wuigk was drawn to the beauty of Pemuteran, and became a partner in his resort.

Rani’s passion is underwater photography, and over the years she returned many times, lured by the beauty of Pemuteran’s outlying coral reefs.

RANI SYNC: “I started filming here….’95. It was one of my favourite dive sites and I kept coming back. It’s the only bay with photos or video that people can actually see it because not everybody’s a diver and not everybody can come here and look at it.”

RANI SYNC: “A very very beautiful, and alive reef, with huge table corals full of fish and full of life.”

RANI SYNC: “What I loved there was the cuttlefish…sometimes ten cuttlefish at a time surrounding me, which was wonderful.”

RANI SYNC: “I’ve seen cuttlefish mating, also very close to where they put their eggs. And a few months later you see all these eggs in the fire coral. And I was down there and looked around and I felt happy, because it was such a thriving beautiful reef and a beautiful dive.”

It was not only the marine creatures, but the dizzying array of corals that attracted her… around Bali and Indonesia; there are more coral species than anywhere else on the planet.

As she built up her video collection, Rani had no idea these images would be the only lasting record of an entire coral reef system that was about to be destroyed.

There is concept in Bali called *Sekala/Nisekala - the underworld, forever in darkness, merging with our world in the light.

But no-one could have realized the extent of the coming darkness….destined to wipe out Bali’s coral reefs.

In Hindu cosmology, Gods and Demons share the same stage… locked in an endless struggle between light and dark.

In the late 1990’s, a series of disasters were to impact on Bali. The ‘Asian economic crisis’ hit Indonesia and the currency collapsed.

Rice, the staple food, went up to five times it’s price - and a 100 million desperate people took to the roads, and the seas… looking for their next meal.

Bali, with its booming tourist industry, offered hope. A shuttle of ferries brought waves of economic refugees from other islands.

Bali’s population nearly doubled, and the flood of poor and dispossessed were driven to desperation.

The seas around Bali were one place people could find food… and the coral reefs became prime targets for fish bombers.

Every day bombs could be heard in Pemuteran Bay… the outer reef was a war zone.

But even worse was to come.

In 1998, global-warming over-heated the oceans, causing widespread coral bleaching. Rani’s favourite dive sites were in ruins.

RANI SYNC: “And you can actually see in ‘98-’99, the reefs were getting destroyed. Actually at that time you couldn’t go diving because there were sometimes 7 to 8 boats bombing and cyaniding so it was not safe to dive there.”

RANI SYNC: “I did go out there once and I have the video from that time. Looks like a boresound, like a bomb has hit down here, everything destroyed, like houses spoiled on the ground.”

The magnificent plate-corals, home to so many fish, were gone… a deadly combination of bombs, cyanide and finally - coral bleaching, killed off these magnificent living corals.

The dream had become a nightmare…

But even in the darkness of despair, there was (a glimmer of) hope.

On opposite sides of the world, two men dreamed very different dreams, destined to bring new life to the shattered reefs of Bali.

After praying at Pulaki temple for help to heal the damaged environment, Pak Prana was visited in his dreams by the Hindu God, *Visnu… the Protector, who promised to support him in his efforts.

A world away, Professor of Architecture, *Wolf Hilbertz, had long dreamed of building structures in seawater using an inspired method he calls ‘living architecture’.

The global coral-crisis gave urgency to Wolf’s ideas.

Their different visions would unite them in a common dream… saving the coral reefs of Pemuteran.

ACT 2

While Professor of Architecture at Universities in the United States, Wolf Hilbertz came to an amazing realization… that he could ‘grow’ rock under the sea from minerals naturally occurring in sea-water.

The process is called mineral *accretion… but it’s not a new process. For millions of years, marine creatures have been using minerals dissolved in seawater to build their shells and exoskeletons.

WOLF SYNC: “This is a natural accretion, this animal takes the naturally occurring minerals in seawater, and uses it for its purposes to build it’s shell. The same is happening of course wiith corals. Corals use calcium carbonate drawn from seawater to build their exoskeletons, and what we are naturally interested in for our structures are the calcium carbonates dissolved in seawater and the magnesium hydroxides. We use these materials for building purposes.”

