I received the first grant from the Rufford Small Grants Foundation in 2005 for the coral rehabilitation experiment in Ha Long Bay Natural World Heritage Site of Vietnam. In the framework of this project, our team has achieved positive results both in terms of scientific baselines and social aspects, contributing to cutting down the degradation trends of the keystone tropical ecosystem in this famous bay. We successfully transplanted corals at the degraded reef sites that have been destroyed by the destructive fishing practices in 1990s using several low cost techniques applicable for Vietnam. Though, the transplanted sites just were carried out at the small scale but we can confidently ourselves that people can do something right now to boost up the recovery rate of coral reefs and other marine ecosystems in Vietnam.

The author at the field site

Seminar on coral and coral reefs for high school students

Mariculture technical training course

Coral developed on the steel frame since 2005

A common chop celling coral-made products at Khanh Hoa Province

Discussion with the fishermen at Phu Yen Province

The findings of this project received strong support coming from public and local communities. The National Broadcasting Television (VTV 1) did several programs to broadcast the news from Ha Long Bay project and considered as the typical contribution of scientists in the field of marine conservation. In addition, the team members have good opportunities to train by themselves at the real works (most of them are young scientists) on how to make the changes in the knowledge of local people and thus enhance the capacity building of the Ha Long Bay Management Department. The transplanted sites now are under the safeguarding of the Park authority and we hope that this model will be scaled up in following years.