Nature Seychelles, a nonprofit organisation, is planning to set up a land-based aquaculture coral farm on the island of Praslin to produce more heat-resilient corals, which are better engineered to adapt to continuously rising ocean temperatures.

The organisation’s chief executive, Nirmal Shah, told SNA that such a project will be more advantageous than an ocean-based nursery or farm.

“By growing corals in an aquaculture facility, we will be able to produce more corals and faster. We can also produce corals that we have experimented with. We want to train the corals to become more resilient to heat as this is the problem corals face at the moment,” said Shah.

Corals all over the world are increasingly dying due to the continuous rise of sea temperatures as a result of climate change.

Shah explained that it is more urgent for Seychelles matters as waters of the western Indian Ocean are warming up at a faster rate, causing corals to bleach faster.

When corals bleach, they expel their symbiotic partners, types of photosynthetic algae, causing the corals to be deprived of their nutrients and, as such, die off.