WOLF SYNC: “So we are building coral arcs as we call them because we know corals are perishing all over the world because mainly to global warming. We are building these arcs wherever we can to have little islands of surviving corals and to preserve them as long as we can.”

With the backing of a Balinese dive operator, these first few structures were placed in Premuteran Bay.

The corals grew faster and healthier than corals on surrounding reef.

The secret… an electric current is passing through the structures.

WOLF SYNC: “These structure members are electrically conducting, and I connect it via an electrical cable, to the negative terminal of a direct current power supply. Next to it I place an anode which is typically a titanium mesh connected to the positive terminal of a direct current power supply. And now we have a galvanic cell , itself in sea water, and electrochemical reactions are taking place, causing the calcium carbonate ions and the magnesium hydroxide ions to deposit themselves here and building this structure up.”

The electric current actually causes limestone to grow on these structures.

WOLF SYNC: “When settling on the substrate structures, the coral receives extra energy from the electromagnetic reactions and therefore corals grow faster, they have healthier extensions, they show more vivid colours and they definitely produce higher survival rates than the unprotected reef around it is dying due to global warming for instance.”

During the time these structures were growing, Rani continued to video and photograph… her images are a striking record of the success of coral-ark technology.

RANI SYNC: That structure was put in on November 2000, just right after that I’ve taken this photo the first photo, and the second photo I’ve taken from the same structure showing how successful that is and the corals are really quite vibrant and very healthy looking. For years I felt like I was helpless to do doing anything against what was happening with the bombing and cyanide and when I saw the first structures, actually the structures you see on these pictures and saw the corals and the fish so alive I thought maybe that is the only way we can save some of the corals. So my idea was to make a nursery just in case everything else gets destroyed.

The contrast between new and established structures was very dramatic, and had a profound affect on Rani. She became a major sponsor of the coral ark nursery.

PAK PRANA SYNC: “We are not in dream, here. It’s real! Real! We are doing something real! Not talking!

Rani, in partnership with Pak Prana, commissioned Wolf to build an accretion reef in front of the resort.

WOLF SYNC: “We are trying to save as many corals as is possible and I think this is a matter of the highest urgency. We are welding these reinforcement bars for concrete construction which are available anywhere in the world and we are working with these village welders who know their job quite well. It’s not specialised labour, it can be done in any place in the world and this is why we chose this material and this technology. There are more expensive ways, more precise ways possible but we don’t need that and we are quite content with what we have here. We are starting with the conical one which is an artificial reef element which we will repeat at least 3 times and then we get a new design going but we want to have a multitude of designs in the water and see how they perform all the time. Here we see a plan of what we intend to build. We have a total length of 12 metres, we have about 2 metres in width and a height of about 1 metre 20 (cm).”

Wolf and his team experimented with several different shapes… some conical, others tunnel-shaped, to find out which shapes corals preferred.

This towering structure he named ‘The Nautilus”.

WOLF SYNC: “It’s the first step now and once we have the structures in water we’ll place them, connect them and have a growing system.”

To provide surfaces for coral attachment, Wolf added extra arms to the structures… using whatever metal off-cuts he could lay his hands on.

WOLF SYNC: “The last piece! As a matter of fact there are tool that we are welding on right now as we don’t need the tool any longer. It looks like a piece of drum but actually it might work.”

As an architect, Wolf originally developed mineral accretion technology to ‘grow’ building materials in seawater.

But with the increasing incident of El Nino’s and coral bleaching events, Wolf realized the urgent need for his technology to be applied to rescuing coral reefs.

As the oceans continue to heat up – so does the urgency.

TOM SYNC: “With global warming what’s really terrifying is that in 1998 which was the hottest year on record, about three-quarters of all the reefs in the world were affected by coral bleaching. But in 1998 we saw corals die that were a thousand years old, and these are corals that had been through hundreds of El Nino’s in the past, and it survived them all. This one killed them.”

Wolf’s business partner is Marine Biologist, *Dr.Thomas Goreau – an expert on coral reefs.

