1ClickImpact Powers Mossy Earth's Coral Reef Restoration in Indonesia
Our new coral partner, Mossy Earth, is rebuilding a blast-damaged reef in the Nusa Penida Marine Protected Area. Here is how the restoration works, what 5,303 structures and 12,000 fragments have achieved so far, and how any business can fund a coral fragment from $2.20.
Rebuilding a blast-damaged reef in the Nusa Penida Marine Protected Area, Indonesia, one coral fragment at a time. Now fundable from any checkout, app or workflow you already run.
From $2.20 a fragment. Fifteen fragments rebuild one reef structure.
Coral reefs cover about one percent of the ocean floor and shelter roughly a quarter of all marine species. We have lost around half of them in thirty years. That is a faster decline than birds, mammals or amphibians, and it is happening almost entirely out of sight.
The short version
- 1ClickImpact now funds coral reef restoration through Mossy Earth's Wilder Reefs project in the Nusa Penida Marine Protected Area, Indonesia.
- The work stabilises blast-damaged coral rubble with modular steel structures, then transplants coral fragments that had already broken off the healthy reef next door.
- 5,303 structures are in the water, 12,000+ fragments have been transplanted, and Area 1 has started recruiting wild coral on its own.
- Coral starts at $2.20 per fragment. Fifteen fragments rebuild one reef structure, about 2,160 cm² of living reef.
- One API call, one Shopify setting or one Zapier step is enough to fund it automatically.
1ClickImpact has partnered with Mossy Earth to fund Wilder Reefs, their coral restoration programme inside the Nusa Penida Marine Protected Area in Indonesia. Coral reef restoration is now a live impact type on 1ClickImpact, which means any business, app or workflow can fund a real coral fragment the same way it already plants a tree or pulls plastic out of the ocean.
We picked this project carefully. Reef restoration attracts a lot of good intentions and a lot of structures dumped on a seabed with nobody coming back to check. Wilder Reefs is the opposite: monthly dives, individual fragment tracking, published failures, and a team that changed its own attachment method after the data said the old one was worse. You can watch them do it, which is rarer than it should be.
A reef that cannot rebuild itself
Decades ago, parts of this reef were fished with dynamite. The practice has largely stopped, thanks to local education and enforcement inside the marine protected area, but the damage did not stop with it. Blasting, anchor strikes and overfishing left craters of loose coral rubble where solid reef used to be.
Rubble sounds harmless. It is not. Coral larvae drift in the water column and need something stable to cement themselves to. On a rubble field, every current shifts the fragments and grinds the settlers off. Marine biologists describe it as a killing field for larvae. Left alone, that ground could take centuries to consolidate on its own.
of the ocean floor is reef
of marine species live there
of reefs lost in 30 years
Why restoration is worth it here specifically
This site sits in a localised potential thermal refugium. High subsurface temperature variability and pockets of local cooling mean it is less exposed to bleaching than most reefs of its size. Putting effort into coral that has a better chance of surviving the next marine heatwave is simply a better bet than restoring reef that is likely to cook.
How Wilder Reefs puts a reef back together
The method is deliberately unglamorous, and that is the point. There is no lab-grown super coral and no single clever invention. There is a steel frame, a handful of broken coral that was going to die anyway, and a team that keeps coming back.
- 01
Hold the rubble still
Modular steel hexagons, roughly 50 cm across, are coated in resin and sand, then staked down over the loose rubble. The coating stops the frames corroding and gives coral polyps something rough to grip. Once the ground stops moving, larvae finally have a chance.
- 02
Rehome fragments that already broke off
Nothing healthy gets cut. Divers collect coral that storms and currents have already knocked loose on the neighbouring reef, across a wide mix of species, so the new patch colonises the way a wild reef would rather than as a monoculture.
- 03
Micro-frag so colonies fuse
Pieces of the same parent colony are placed together on one structure. As they grow they recognise each other and knit back into a single large colony, reaching a reproductive size years faster than a fragment left on its own.
- 04
Come back every month
The team dives the sites monthly to brush off smothering macro-algae, pick off Drupella snails and coral-killing sponges, and check calcium carbonate deposition. A coral laying down fresh skeleton is thriving. One that has stopped is telling you something.
