Indonesia consist of vast coastal region which about 81,000 km shoreline and more than 17,000 small islands and has provided huge contribution to the Indonesia economic development. The region and its resources should be sustainably managed so it still available in the future to support the country’s economic development.
Indonesia is also one of the regions that contains the highest diversity of marine life in the world. Their ecosystems face significant threats including exploitation, overfishing, sedimentation, and climate change.
Dr. Munasik, a lecturer from the Faculty of Fisheries and Marine Sciences, Undip and researcher of coral reefs restoration said that the sedimentation from run off land or rivers are threatening the preservation of our coral reefs, and thus are characterized by a reduction in the area of coral reefs, failure of reproduction and settlement of coral larvae. Apart from that, the physical treats such as the activities of barges and massive tourism activities could leads to the damage of the coral reefs.
In order to save the marine ecosystems and rehabilitation of coral reefs, sequence approaches needs to be conducted: the first is to do mitigation of coral reefs, namely efforts to prevent the damage and degradation of coral reefs both non-structural (public awareness) and structurally and the second is the rehabilitation of coral reefs by applying artificial reefs.
He creates an Artificial Patch Reef (APR) for Coral Reef Restoration with various advantages including easy to install (modular and lightweight), cheap, consist of hard substrates that can support vegetative and generative coral development; suitable for murky and shallow waters; growing new habitats for sustainability. However, the restoration of coral reefs will not be achieved without synergy and awareness from the society “he said.