Coral Conservation

Coral reefs, and what we do about them

Less than one percent of the ocean floor is reef, yet around a quarter of all marine species live there. That is the whole reason reefs matter out of proportion to their size, and why losing them costs so much more than it looks like it should.

 

They are animals, not rocks

A reef looks like coloured stone and is in fact a colony of tiny living animals. Coral polyps build in layers, slowly, and over thousands of years those layers become the structures that shelter fish, break the force of storms before they reach the shore, and feed the coastal communities built around them. A reef is a nursery, a wall and a larder at once.

 

What is happening to them

Warmer water, pollution, overfishing and coastal building have all pressed on reefs at the same time, and stretches that were once dense with life have thinned out. The visible sign is bleaching. When the water stays too warm, coral expels the algae living inside it, the algae it depends on for both its colour and most of its food. What is left is white and starving. This is not damage that undoes itself, which is the whole reason restoration matters. Replanting is not waiting for a reef to recover. It is putting back, by hand, some of what has already been lost.

What Kaoua does

A portion of every sale goes to coral reef restoration.

The ocean is where everything here leads to. So the reef is not a cause we picked up along the way. It is where this was always going to end up.

We have supported two reef projects directly, and we go to them. The most recent meant diving a restoration site in eastern Indonesia and learning coral planting by hand, alongside the team who built it.

Support goes to particular reefs and people we know rather than to a logo on a donation page, and it grows at the speed the brand grows, which is slower than we would like.