A detail we like: the team ran a side by side trial of plastic zip ties, hemp rope, cotton twine, stainless steel and aluminium wire to attach fragments. Hemp and cotton looked better on paper and performed worse in the water. Aluminium won. They published the result and changed the method. That is what a project that is actually measuring looks like.
What one coral fragment actually buys
We bill on the fragment because the fragment is the thing a diver physically ties to a frame. It is the smallest honest unit of this work. One fragment covers about 144 cm² (22.32 in²) of reef. Fifteen of them fill one modular structure, which comes out at roughly 2,160 cm², or 335 in², of living reef.
Contribute at any scale
One fragment on a small order. Fifteen on a subscription signup. A few thousand as an annual commitment. Because the unit is small, the same integration works for a side project and an enterprise programme.
The API returns raw counts
coral_restored is always a fragment count. Divide by 15 for structures, multiply by 144 cm² for area, and display whichever number your customers understand best.
Where the project stands today
reef structures on the seabed
coral fragments transplanted
of rubble field stabilised
wild coral recruits in Area 1
The headline number is not the structure count. It is the wild recruits. Those are baby corals that drifted in, found stable ground, and settled by themselves. When a restored patch starts recruiting on its own, it has stopped being a garden and started being a reef again.
How it got here
- Feb 2024
Seven hexagons and a hunch
The first trial structures go down to test a simple question: if you hold the rubble still, will coral come back on its own?
- Jun 2024
Licensed and launched
Indonesia's marine ministry grants the permit, and Wilder Reefs becomes a full restoration programme inside the Nusa Penida MPA.
- Sep 2024
Past 12,000 fragments
Transplanting crosses twelve thousand fragments. Fish counts around the earliest structures start climbing.
- Dec 2024
Area 2, and a listening experiment
Area 2 is completed. With Blue Corner Marine Research, the team starts recording reef sound to test whether the noise of a healthy reef pulls in drifting larvae.
- Jul 2025
First full annual survey
All six areas are surveyed. Four wild coral recruits turn up on older structures, the first hard evidence the patch had begun reseeding itself.
- Nov 2025
Designing the plastic out
Attachment trials put aluminium wire ahead of plastic zip ties, hemp rope and cotton twine. Later deployments switch over.
- Jan 2026
The reef starts doing the work
120 wild recruits counted in Area 1 and 37 in Area 2. Nobody planted those. They settled because the ground finally held still.
- Jul 2026
Reef Bells
A bell-shaped structure copied from natural reef forms picks up five wild settlements in four months, and sergeant major damselfish start laying eggs on the frames.
Field Notes from Our Biologists
Short dispatches filmed on site by the Wilder Reefs team.
Choosing the next site is not guesswork. The team surveys rubble fields, current, depth and neighbouring coral cover before a single frame gets built.
Videos by Mossy Earth Field Notes. The full series covers every project they run, not just the reef.
Nusa Penida, and the people in the water
Nusa Penida sits southeast of Bali, inside the Coral Triangle, the most biodiverse stretch of ocean on the planet. Its marine protected area covers reefs that draw manta rays and mola mola, and that local dive and fishing communities depend on directly.
The work is run by a local team. Purnomo “Yudi” Yudhianto manages the project on the ground, and marine biologist Chansa Hilmira leads much of the survey and monitoring work. The structures are built and maintained locally, and the licence comes from Indonesia's marine ministry. This is not a foreign crew flying in for a photo shoot.
“The ocean's vastness and mystery have always captivated me, and the opportunity to actively engage in its preservation is incredibly rewarding. This project allows me to give back, to protect and nurture the marine life that fills me with wonder.”
Life is coming back
Cloudy dascyllus and lemon damselfish now live on the frames, parrotfish and trumpetfish pass through, and sergeant majors have started laying eggs on the structures.
Unexpected allies
Tiny Tetralia coral crabs moved in as obligate symbionts, clearing sediment and fending off predators. Fragments with crabs survive noticeably better.
Measured, not assumed
Photo transects, visual fish census, benthic diversity surveys, recruitment counts and 3D models, repeated on a schedule.
