This Community is Rebuilding Their Coral Reef.

What if you could take a coral graveyard, an area of lifeless rubble, and turn it into a thriving ecosystem once again? That's exactly what the team at Mars Sustainable Solutions have done and now they're bringing their method to the rest of the world. So let's go see how they're doing it here in the beautiful island of Kiadu in the Maldives. Okay, let's do it. We're going coral collecting. The first step in rebuilding a reef is to collect healthy corals. These can be corals of opportunity, pieces that have naturally broken off and wouldn't survive on their own, or smaller clippings, like trimming branches from a tree. What we're doing right now is we are tying the coral fragments onto the reef stars. Bebe and his incredible team at Save the Beach Maldives are the local partners and fundamental to large-scale reef restoration. The community here is very much involved with coral restoration and also learning about corals. Corals is the foundation for Maldivians. If the corals don't exist, our islands don't exist, and if the islands don't exist, we don't exist. So we have to protect them. The reef stars are arranged into a web structure, providing the corals with a stable platform to grow rapidly. We have attached corals on 400 reef stars in two days. It's incredible. I am very hopeful because there's more people like us, more people building reefs around the country, and happy to see kids enjoying this process, falling in love with the reef, falling in love with these corals. So yeah, the future's bright. We've shuttled about 230 reef stars out to the side, so looking good. We're ahead of schedule, so let's see what tomorrow holds. Bebe, what's the weather like? Today's weather is a little bit rough. The conditions are not very great, but we are thinking to shuttle our reef stars to the side. Weather is pretty horrendous. This weather is crazy. Not much we can do now. Just wait, get some editing done, see how it goes. It's the next day and the weather is just not improving. Wind's coming in and there's a strong current as well. We're not going to be able to finish the build while we're here, but the Save the Beach team is staying behind to make sure all the reef stars get put into place and the build gets finished. This is actually the second build here in Keoding. Eight months ago, the Save the Beach team did a 100 reef star pilot for this area. So let's see what it looks like in just eight months of coral growth. The coral growth has been incredible and I can't wait to see what it looks like in two years' time. Through effective partnerships, the MARS team is rebuilding coral reefs all over the Maldives to help restore this coral nation. If we all work together, we can restore these reefs, which will safeguard these islands. It's not too late. We can actually do something today. And it's not just the Maldives. They're on a mission to restore these vital ecosystems all over the world. So if you want to be a part of this journey, head to buildingcoral.com