Reef Ball Coral Team Project Activation for Windward Breakwater Project

The Reef Ball Foundation activated its Coral Reef Propagation and Coral Reef Rescue teams which are composed of hundreds of experts from around the world willing to volunteer their time, when coral reefs are threatened. For the Antigua project, over 274 volunteer man-days were used complete the coral propagation and rescue missions. This effort included experts from Australia, England, Holland, Mexico, Curacao, France, Italy, Antigua, Florida, Georgia, New York, Arizona, Turks and Caicos, Mississippi, Malaysia and more. Local volunteers from Antigua greatly assisted the efforts, making this not only the largest reef restoration effort ever...but also one based largely on volunteers. The volunteer teams did more than just transplant and propagate corals...they also did a biological census, reef clean up, created a genetic coral bank, rescued imperiled sea life, and educated local Antiguans on the importance of the coral reefs and how to keep up the health of the new reef. The volunteer teams documented 73 fish species, 71 invertebrates spp., 30 corals spp. and 26 algal spp. (plus a turtle) now on the reef. Every day the species list continues to grow.