TOM SYNC: “I personally first visited Pemuteran in I think May of ’98 and it was during the height of the bleaching event. I was diving around having a look”.

Tom Goreau paints a very bleak picture for the future of the world’s coral reefs.

TOM SYNC: “We are basically in the middle of the first human coral’s mass extinction of an entire ecosystem. And we so may be the first ecosystem to be essentially wiped out. There will be coral surviving, but there won’t be reefs. What we’ll find will be a few corals in marginal habitats, they will mostly be small, be isolated.”

Global warming leads to corals bleaching, and the mass mortality of reefs through the breakdown of living coral. The intricate structure of corals are created by two separate life-forms, one animal… one plant, conjoined in one of the most wonderful partnerships in the natural world.

‘Bleaching’ occurs when the coral is abandoned by the algae which gives them their colour… a fine covering of coloured algae called *zooksanthellae.

TOM SYNC: “Coral itself is an animal. Think of the zooksanthellae as little microscopic plants. It is as if we had leafs on our body or as if we had chlorophyll inside our skin and as if we could stand out in the sun and photosynthesize and get our food simply from the sun. Well corals are basically able to do that, they catch foods floating in the water and they eat it, and at the same time they’re also plants. Now without the plants they’re losing a major source of nutrition, but the other thing that’s even more critical is if the coral loses it’s algae it completely stops growing it’s skeleton. It also stops reproducing, it’s basically in a state of starvation. It’s severely stressed; even if it doesn’t die a bleached coral is essentially one step short of death.”

Just as the zooksanthellae help feed the corals… the coral reefs have helped to feed the fishing community of Pemuteran.

For generations, local fishermen hunted the seas for their livelihood. Their fathers and grandfathers never had to think about conservation… they just went out to the reefs and caught lots of fish.

This is one of the poorest villages in Bali, dependent on fishing for it’s survival, and as the reefs deteriorated… so did the fishing.

Fishermen are having to travel further… and are returning with much smaller catches.

With the encouragement of Pak Prana and a local dive-operator, the village created a reserve to try to protect their corals.

TOM SYNC: “ I came here to Pemuteran because the village had established a protected area and I was delighted to hear that, I felt that it meant that the villagers, the people, were taking a stake in their own future and trying to protect what they had and nuture it along. And what I was also impressed to see was that this was a protected area that was declared by the villagers themselves.”

The reserve is close to shore, but since the economic collapse, the village couldn’t protect their outlying reefs… and in the late 1990’s, bombing got out of hand.

TOM SYNC “Well look, two more blasts just went off in quick succession out in that direction someplace . We were standing here when they went off and we didn’t see any plume go up so it’s hard to say quite where it was but you see there’s half a dozen boats on the horizon. I think it’s been illegal for many years but the law’s never been enforced properly.”

WOLF SYNC: “It’s just slightly absurd, one tries to be productive here, to bring the situation up and know at the same time we hear these blasts and the reef is being destroyed out there.”

Bombing was once promoted by government as the most effective way to catch fish… it’s well established, and there’s enormous resistance to change.

TOM SYNC: “We’re in a critical moment here, but if the village can’t really get their act together and protect it then it’ll be a waste of time what we are doing. But we’re optimistic because they’ve made a lot of very progressive decisions and they’ve done it on their own and that gives us some hope for the future.”

Another fishing practice destructive to the reef is Potassium Cyanide poisoning… used to stun and capture fish live, for sale to the international aquarium market.

These small, brightly coloured fish are worth more than food fish, and many fishermen are switching to this trade.

TOM SYNC: “The thing about them that makes them easy to catch is they live in the branches of coral, they will not desert that coral, so they swim around in the waters eating plankton but then they dash back into the coral for safety. So what the cyanide fisherman does is he approaches that coral and the fish go and hide in it and he squirts it with cyanide.”

It stuns some, kills many more, and leaves the corals dead - but still standing… to become overgrown with algae.

RANI SYNC: “There’s hundreds of thousands of them lying on the bottom of the reef, and just dying, and just to see that especially since I love to look at them and photograph them and video them….um. The village have actually decided to take action and stop the bombing and cyanide fishing which is an incredible success. Without that it could not be done.”

