Damage Repair & Mitigation Banking

There is a growing need for corals to repair damaged sites, as reefs are regularly impacted by dredging projects, ship groundings, and reckless behavior. Existing ocean-based nurseries are limited in the scalability and coral diversity necessary to service large-scale restoration needs. Coral Vita provides the opportunity for mitigation projects to obtain the corals needed at-scale to restore the vitality of damaged reefs.

Damaging corals is illegal in many countries, and there are penalties or tools for financing restoration projects. In some areas, offenders who damage reefs get off without penalty- but local communities and industries are still affected. In the United States, mitigation banking has proved to be an effective tool for damage caused to wetlands. The State of Hawai'i is now piloting a bank to offset coral losses, proposing "to maintain or improve the quantity and condition of coral reefs at banks sites and provide high quality compensatory mitigation that yields ecologically successful and sustainable results." Such a model can prove effective for countries in need of effective compensatory mechanisms to restore reefs.

Banner photo credit: New Zealand Defense Force