Protect Coral Reefs in Malaysia

The World Reef Awareness Day, World Oceans Day and Coral Triangle Day fall in the month of June. In conjunction with these three important days, Reef Check Malaysia took the opportunity to spread awareness on the importance of conserving and protecting our reefs and oceans.

Webinar on ‘The Diversity of Marine Ecosystems in Mersing and the Importance of Conserving Them’ was given by the Mersing team and managed to reach around 400 audiences. Reef rehabilitation and clean-up programmes were also carried out on Tioman Island, islands around Mersing and in Sabah. These activities were carried out together with volunteers and gave us the opportunities to inform our volunteers the important benefits of healthy coral reef ecosystems and what they can do in their daily life to help.

Over the last few months, Reef Check Malaysia conducted reef resilience assessments on Perhentian Island, Redang Island, Tioman Island and islands around Mersing. The surveys look at the composition of substrate cover, reef rugosity, fish and invertebrates as well as impacts on the reefs.

The aim of the assessment is to understand the resilience of the reef system in each island in order to inform management. The assessment can help to identify sites that have coral communities likely to be more resilient to climate change and other human stressors, help managers to prioritize management actions or strategies that will reduce stress at high resilience sites, provide an early warning of decreases in important resilience drivers, provide information to adaptively manage coral reefs following major disturbances, such as coral bleaching events or severe storms.