Sponsored by local resorts and dive-shops, Pemuteran leaders formed the *PECHALANG LAUT, or ‘people police’… villagers who set out on daily patrols, guarding their bay and outlying reefs from bombers and cyanide fishermen.

Millions of people live on boats all over Indonesia, stripping resources as they go.

SYNC: “Maybe traditional fishing or aquarium fishing.”

These itinerant fishermen have no long-term stake in the future. They just take what they can, and move on to damage another area.

SYNC: “They are traditional fishing, fishing by line.”

SYNC: “We can check the small boat that’s this way.”

Because the seas are common property… owned by everyone, they’re cared for by no-one. A resource is exploited until it is wiped out. This is a dilemma facing fisheries world-wide.

Rani came along on this patrol to video fishing methods.

RANI SYNC: “Going to get in the water. Going to check out how they’re doing it. Since we are right here next to a boat catching aquarium fish I’d like to see if they actually really use the method they’re saying they’re using - which is by net. I’ll be able to tell if there are fish lying around dead and I’ll know it was cyanide. They sort of sneak towards the net and then push the fish and then they quickly take the net and pull it up top. I could never hold my breath for that long amount of time they were able to, they were quite skilful. They knew exactly which corals to go to for certain fish. They were looking for the very colourful ones, the blue ones, and the other ones they actually threw out, back into the oceans the ones they didn’t like.

The people of Pemuteran are not afraid to go out and stand up and say ‘You can’t dynamite anymore and you can’t use potassium anymore for fishing. If they do, they will give them a fair warning twice and then the third time they will arrest.”

This daily vigilance is working. Neither of the two boats boarded were using fishing methods which would destroy corals.

But back in March of 2002, a fleet of 5 boats bombed the reefs for a passing school of tuna.

The village Petchalang took decisive action. It was a big team of bombers so they called in armed police.

They had the bombers arrested, impounded their boats and bombs, and put the offenders in jail.

The bombers use home-made waterproof bombs with short fuses… dangerous to the bombers - and devastating to the reefs.

ACT 3

Launch time for the coral nursery, and the start of the strangest procession ever to cross Pemuteran beach. A team of young men recruited from the resort and dive-shops lend a hand.

Wolf believes Community support is essential for the project’s success.

WOLF SYNC: “Here we have community involvement. They want to better their environment, they want to take an active hand in doing so, and they are very very interested.

Over the next few days a coral ark nursery will be installed, scattered over a two hectare reserve… a couple of hundred meters long and parallel to shore, directly in front of the resort.

The structures are placed within two hundred meters of shore in water six to ten meters deep.

The growing structures will attract snorkellers and divers to the resort.

These coral arks will help corals survive global warming, bleaching and other environmental stresses. They will grow a range of different coral species, and their healthy spawn will help to re-populate the outlying reefs.

The Balinese divers are all from the village, and local dive-shops are supporting the community effort, providing boats and gear.

Tom and Wolf have placed trial structures in a number of sites from the Indian Ocean to the Caribbean… but with a total of 21 coral arks, this is by far the largest mineral accretion reef in the world.

This roll of mesh is the anode, which receives the positive electrical current. It looks like chicken-wire, but is made from a revolutionary combination metal which makes the whole process possible.

WOLF SYNC: “The material is titanium covered with a special oxide of rare metals, and you can shoot high current densities through this anode material without disintegrating it. Under normal conditions as we use it it hold up for years in the sea water which no other combination metal does. Chicken wire would disintegrate within a couple of hours, it would have corroded and disappeared into the sea.”

The anode mesh is positive… the cathode structure negative. Like a car battery, it needs both to make an electric circuit for accretion to take place.

WOLF SYNC: “This is the first anode cable to bring on land, now we can establish electrical power, and the system begins to grow. So this is always a triumph to get so far.

I’m just preparing the cable to be hooked up to the power supply, which is of course a direct current power supply.”

Ordinary battery chargers are used.

WOLF SYNC: “Good! It works!!” It’s OK, it will stand it for a little while. Let’s do exactly the same.”

