Sustainable Oceans International

22/12/2025

Our Oyster Triangle reef units proving very effective in port Phillip bay, Melbourne.

Excellent pilot project that first seeded the Oyster Triangles with oysters and then deployed them to accelerate productivity.

Growth has been fantastic confirming the site has the right food and flow and not surprising as it was the site of a very large mussel reef back in the 70’s until it was trawled.

These Oyster Triangles are ideal for estuary bank stabilisation from boat wash while providing productive habitat. And of course ideal for enhancing productivity around or inside larger concrete reef units or for coral reefs. Our goal in designing reefs is always a diversity of habitat to help increase the variety of food. It’s like making sure there are sufficient cafes, supermarkets for the large office towers!

Reach out if you might have an application for these units.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CuH7ANLbb/?mibextid=wwXIfr

07/08/2024

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/h8yywNAbFYqxaoUa/?mibextid=WC7FNe

⬇️ This is good news, BUT it’s important to understand some details AND it’s all in the timing.

Today, we release our annual summary on reef condition in the Great Barrier Reef, which shows that coral cover has increased in all three regions of the Reef.

BUT there’s a little more to understand:

🤿Most of the surveys were done before and during the recent mass bleaching event, one of the most extensive and serious on record.

🪸How many corals survived or died following the bleaching won’t be known until we survey the reefs next monitoring season, which starts again in September.

Read the media release: https://bit.ly/LTMP_MR_24
View the report: https://bit.ly/LTMP23_24

15/03/2024

I wanted to draw attention to something that is starting to worry me. Interested in what you think.

The world has become quite obsessed with saving corals and while that is great, and long over due, especially for someone like me and colleagues that have spent literally years and hundreds of thousands of dollars campaigning and pushing for coral restoration but no one cared...I'm noticing a worrying trend in some artificial reef designs for reef restoration and coastal projects looking to save and/or enhance coral cover.

Many artificial reef units I'm seeing for reef restoration are not including features attractive to fish (and other marine life). This may be partly due to the belief that if we grow coral the fish will come...by default.

But...

1. Its been shown that coral reefs do better and can have a higher resilience to warmer water if they have a healthy fish population.

2. There is a real chance we are NOT going to halt climate change quick enough to save a large number of corals, and in 10, 20, 30, 40 yrs all the artificial structures designed specifically for corals may not have any living corals, or at least minimal cover. I hope I'm wrong. However, planning restoration for the worse case scenario is smart I think. Therefore 'coral focused' reef units run the risk of being of limited use other than structure for some food to grow on, essentially making them expensive rocks. This is a costly mistake, and equals a missed opportunity to design for the future, not just the immediate desire to grow corals.

We saw the horrific loss of 10yrs of coral planting in the Florida keys this last summer and the Great Barrier Reef is now having a mass bleaching event. So the reality is there, we need to design structures for more than just corals.

3. Incorporating design features (and reef configurations) that will support a diversity of fish and food such as crustaceans and molluscs is not hard and doesn't really cost extra but could have significant long term benefits, and avoid wasting a huge amount of time and money.

And having structures that support the smaller shrimp and crabs helps control COTS babies hiding in the reef as they eat them, therefore giving an extra protection for corals that do survive.

So there you go. If you are designing reef units and reefs, commissioning artificial reefs for coral restoration, or building coastal developments looking to have coral gardens, please please please don't forget the fish. Happy to discuss further!

13/01/2024

ARTIFICIAL REEF DESIGN IN 2024+

I am looking forward to seeing some beautiful effective reef units come to life in 2024 that I've had the pleasure of helping design.

They are the best xmas present for me! I just love seeing advances in reef unit design and seeing talented passionate people collaborate to help make it happen - including progressive customers willing to push the envelope.

In particular, several 3D printed designs will come to life via a collaboration with myself, coastruction, Nadia Fani and extremely talented architect Tim Fu. Attached photos are a small taste for some of the designs but not the limit! We are just getting started...

All designs take into careful consideration customers goals, application, target species, currents, waves, method of deployment, seabed, materials, cost and last but not least, aesthetics which I think needs to be an additional consideration in restoration projects moving forward. Worldwide we have seen an explosion of marine/coral restoration projects working out the fundamentals and laying the necessary groundwork, and now I think we can add aesthetics of restoration to our essential criteria, but that's another post! :)

When I design units, every surface and angle and edge and opening is considered for its ability to provide 'opportunities for nature'. This is achieved by thinking like a fish or coral and creating 'protective spaces' at the micro to macro scale. Like building a city...its a boring and less effective city if every building is exactly the same, same height, street width the same, spacing the same. Diversity of opportunities is key so we try to avoid uniform patterns/grooves/openings/surfaces etc. BTW - We need to address this in one tower in the photos - it needs greater diversity of hole sizes and shapes!

