Coral Monitoring: August 2, 2025

Pandanan Surveilance Community (Pokmaswas), NTB Office of BPSPL Denpasar, and the guest Carles Simson Panjaitan from Sea Kayak Indonesia have done coral monitoring in Pandanan Marine Technopark on August 2, 2025. Monitoring started at 10.00 Central Indonesia Time (CIT) with a short briefing about the story of Pandanan Marine Technopark and what the monitoring will be done.

Simson and Barmawi

Pandanan Marine Technopark is developed based on the three main pillars. They are Ecology, Economy, and Education. This pillars are shortened as 3E. The first pillar is aiming to restore the coral reef condition to the previous good condition. At the beginning of program, in January 2020, the coral reef was in destroyed condition. There are only about 10 percent corals are good. The rest, about 80 percent, consisted of rubble, dead corals, alga, and sands. The second pillar is aiming to generate an economic income for the local community through the coral reef restoration-based ecotourism operation. People can learn to a scuba diving and coral transplantation. The local community provides those services and generate income. The last pillar is aiming to make those all process as a learning tool and media. K-12 and university students and public can learn scuba diving from the very beginning and participate on the coral reef restoration. This pillar is simple to be explained to the stakeholders but comprehensive to acheive the goals.  

The monitoring was started at the nursery point supported by PLN Indonesia Power UBP Jeranjang. The divers descended right to the miniature of PLTU building. The construction was still good and recided many fish. The observation was continued to the miniature of electrical power circuit network. The towers were still standing but the cables (nylon ropes) have been replaced with the new one. Not every 30 cm ropes were attached corals. The team need to arrange maintenance of the ropes and attach corals on it.

The diving was continued to the tree-like structures. Many of this stuctures were collapse and some were still exist with small coral attached on the branches. The next point was at the PLN-IP concret structure. the structure was still exist and in a good condition. The next maintenance required is planting corals. The next point was MARS block structures. The structures were growned healthy corals, mainly the redish brown. A black lion fish was swim playing beside the MARS blocks. There are also a schooling bannerfish (5 individual) swim playing to the end of MARS block structures. It seem that the structure is already becoming a habitat of many fish. Several MARS blocks are still need to be attched coral fragment on its holes.

The last monitoring activity was strengthening spider structures and coral planting. 30 cm cable ties were used to tie two spider legs and 15 cm cable ties were used to attach corals on the structure. The monitoring finished after about 60 minutes diving. The next week monitoring will be done at the moment of the National Independence Day.