TOM SYNC: “This indicates the current is going through he anodes and the different cathodes that are around it.

If the voltage is too high, accretion will happen too rapidly and lose its strength. The low current is cheap to run… and safe to use.

WOLF SYNC: “Here we go! We are on line. Now the needle is most likely going to be a little bit erratic, beginning of accretion it will be a very fine white film which is forming on the structure, and this film will grow and grow. There is a lot of rust which is going to be reformed now, the rust becomes metal again, and this will happen over the next few hours and then we will see the beginning of accretion. That will be a very fine white film which is forming on the structure.”

The negative electric current slightly raises the pH on the surface of the metal, causing accretion to occur. As it grows, the structures will become solid walls of limestone, covered in corals.

Tom and Wolf’s inspired technology actually mines the ocean, growing industrial strength rock- straight from seawater.

WOLF SYNC: “What we have here is a piece of mineral accretion, a cross-section through a structural member, and you see here the wee bar, the metal, conductive metal, and the mineral accretion grew around the wee bar here. That one was in the water for about 2 years but mineral accretion was happening for about a year, about 12 months. This has mechanical properties of about a lightweight concrete.”

“This is Comung, he lives here in Bali, and he is a divemaster and also learning the trade of mineral accretion. He will be in charge of these electrical connections plus a few other things, and if necessary he will be able to repair anything. So we are teaching him to do our job when we are gone and expand the project so they will become experts.”

TOM SYNC: “Yes certainly because if the wire breaks in a storm and it doesn’t get replaced it’s the end of the Bali mineral accretion project right there. There might be structure remaining but it may not be growing and the corals all along may not be getting the boost that they get.”

The first corals are collected and wired onto the structures. They would take too long to grow from spawn, and Tom believes that in the global coral-crisis… time is of the essence.

TOM SYNC: “We’re collecting broken fragments of corals to transplant into the coral nursery, and we’re looking for pieces that are lying all over the bottom, it’s a steep reef slope, there are branches of corals, many of them have been damaged by physical factors around here, and they’ve fallen into the mud at the bottom of the slope. There they’ve just kinda been buried in the mud and been carried down into deeper water.

What we’re trying to do when create coral arcs is essentially build a habitat to maintain corals through the global warming crisis or at least as far into it as we can manage.”

SYNC: “This coral has bleach, and this coral has none, so that’s the difference.”

TOM SYNC: “So our effort is to try to grow coral populations that are more resistant to stresses, in particular the stresses that we know are going to be hitting them with global warming.”

The coral nursery will help determine which corals are more resistant to bleaching, and other stresses bound to hit them with global warming.

TOM SYNC: In essence what we are doing is a coral hospital, because we’re trying to take corals that would otherwise die and rescuing them in a sense, and trying to get them to grow and form much larger corals, we want to propagate, but most of these picked up here to day they would normally die by themselves.”

Once this tie-wire makes contact with the metal it stops rusting, becomes part of the structure, and begins accreting. The entire structure is alive.

Earlier experiments have achieved growth rates 3 to 5 times faster than peak growing rates of corals… in places where surrounding corals have died.

TOM SYNC: “Corals that were growing are much healthier than normal corals. The reason for that is that normal coral has to use a lot of it’s energy to grow it’s skeleton. Our corals are getting that energy for free. We’re creating the conditions that allow very rapid growth of limestone both chemically and biologically through our process. So the result is they have much more energy left over for growth and for reproduction, and they also have more energy for resisting stress.”

There is another application of accretion technology, which could have profound impact on all our lives.

TOM SYNC: “The Reef is the most effective form of coastal protection against erosion that exists. It’s a growing, wave resistant barrier that may get clobbered by a hurricane, broken up, but it grows back up and is constantly growing up towards sea level and regenerating itself. The fact that coral reefs are severely damaged means that those corals are not growing up and regenerating and forming a wave resistant barrier,, in fact they’re collapsing and disappearing, so the result of this is now the wave forces are hitting the shore with much greater energy and causing much more erosion. But if we have to build a sea-wall to protect the coastline, the typical cost of the seawall built in concrete or rock world-wide is in order of $50 million per kilometre. But there’s thousands and thousands of kilometres of coastline that are eroding world-wide. That is probably going to be the biggest cost of global warming. It’s only when you need to build sea walls, import fish and find other jobs for your population that have lost tourism that you will appreciate the true value of the reef.”

