COSMARINDO: First Coral ID Workshop with Dr. Douglas Fenner

Coral identification workshops begin at University Banda Naira. It is the first of 6 universities in Indonesia where workshops will be held within April and May.

In January this year we kicked off our COSMARINDO program with preparatory online workshops on coral reporduction. COSMARINDO stands for "Coral Spawning Monitoring and Awareness for Restoration Network Indonesia". It is a CORDAP funded program to teach sustainable coral restoration practices and build a monitoring network for coral spawning in Indonesia.

Last week we were so lucky to spend a few days diving with Dr. Douglas Fenner (Doug), taking pictures of corals around the Banda Islands. With these pictures Doug build teaching materials for common coral species of Banda. Just with a week of work, he came up with 175 species already. Interactive identification materials will be made available on our website soon. All will be free of charge so that students, divers or all coral enthusiasts can practice identifying. Correctly identifying coral species is extremely important for understanding interactions in reefs, reproduction biology and reef conservation.

On Monday this week, we kicked off the coral identification workshop with Doug at the University Banda Naira (UBN). The first day was dedicated to the topics "Can we save coral reefs?" and "Coral biology". Today, we started with lectures and pratice sessions on coral genera and will dedicate the next days to coral species.