Fund coral restoration from your own product
Coral is a first-class impact type on 1ClickImpact, which means it works everywhere the rest of our impact types work. No sponsorship deck, no minimum commitment, no annual contract. One call restores one fragment.
curl --location 'https://api.1clickimpact.com/v1/restore_coral' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY' \
--data '{
"amount": 15,
"customer_email": "maya@example.com",
"customer_name": "Maya"
}'That request funds fifteen fragments, which is one full reef structure, and credits it to Maya. She gets her own certificate and a live tracking page. Drop customer_email if the impact belongs to your company rather than a customer.
Restore Coral API
A single REST endpoint, free to call. You pay per fragment, never for API access, and the sandbox is free too.
Read the API docsShopify and Zapier
Restore coral per order, per product, or on any Zapier trigger you already use. No code, and the Shopify app is always free.
See integrationsCertificates and tracking
Every fragment is attributable. Customers get certificates, you get verified totals you can pull back through the API.
Explore featuresIdeas that fit coral particularly well
Dive shops, surf and swim brands. One fragment per order is under three dollars and lines up exactly with what your customers already care about.
Travel and hospitality. Restore a full structure per booking, in the destination your guests are flying to.
SaaS and apps. Tie fragments to a milestone: annual plan upgrades, referrals, or a yearly team commitment fired from a single cron job.
Ocean-linked footprints. Brands already funding ocean plastic removal can add reef restoration to move from cleanup to rebuilding.
Put your first corals back on the reef
Start with five fragments, then scale to a full structure whenever you are ready. Every fragment goes on a real frame in the Nusa Penida Marine Protected Area, and you can send the same restoration to someone else as a gift.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Mossy Earth and what is Wilder Reefs?+
Mossy Earth is a rewilding organisation that runs long-term restoration projects around the world and publishes what it spends and what it achieves. Wilder Reefs is its coral programme in the Nusa Penida Marine Protected Area in Indonesia, rebuilding roughly one hectare of blast-damaged reef by stabilising coral rubble with modular structures and transplanting naturally dislodged coral fragments onto them.
How much does it cost to restore coral through 1ClickImpact?+
Coral restoration starts at $2.20 per coral fragment. There is no monthly fee, no platform subscription and no minimum contract. You pay per fragment, whether that is one fragment or ten thousand.
What does one coral fragment actually get me?+
One fragment covers about 144 cm² (22.32 in²) of reef. Fifteen fragments fill one modular reef structure, which is roughly 2,160 cm² (335 in², or 2.33 ft²) of living reef. The fragment is the billable unit because it is the smallest thing a diver physically attaches.
Why transplant broken fragments instead of growing coral in a nursery?+
Because the fragments are already loose. Storms and currents constantly knock pieces off the healthy reef next door, and most of them die in the rubble. Rescuing those pieces means no healthy colony is cut, the genetic mix stays close to the local reef, and the fragments are in the water working within hours rather than after a year in a nursery.
Is the reef actually recovering, or is this just structures on the seabed?+
The clearest signal is natural recruitment: baby corals that nobody planted, settling on their own. As of January 2026 the team counted more than 120 wild recruits in Area 1 and 37 in Area 2, alongside resident damselfish colonies, parrotfish, trumpetfish and sergeant majors laying eggs on the frames. That is the reef starting to run itself.
Can I restore coral automatically from my store or app?+
Yes. Send a POST to /v1/restore_coral with an amount, and the fragments are funded. If you would rather not write code, the Shopify app and the Zapier integration can fire the same action per order, per product, or on any trigger you already have.
Does my customer get proof?+
If you pass a customer_email, that customer receives their own impact certificate and a live tracking page showing exactly what was restored on their behalf, with the project location. You can pull the same numbers back through the impact and records endpoints for your own reporting.
Is coral restoration a substitute for cutting emissions?+
No, and Mossy Earth says so plainly. Restoration buys a reef time and resilience where local pressure can be managed. It does not cancel out warming water. The honest version is that climate action, reduced local pressure and restoration all have to happen together.
Learn more about Wilder Reefs
Mossy Earth publishes monthly updates, survey results and the things that did not work at mossy.earth/projects/wilder-reefs, and the team posts from the boat on @wilderreefs. On our side, the coral restoration project page tracks how many fragments have been funded through 1ClickImpact so far.