REPOSITORY ON COASTAL ECOSYSTEMS:
BRIDGING ARTISTIC, SCIENTIFIC AND COMMUNITY-LED PRACTICES I N THE RIAU ARCHIPELAGO

Along the coasts of Bintan island, small-scale, community-led efforts have emerged to manually support the recovery of damaged coral reefs. One such initiative is led by Rudi, a young local diver who combines hands-on restoration work with ecotourism and education. Trained in fisheries at the local university in Tanjungpinang, Rudi works both at Bintan Black Coral dive centre in Teluk Bakau, eastern Bintan and with Bintan Resorts in Lagoi, where he teaches diving and coral transplantation while engaging visitors with the realities of reef degradation and care.

For Rudi, protecting and restoring coral reef ecosystems is tied to their economic and ecological value. Healthy coral reefs support fisheries, sustain marine biodiversity, and attract tourism, providing livelihoods for coastal communities when they are cared for rather than exploited. In his view, restoration is not only about environmental responsibility, but also about ensuring long-term economic resilience for people living along Bintan’s shores.

At the same time, Rudi is aware of the challenges coral reefs face. Rising global temperatures (an increase of around 1-2°C) can severely stress corals, leading to bleaching and mortality. These climate pressures are compounded by human activities such as unsustainable coastal development, fishing practices, and tourism, all of which place additional strain on already vulnerable reef ecosystems. It is within this context that Rudi’s work takes shape: as a practical, community-based response to overlapping environmental and social pressures on Bintan’s coral reefs.

Rudi carries out this work through coral transplantation, a method that involves planting and growing new coral colonies by fragmenting healthy parent corals and attaching them to suitable substrates. This technique allows damaged reefs to gradually regenerate and degraded areas to be repaired, while also offering a tangible way to show visitors that corals can recover when given care and time. He initiated his first coral restoration project in 2021 in Teluk Bakau, East Bintan, with full support from the Bintan Black Coral dive center, where the restoration site is located. In 2025, he began a second project in Lagoi, within the Bintan Beach International Resort area, carried out under the auspices of PT Buana Megawisatama and planned to extend across the wider resort coastline.

Spanning over 73 km and encompassing coral reefs alongside mangrove and seagrass ecosystems, this area is one of Bintan’s major tourist destinations, where Rudi seeks to bring together coral transplantation and conservation-based tourism.

Rudi and his team work according to a clear and careful plan. Before any transplantation begins, they conduct a site survey to assess local conditions, including the percentage of live coral, to determine whether an area is suitable for restoration. Once appropriate sites are identified, transplantation activities begin using several different methods, selected based on site conditions and practical considerations.

The three most commonly used structures are coral spiders, coral trees, and coral squares. Coral spiders are permanent, spider-web-like iron structures coated with epoxy and sand to prevent corrosion; they take about 35 days to complete and are favoured because they are relatively easy to construct and have high coral survival rates supported by research. Coral trees are temporary, tree-like structures where coral fragments are suspended from ropes attached to pipes, with weights below and floats above for stability; they take around 25 days to complete, allow fragments to grow for about a year, and can be repaired and reused. Coral squares, by contrast, are permanent cement-block structures arranged in a square with small pipes on top, providing stable bases for coral growth in selected areas.

For installation, Rudi and his team adapt their approach to each structure. On coral trees, each branch holds eight coral fragments, with eight branches per tree, allowing a single structure to support up to 64 fragments. They mainly use branching Acropora fragments of around 8 cm, taking no more than about 10% from a parent colony, and place the trees at a depth of around seven metres to ensure stable temperature and light conditions. Coral spiders, by contrast, can hold about 18 fragments per structure, which are secured using cable ties. For these, the team uses a wider range of branching corals, including Acropora, Seriatopora, Stylophora, Pocillopora, and Porites, with fragments of similar size, ideally sourced from the same location to support adaptation and survival.

After transplantation, Rudi and his team carry out regular monitoring to ensure the health and growth of the corals. Monitoring is conducted every 15 days, focusing on cleaning sediment and algae from the nursery structures, which is crucial for improving survival and growth rates. During these sessions, coral fragments are measured to track changes in height and width, dead fragments are replaced, and water quality is checked as an indicator of overall reef health. These monitoring activities are carefully documented and shared with participants, reinforcing both transparency and learning throughout the restoration process.

After around one year of growth in the nursery, coral fragments can be released back into the reef using new, permanent transplant structures, selected based on the results of the year-long monitoring. These release activities are planned not only as ecological interventions, but also as moments that actively involve travellers and local communities, where restoration becomes visible and participatory, setting the stage for better community and visitor involvement through conservation-based tourism.

Building on this, Rudi and his team aim to expand conservation areas across Bintan through concrete restoration targets, including the addition of coral spider, coral tree, and coral square structures in collaboration with partners such as PT Buana Megawisatama. Beyond increasing live coral cover and supporting the recovery of marine biodiversity, Rudi sees the strength of these efforts in their educational potential. As he explains, ‘’With conservation programs in place, we can offer eco-adventure tours that provide experiences and knowledge that will make people more responsible about the environment.’’

Central to this approach is community involvement and collaboration: engaging university diving communities in Tanjungpinang through monitoring and research projects, working with local dive centres as conservation facilitators, and involving local divers as volunteers. These efforts are supported by eco-diving courses that integrate coral planting, revenue-sharing models that fund restoration, coral adoption schemes for companies and individuals, and plans for future eco-tour packages that combine diving with hands-on coral restoration experiences.

So far, the results of Rudi and his team’s work have been encouraging. Research on the coral tree nurseries shows that after six months, transplanted fragments achieved an average growth of 3.05 cm with a survival rate of around 75%, with most losses linked to fragments taken from already unhealthy parent corals. The initiatives have also had a strong impact on tourism, particularly at the Bintan Black Coral dive center, which recorded a 40-60% increase in visitor numbers between 2023 and 2024, with around half of returning guests drawn by an interest in coral reef restoration. Beyond this, the programme has received positive responses from universities and other stakeholders, has been replicated by several tourism sites, and stands out as a pioneering effort in Bintan by offering public access to an artificial coral reef focused on conservation. At the same time, the sites have become important learning spaces, where students are not only welcomed to learn freely but are also supported in conducting research for their final academic projects.