Ceiba Strategies LLC

12/12/2025

🌱 Free Fruit-tree Giveaway : 9 AM to 12 PM Sunday 12/14/2025
Christiansted Government Parking Lot (by the Baobab Tree)

We’ll be giving out about 100 fruit trees for community members to plant and enjoy at home.
Tree varieties include: mammee apple, jackfruit, sea grape, acerola cherry, cacao, and bell apple.

Details:
• Free; one tree per household
• First come, first serve
• Mammee apple recipients may receive two for pollination
• Care instructions included
• We encourage you to email us a photo of your planted tree: [email protected]
• Donations welcome

🚶‍♀️ Free 4-Mile Holiday Walk: Starts at 9 AM Sunday 12/14/2025
Meet at the Baobab Tree in the Christiansted Government Parking Lot

Led by Stephen Cohen and Esther Sweeney of the St. Croix Hiking Association, this moderate 4-mile loop takes you along the waterfront to Altona Lagoon, up to the Altona Lagoon hillside overlook, then to the storytelling circle at Canegata, and up to the Bypass overlook before returning to town.

Plan for about 1.5 hours of walking, with breaks at the benches installed along the way by the Vi Trail Alliance, to enjoy the beautiful views.

What to bring:
• Comfortable closed-toe shoes
• Water
• Sun hat
• Light snacks if desired

03/12/2025

22/10/2025

Support our partners in coral restoration on the West End! These guys supply air, equipment, and community connections with divers that want to make a difference!

19/10/2025

07/10/2025

🌿 We're Hiring! 🌿

Join Thriving Islands in beautiful St. Croix, USVI, as a Coastal Resilience Technician and play a hands-on role in restoring coral reefs, growing mangroves, and protecting island ecosystems.

This full-time position combines meaningful fieldwork with community outreach—perfect for someone passionate about marine science, conservation, and making a real impact. 🌊

If you have field experience, love the ocean, and want to grow your skills in coastal restoration, we want to hear from you!

📍 Based in St. Croix
🔗 Learn more + apply: www.thrivingislands.com/jobs/technician

Let’s build thriving coasts—together. 💙

01/09/2025

🌊💪 Coral Emergency Response Diver Training – STT Edition Begins! 💪🌊

We’ve officially launched Day 1 of our Coral Emergency Response Diver Training in St. Thomas! 🪸⚒️

Building on the momentum from our STX pilot earlier this month, our STT Strike Team came together on August 23rd for hands-on training focused on assessing coral reef damage — starting on land before heading underwater.

📍 The day kicked off with a land-based survey training exercise, where trainees learned how to accurately measure and document damaged corals — an essential skill when responding to events like vessel groundings or storm impacts.
📏🐠 Our team also practiced conducting a belt transect survey, a key method for assessing coral health and documenting damage on the reef.

With skills sharpened, we took the training to the water with a reef survey dive at Coki Beach — putting theory into action in a real-world setting.
This program is part of our ongoing mission to build a local “reef first responders” network — a team ready to jump into action when our coral reefs need help most.

🙏 A huge thank-you to CWORI Dive Center for generously hosting our dive training at Coki Beach! Your support plays a vital role in building our community of reef responders and protecting the incredible marine ecosystems of the Virgin Islands. 💙🐚

14/08/2025

🌊💪 Coral Emergency Response Diver Training - Pilot Course in STX! 💪🌊

On August 2 & 3, Ceiba kicked off our first-ever Coral Emergency Response Diver Training Course in Butler Bay in STX! 🪸

Over two full days, our Strike Team divers worked to expand their skills from coral disease treatment to responding to acute coral damage emergencies like vessel groundings and hurricane damage.

Training covered:
✅ Coral surveys & site assessments
✅ GPS & geotagging
✅ Safe coral handling & transport
✅ Cementing & epoxy reattachment

This pilot program is the first step toward creating a “reef first responders” network — like a community firefighter team, but for our coral reefs. 🐠💙 We’ll keep refining the training and hope to offer it to more local divers in the future. Ceiba extends a huge "thank you" to our local trainers from NOAA, Coral Restoration Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, Thriving Islands, and East End Marine Park (DPNR) who helped our dive team work through these skills.

Looking forward to our STT training later this month with friends from , UVI and Sea Grant!

Department of Planning and Natural Resources The Nature Conservancy in the Caribbean Coral Restoration Foundation Feather Leaf Inn

Lindsay Z Metz Hilary Lohmann Alexandra Gutting Corina Isabelle Marks Bailey Benson Leslie Marie Bernard Castillo, Amanda G Boissiere Michael Funk, MG, Schneider

18/07/2025

Growing mangroves for our "Roots for Reefs" project on St. Croix!

30/05/2025

🌊🪸 Turning a Fragment of Opportunity into a Second Chance! 🪸🌊

During a recent intervention dive, the Ceiba Strike Team encountered a coral that had become detached from the reef —what we call a "fragment of opportunity"— at the Coki beach dive site in St. Thomas. This coral had living tissue face-down in the sand, smothering it and allowing corallivores (like ocean snails that feed on coral) to move in. Several of those snails were actively preying on the fragment when we found it.

🐚 Thankfully, our team was ready. The snails were removed, and divers mixed a two-part epoxy to reattach the coral to the reef, lifting it out of the sediment and away from future threats. This reattachment helps give corals a better shot at survival—an essential step in reef resilience and recovery.
🎥 Check out this video featuring Michael Niemeyer, Ceiba's 2025 St. Thomas Dive Team Lead, explaining how we respond to coral reef disturbances like this one on our monthly missions.
💙 A huge thank you to the divers at Coral World Ocean Park for alerting us to this fragment of opportunity and for generously supporting our St. Thomas dives this year with access to their dive platform and tanks. Your collaboration makes this work possible!

Let’s keep working together to protect and restore USVI’s reefs—one fragment of opportunity at a time. 🌿🌊