What We Do

Local Economic Empowerment

Sustainable economic opportunities
for local & indigenous communities

While installing coral is very much our day to day activity, underneath this lies a level of impact that is much bigger than reefs, fish and coral. We insist that our organization is part of creating significant economic opportunities and improvements for local communities in Bocas.

Apprentice to Entrepreneur Progam

We offer paid training apprentice programs specific to fishery development and sustainability, for enthusiastic and dedicated residents of Bocas. The hypothesis is that apprentices will become local entrepreneurs and village employers as artificial reef suppliers for future installation projects.

Our Programs

Apprenticeship

Job skills, conservation education, reef building and supplier development. A paid apprenticeship that evolves into village entrepreneurs and national reef structure suppliers.

Education

Alongside applicable skills, participating with local communities to share the insights, methods and abundance of fishery rehabilitation.

Conservation

Creating community opportunities to build lifelong and career conservationists – from Nursery staff, tour guides, to the Caribbean Coral Restoration education center employees.

Apprenticeship & Coral Restoration

Our goal is to create a sustainable industry will be generated that will benefit the community in multiple ways.

Early on, we became painfully aware that the reef system was in such a state of collapse that without artificial supplementation, the fisheries had no hope of a timely recovery. The research and development of suitable structure systems for the marine environment of the Bocas Del Toro archipelago was challenging but very rewarding with the results achieved in a relatively short amount of time.

However, we soon realized that the continued manufacturing of the necessary artificial reef structures would encompass a great deal of time and labor to be effective. Our first approach was to hire local workers to assist in the construction of these structures. Although this was effective it soon became a management hungry division of the coral restoration nursery.

Our next approach was to teach one of the workers the entire process and let him build to our specifications at his own facility. The idea was that we would pay based on productivity. Unfortunately, productivity vastly exceeded quality control. It was apparent that on-site communication and supervision during the initial process and learning stage was paramount to impress ongoing sustainability.

Our solution was to start a program where we are training several apprentices on-site with the intention that they get to the point where they fully understand what is needed and the standards which have to be maintained throughout the process. By having these apprentices involved in the artificial reef construction process starting with the ordering of materials and processing clear through to the placement of the structures in the ocean, the task becomes much more meaningful and a sense of accomplishment supports the quality of future manufacturing.

Once an apprentice demonstrates that they are interested in pursuing a larger potential, the next step will be to empower these apprentices to be in control of their own manufacturing devices from start to finish. Caribbean Coral Restoration will buy structures from them for a pre-agreed price, but they will not be restricted to selling to CCR exclusively.