Global warming is currently causing sea levels to rise around two millimetres a year, but with changing weather patterns and more extreme weather, some places already feel threatened.

WOLF SYNC: “Many island states, especially the low-lying island states, will be inundated, the timeframe we are talking about is perhaps between 50 to 150 years. It will be land under, and they won’t exist any longer. But long before that will happen, storm surges will become more extreme and we will reclaim more and more land, and ultimately people will find that those islands are not inhabitable any longer and will be forced to leave.”

Mineral accretion doesn’t just work in the tropics. The process will grow rock wherever there is seawater, protecting coastlines in cool and temperate waters throughout the world… growing at rates many times faster than sea level rise.

ACT 4

Accretion technology will provide another benefit for the people of Pemuteran.

TOM SYNC: “When the sea was still hunted by our Fathers, what we’re trying to do really is kinda push fishermen who can no longer be hunters because there isn’t anything left to hunt, to growing the food instead of simply wiping out all the wild stock.”

The simple idea, of farming the open sea by creating protected habitat, could revolutionize fishing practices worldwide. Within days of being installed, the coral arks were inundated by masses of schooling fish.

TOM SYNC: “What you have to understand is that right here, the fishermen in this village are going out 5 or 10 kilometres out to sea, they’re going to the off-shore banks, those banks have had their corals almost totally destroyed by dynamite and by cyanide. They’re out there all day and you know, they’re getting a handful of fish at the end of the day. But every day when they go out to those dead reefs they have to cross over the reefs that we’ve been growing right here near shore that are 50 metres in front of where they live in many cases and they see that those areas are full of fish, so it’s an irresistible temptation, you know, why go 5 kilometres and catch nothing when you have it 50 metres in front of you. I’m not surprised that a few fishermen have been unable to control themselves - they’re hungry. We’ve been working mainly here on growing coral habitat, but we can build fish habitat, we can build lobster habitat, we can build oyster or clam habitat as well. We need to be working more closely with the fishermen, we need to be turning them into farmers in the future because their children can’t be hunters. There just isn’t going to be a resource there. If we don’t work with the fishermen, turn them into farmers instead of hunters they’re going to have no choice but to destroy all our conservation efforts, cause there won’t be any other place to find the fish that they want.”

After a number of night fishing raids on the structures, the entire project was in peril… so a meeting with village leaders was held. It was decided to ask Tom and Wolf to build new structures as dedicated fish habitat… to help increase fish stocks in the bay.

WOLF SYNC: “The difference this time is we take the material, which is old, so it has innate curls in it and we want to use these curls directly. We want to cut about 3 spirals off this roll and sink them in various locations and positions as well, spirals that are open towards the sky or spirals that are open towards the sides. After some time we’ll see what kind of construction is preferred by the local fishes here for breeding holes, hiding spaces and so on. I guess we will have three fish reefs cut out of this, all with 2 people between 2 or 3 hours, which is incredible. Then the task of sinking begins and that’s including wiring the structure up.”

PAK PRANA SYNC: All for the benefit of the village. “Why do we start the fishery project up? Because we now know that fish will come if there are houses for them.”

RANI SYNC: “Bapak Agung Prana, my partner here, has played a very big role in convincing the village and also talking to media.”

PAK PRANA SYNC: “All probability that it works. Number one, people are here, yes, funding, yes, but unit one is the community participation…”

Community involvement is the key to the project’s success, and Rani does her bit to spread the word.

RANI SYNC: “I’m working on a 5 to 7 minute documentary about the project we are doing here in Pemuteran. And then Putu will speak the narration for it so that Indonesians can also understand it. “

RANI SYNC: “A combination of disasters, economic and environmental, maybe that is easier for you to translate? (YES), both of those together, and both of those impacted, you know, it was like strong.”

Rani’s videos have been vital in bringing the unseen world to community awareness.

She’s completing her documentary for screening at the National Conference on Coastal Management.