Stay tuned for updates, get in touch if you have a project, and I wish all of you a wonderful 2024 and may we see our marine buddies benefit and have a great year also!

17/12/2023

Kicking off 2024 with new REEF CPR (coral preservation and restoration) programs!

We stopped running the courses due to covid but excited to say Bali Conservation Diving will be offering basic and advanced REEF CPR training in 2024. 😀

REEF CPR is reef 'firstaid' for rec divers, a program myself and John Walch originally wrote in 2012 for resort reefs but expanded to rec divers. It provides fundamental strategies that enable divers to 'leave reefs better than they found them'.

Divers are a valuable resource that can help take care of and reduce their impact on the wonderful coral reefs they are enjoying everyday. We look after public parks and resort gardens, but reefs tend to be used without maintenance. 🙁

REEF CPR promotes 3 core strategies, designated by the letters 'CPR' much like regular firstaid.

'C' = CONTROL the cause of impact. As best you can and includes over 10 core ways including things like stopping fin damage, trash/plastics/fishing line, toxic sunscreens, predators, anchors etc. This is like moving an injured victim out of danger in traditional firstaid.

'P' = PREPARE for natural recovery. Nature has a wonderful ability to recover providing certain conditions are present. Strategies here include stabilising coral rubble, stabilising broken corals, turning them back over, removing seaweed, adding artificial structures (ICRs) etc.

'R' = REPLANT (or reseed) corals. Final and usually most expensive option, and important C and P are in place first.

We now have a two hour online or in person 'basic' REEF CPR course providing fundamental knowledge divers can use, and an advanced course conducted over several days that gets hands on doing actual CPR.

Let me know if you are interested in offering the course or taking part.
hashtag hashtag hashtag hashtag hashtag

15/09/2023

Removing seaweeds with divers/snorkellers can help increase coral cover.

Some helpful research from AIMS and an action we will add to our Reef CPR training 👍🏻

https://www.facebook.com/100064793433889/posts/695352959301146/?mibextid=cr9u03

04/06/2023

FREE TO A GOOD HOME! 🙂
In honour of World Reef Awareness Day and World Env Day, we dug out an old acronym for the recreational diving industry that we came up with in 1996, and sold posters and t-shirts with it, and used it in Reef CPR training - but we are not using it much and its a shame so I'm offering it to anyone and everyone that might be drawn to it and have a use for it to help our coral buddies.

Free, no strings attached.

Use it in your own custom poster, sticker, tshirt, whatever...and use on your dive boat, dive shop, in your reef organisation, at your resort etc. 😍 🙏 🐠

And we'd love to see what you produce! Feel free to pass on to anyone you think might have a use for it.

Activate to view larger image,

24/01/2023

Reef Arabia is like a sister company for us as SOI director David Lennon is a co founder and co-director of RA and trainer and consultant to the RA team.

Here are some shots of RA’s new patented Sea Mount and Majfara reef units. These units are designed for coral relocations or general out planting of corals and have a more natural appearance so they blend in to the reefscape. They also have caves, holes and sufficient swim through to be attractive to reef fish.

The tan coloured patches are fired clay inserts that can be added to provide alternative surfaces for natural coral recruits. These can have a variety of textures.

Stay tuned for details and updates of their deployment. And moulds can be shipped anywhere or made in country if you want to use them outside of the Middle East. 👍🏻

05/08/2022

This is an excellent concept. We subscribe to Ecologi that plants trees. This one takes it one step further. 👍🏻👏🏻🐙🦀🐠🐬

06/07/2022

TALK: ARTIFICIAL REEFS

SOI Director David Lennon is presenting via zoom on artificial reefs for Marine Care Ricketts Point (VIC), Thurs, 7 Jul, 730pm Melbourne time. Anyone is welcome to join using the link below.

Topics I'll cover include:

- Artificial reefs share many similarities to cities and this can help us understand them.

- Examples of reef units I have designed and/or deployed, from 10kg to 7 tonnes and their key features.

- How corals can be moved and saved from development and role of artificial reefs in coral restoration.

- Advances in artificial reef design, where are we heading?

- Questions

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85050151037

Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise video communications, with an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars across mobile, desktop, and room systems. Zoom Rooms is the original software-based conference room solution used around the world in board, confer...