Protect Coral Reefs in Malaysia

Anchors from boats can cause considerable damage to coral reefs, including breakage, fragmentation and direct injury to the reef ecosystem. Additionally, anchors and chains can break or dislodge corals, sponges and sea fans, resulting in immediate and long-term damage to large areas of the coral reef. Some coral species only 1cm per year, therefore it can take many years for some coral to recover from an anchoring incident. Anchoring also causes immediate and extensive damage on reef-associated habitats such as seagrass beds, which are important nursery and juvenile habitats for many species. A mooring buoy floats in water to which boats can be moored. Mooring buoys are therefore essential to marine tourism as they discourage boats from dropping their anchors.

The Tioman Marine Conservation Group from Tioman Island inspects existing mooring buoys regularly and installs new mooring buoys and fixes broken mooring buoys when needed. Over the last 13 months, the team together with Reef Check Malaysia had installed and fixed a total of 13 mooring buoys.

Further down south from Tioman Island, Reef Check Malaysia aided in the installation of mooring buoys at Harimau and Hujung islands with the help of Besar Island’s community. It is hoped that these mooring buoys will help to reduce the impacts of anchoring on the reefs.

In year 2022, our team on Mantanani Island has successfully prevented more than 52,000kg wastes from ending up polluting the island and its surrounding environments. With the recycling collection centre (Mantanani Plastic Recycling Centre) on the island, which was established in 2018 and run by our team together with members of the local community, recyclable materials such as plastic bottles were compacted before being packed and sent out of the island to recycling centre on mainland. Every month, our team collected around 4,000 to 6,000 plastic bottles, especially PET bottles. Other recyclable materials such as glass bottles, cans, metals and electrical wastes were also sent out of the island to be recycled. Food waste on the other hand was composted on the island for fertiliser, which will be used by the locals in their community farming.