And the mini-documentary is a hit with village leaders, fishermen and the Pechalang patrol.

RANI SYNC: “Documentary they could understand it - the impact the destruction has, and how important it is to protect it. I think they loved it all, in fact, the village chief came to me and said he wants to have it on CD because it’s the only way he can play it. He wants the whole village to see it because it is very convincing apparently.”

PAK PRANA SYNC: “That is amazing.. All happen at the same time. Lately we’ve had a national conference about the coast protection, and at the conference they decided to present us with a national award”

At the National Conference on Coastal Management, Pemuterans ‘Coral protection’ or *‘Karang Lestari’ project, as it came to be called, won first prize. It is hoped the victory will help inspire other coastal communities to set up similar projects… and begin looking after their coral reefs.

RANI SYNC: “And it has come now to a point where the politicians are even listening and wanting to know about it.”

This project is the first of it’s kind in Indonesia, and largest of its kind in the world. The huge success has helped instill a sense of pride in the community.

In the Balinese style, preparations are under way to celebrate the blessing and launching of the five new fish structures.

National awards help to maintain long-term support for the project… but nothing will reward the community as much, as when their boats start returning home with a decent catch of fish.

PAK PRANA SYNC: “This ceremony is kind of a blessing ceremony. We’re purifying all the structure which will be going down into the ocean, but before that as Hindu’s, as a traditional Hindu way we have to get permission from the God of the Ocean as well as purifying all this structure.”

On the morning of the ceremony- an auspicious sign, the God of the Ocean sent a special blessing to the Karang Lestari project.

RANI SYNC: “I sea cow or dugong, it’s apparently out there and I’m going to try and get it on camera. By snorkelling only this time.

PAK PRANA SYNC: “In Balinese society, a ‘duyong’ is a good spirit. For them to appear here in the bay of Pemuteran, it is believed the transformation of the spiritual energy in the shape of wheel. In the shape of beautiful woman with fish tail. So in the Balinese society, the blessing can be in any forms. We are really very grateful that our effort is being blessed, from the dream, from the action and now with the coral growing with blessing.”

National Television crews visited Pemuteran several times, and ripples of success are being felt overseas. Rani’s video helped the project win an eco-tourism award in Australia.

The five fish structures are towed to their new home where they will be wired-up for mineral accretion.

These structures will become a protected area, free from fishing. Fish thriving in the structures will help to re-populate the bay and outlying reefs.

Creating protected reserves where fish can breed, alongside fishing areas… is a model Tom believes could resurrect sustainable fishing throughout the world.

TOM SYNC: “What we’re trying to do is train the fishermen to realise they could be growing a reef, and harvesting the fish without damaging the corals, and that way if they do it right, they’ll have food forever.”

WOLF SYNC: “ Good good! Excellent as a matter of fact!”

PAK PRANA SYNC: “This is what we are dreaming to have, with all the effort and support of the village. And they are also very grateful to see this, it is beyond their expectations. We have to be in harmony, in harmony with our God, in harmony with environment, in harmony with man. If we are in harmony with God, with people all over the world,and the environment so this becomes a paradise!

If corals throughout Indonesia are to be reborn, it is essential for coastal communities to take charge of their offshore reefs, and like the people of Pemuteran… learn to farm their seas.

WOLF SYNC: “Done.”

For the first time since reef protection began, Rani and her long- time diving companion, Chris Brown, head offshore to check the outlying reefs.

RANI SYNC: “The important thing for me was that I at least try to do something.

Not only sit back and cry about all the reefs which have been destroyed, but actually do something to help.

You can see little patches of corals coming back.

That gives me hope that it will eventually be a beautiful reef again, if it’s left alone.

That was my goal and we started building with these structures because I was hoping that we could at least preserve some of the corals before they totally die but now with the protection happening there’s a much bigger chance that the reef will come back, and it will work not only for Pemuteran but maybe for other parts of Indonesia.

I’ve come to love the Balinese and Bali for the last 13 years, 14 years. They have given me so much, treated me so well in all this time, so it was important for me also to give something back and that was my gift back to the Balinese.”