Reef Rescuers: Regrowing a Hectare of Coral Around the Seychelles' Cousin Island

Nature Seychelles' Reef Rescuers team has been growing coral in underwater and land-based nurseries since 2010 to rebuild reefs devastated by the 1998 mass bleaching event around Cousin Island Special Reserve. Using coral gardening, divers raise fragments in floating nurseries before transplanting them onto degraded reef flats, logging over 1,200 restoration dives across a four-year Adaptation Fund-backed phase. In February 2026 the team announced it had fully revived a hectare of reef, transplanting more than 32,000 coral fragments across multiple genera. The project's Assisted Recovery of Corals facility now also runs a coral spawning lab to scale up restoration for Seychelles' wider reef system.