Gili Lankanfushi put a festive spin on conservation with a Christmas coral line, we helped the marine life, guests and hosts get into the Christmas spirit. Let’s hope for a Christmas miracle!
Gili Lankanfushi takes every opportunity to inspire our guests and hosts about the environment and sustainability. This festive season was the perfect opportunity to inject some Christmas spirit into our coral lines project and get as many involved as possible.
The coral lines project started in 2014, it is a coral nursery and contains almost 9000 coral fragments that are bursting with colour and potential. We have over 20 different varieties of corals and we are hoping they can repopulate our house reef and put more colour back into our seas. We use our successful coral nursery as an education tool about coral reefs, their threats and practical conservation methods that are being undertaken. Worldwide coral reefs are in distress and dying as a result of our impacts to the environment. Therefore, Gili Lankanfushi’s plan to help rehabilitate the environment is to nurse our corals on the ropes and later transplant them onto our One Palm Island house reef. We nurse the corals until they are strong enough to be moved to the house reef. Once on the house reef we expect them to thrive and provide habitat for fish, turtles and rays.
This was the Coral Line Project’s fourth Christmas and it was celebrated in true Gili style. We had the Gili family attend and they helped inspire the guests and raise awareness about the project and our conservation efforts. The line was made by inserting 35 fragments of coral which were around five centimetres in size into a five metre rope. We then measured the size of each fragment. Whilst the line was being made we educated everyone in attendance about corals, their threats and what we do. We then planted the line, on the snorkel we were lucky enough to see a baby green turtle resting on the nursery, a flutemouth and many other beautiful fish. The name of the line is ‘To plant, to grow, to live’. We had many suggestions for the name but sadly only one could be chosen. Gili fell in love with Laura’s suggests so thank you. To view the coral line please click on this link. We will update the webpage over the coming year with new photos and measurements.
A big thank you to everyone who helped. It was great fun for everyone involved! The coral’s couldn’t have asked for a better send off and start to their new life saving our reef.
