Alor community empowerment and coral protection project
Alor in Eastern Indonesia is a remote underwater paradise. The area has become popular with scuba divers and whale watching as well as commercial fishing trips in recent years. There are seasonal Pygmy Blue Whales and Sperm whales to be seen. The area is also known for shark diving with Tresher Sharks and Hammerhead sharks spotted regularly. There are a range of habitats ranging from coral reefs to muck diving for marine enthusiasts.
The area has many coastal communities that rely on fishing and agriculture for their livelihoods. There are some resource use conflicts, such as the hunting of turtles and sharks and using dynamite to catch reef fish taking place. These practices harm the environment and deplete endangered species populations.
The communities are poor, even in the Indonesian context and lack alternative economic opportunities to move away from harvesting critical biodiversity.
We have teamed up with Nautika Foundation and Tresher Shark Indonesia in this area to deliver community benefits from the donations generated through Ocean Eye. The income will further be targeted to community groups such as women and youth and provide training to start small businesses that can provide products for the tourism sector such as sweets, soaps and handicrafts. This will help further diversify the income of the villages make them less dependent on the use of natural resources and create resilience towards economic shocks.
The illegal and extremely damaging practice of using homemade bombs to target fish on coral reefs is still being used in the area and causes irreversible damage to the reefs. The culprits are not known but originate from the wider Alor area. The program aims to educate the communities in the entire Alor region about the damaging nature of this practice.
Ocean Eye has started to work with Nautika Alor dive school and resort in this area and looking to expand its activity to cover more of the tourism sector in the future.