How do we solve a problem like coral bleaching? Corals are the jewels of the ocean, cradles of biodiversity. They are also super-sensitive to rises in sea temperature, which bleach them; if the water warms by two degrees, we will lose warm-water corals for good.
Leading the fight for their survival is Titouan Bernicot, who founded the Coral Gardeners project in 2017, which is supported by the Rolex Perpetual Planet initiative. Bernicot, the son of French pearl farmers, grew up on a small atoll in French Polynesia and became a coral defender overnight after seeing the bleaching for himself. He was 16 and heading to the reef to surf after school when he found that the coral had been bleached a deadly white. Horrified, he leapt into action, rescuing fragments of live coral and replanting the reef with the help of his friends and younger brother.
As the pink coral grew, the fish returned, and Bernicot posted pictures of it online. Then he had a brainwave and created a website. “I was like, people adopt pandas, so why wouldn’t they adopt the corals we have in front of my house in our little nurseries?” he says. “We posted pictures and then someone bought certificates of adoption that we printed out.”
People seemed to love it — and were impressed by the speed with which the coral and fish returned. “Year one with a coral you have one fish, and then in the nursery you have maybe 50,” Bernicot says. “After three years of the corals growing, you have more than 5,000 fish.”
Recent evidence shows that some corals have incredible thermal adaptability, meaning they are resilient to the effects of climate change. This makes them ideal donors of healthy fragments for propagation. Conservationists collect and plant these pieces in nurseries, then later transplant them back into the reefs. But it is imperative to act quickly, Bernicot says, before too much reef is lost. “Experts told me to study and get a PhD, and maybe after eight years I could work for an NGO project and try and get some funding. But this is too late, too slow.”
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Like all good iconoclasts he ignored the experts, dropping out of school to start Coral Gardeners. “Today we have more than seven full-time scientists — including four PhD scientists — and top engineers working for us,” he tells me over Zoom from his headquarters in Fiji. Among them is the former Tesla engineer Drew Gray who, after a call with Bernicot, moved to French Polynesia to devote himself to the cause.
And if you feel the same urge? You’ll be up against some serious competition: Bernicot estimates that he has received 300,000 applications over the past five years — and at present he needs a team of only 60. But Coral Gardeners offers experience packages starting at about £65 a person — or you can adopt a coral from £20. Companies can go bigger: for £43,000 a firm such as Rolex, which has donated to the project, can adopt 5,000 corals or 200 sq m of reef and follow its development on a video live stream — definitely more fun than buying carbon credits.
The Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative was launched in 2019 to help scientists, explorers and conservationists who are working to find solutions to pressing ecological problems. It is renowned for supporting top-flight science-based initiatives to restore balance to global ecosystems. Recent projects it has backed include community-led reforestation in the Andes organised by the indigenous Peruvian biologist Constantino Aucca Chutas, and one of the world’s first farm-to-closet supply chains to benefit rural women in Indonesia, created by Denica Riadini-Flesch, the social entrepreneur and chief executive of SukkhaCitta.
Bernicot’s work is also regenerating the idea of conservation. He’s signed with the Nature Conservancy to build what he calls “the most advanced land-based coral farm and nursery in the world”, with “semi-automated tank robots”. Morethan 610,000 followers enjoy daily updates fromhis organisation on Instagram, and in 2019 a post explaining the work of Coral Gardeners by the influencer Alexis Ren became one of the platform’s top five most-watched videos. “We are the most followed coral reef conservation project on the planet by likes,” Bernicot says proudly.
And the NGO is growing fast, just like its work: over the past six years it has transplanted 100,000 corals back to the reef, and it aims to reach one million by the end of 2025. During the rest of this year (and it is a tough one for Pacific reefs after the strong El Niño), Coral Gardeners will branch out to the Cook Islands, Thailand, Indonesia, Rapa Nui and possibly Panama.
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Thanks to Bernicot, finally we have a path that offers hope for the future of coral reefs.
