Octopus’s Garden

Titouan Bernicot’s childhood sounds idyllic, taking his first steps on the tiny South Pacific atoll of Ahe, where his parents owned a pearl farm. “I was the only child on that pearl farm and I developed a close relationship with the ocean, basking in the water and swimming with sharks when I could barely walk,” he says.

A move to the French Polynesian island of Mo’orea with his family saw him graduate to surfing and free diving. And this was the moment. “When I was 16 years old,” he remembers, “I paddled out to my favourite reef break with some island friends, sat in the lineup and looked down. Something was different; the reef was all white, and had lost its colour.” Titouan admits that, at the time, he had no idea what this meant – or the significance of coral bleaching. “But it weighed on me that day and I began to research it,” he says. “We started as a small band of island kids who witnessed the rapid degradation of our local reef break. Coral reefs were not only dying around my island home, but all around the planet due to global warming.”

Titouan began to research coral bleaching and its leading cause, climate change, which causes ocean temperatures to rise, which stresses the corals – the most biodiverse and valuable ecosystems on the planet.

“When they are stressed, the symbiotic relationship between the corals and the algae that live within their tissue breaks down,” he explains. “The corals expel their algae, losing their main source of food as well as their vibrant colours. As a result, they turn ghostly white. A bleached coral isn’t dead – it can recover if its environment improves.” And this is what Coral Gardeners has taken on.

A small-scale restoration garden at first, he began working with friends and the project grew from there, slowly meeting experts and some of the ocean’s biggest fans as opportunities grew. Now, Coral Gardeners is global, with a team of over 60 people from all over the world and field operations across French Polynesia, Fiji and Southeast Asia.

Without action, scientists estimate that up to 90% of coral reefs worldwide risk becoming extinct by 2050. “We need global and urgent action to address climate change,” says Titouan. “But meanwhile, we work in the field to make coral reefs more resilient.”

In response, his team ‘plants’ corals – a process similar to planting trees on land, but under the water. “To begin, we scout the lagoon for heat-resilient mother colonies that have proven to withstand past bleaching events,” he says; “from which we collect a diverse selection of fragments. These fragments are then placed in nurseries where they will grow for 12-18 months, under the care of our team of gardeners and scientists who monitor their progress and health.”

Once mature enough, the corals are returned to the reef, where they can continue to grow and recreate new habitats for marine life. “To plant the corals onto the reef, we use a mix of marine cement and stainless-steel clips to secure them and help them attach themselves to the surface – essentially taking root, like most plants do.”

Over the last seven years, Coral Gardeners has scaled its work and increased its impact, growing restoration efforts and opening new sites and branches across French Polynesia, Fiji, and Southeast Asia. 2023 proved a milestone: “Last year, we reached more than 100,000 corals planted since our beginning,” he says, “restoring our first hectare of reef, while raising awareness to millions and integrating more communities into our mission. You can see a significant impact in the ocean with more biodiversity and abundance on the reef and its inhabitants. When you swim around our nurseries and ‘outplant’ sites, you see all the grown and colourful corals with all the fish and marine life that chose our corals as their new home. That’s amazing.”

As the business has evolved, innovation has become a vital part of its process, alongside the meticulous work of coral planting. CG Labs is its in-house research and development centre, home to world class engineers and scientists busy advancing the reef restoration field. “Science and innovation have become two of the hallmarks of our operations,” says Titouan. “It’s at the core of our restoration to optimise our work to its fullest potential.
“It’s our in-house research and development centre, where our team of engineers and scientists work hand-in-hand with the gardeners to develop and tech needed to scale up and optimise reef restoration.” It is, he says, a combination of “tech-savvy engineering and traditional and ocean knowledge – we’re creating a unique alchemy focusing on the tools and solutions of tomorrow to restore the coral reef ecosystem.”

CG Labs’ ReefOS platform supports the entire reef restoration process, from site selection to the nursery and ‘outplant’ phase, towards a successfully restored reef. Its network of cameras, apps and devices collects real-time data about coral reefs to help monitor and restore them, monitoring in real time, mapping the sites both from the air and underwater, adding geospatial visualisation and helping the team better analyse, understand and preserve the marine ecosystems they work in. “It tracks data such as the fish abundance, biodiversity and coral coverage with a level of precision and potential to scale that would be impossible for humans to obtain alone,” he adds. The tools are also shared with practitioners around the world, streamlining and scaling coral restoration efforts.

While the tech is taking great leaps forward, the bigger challenge for the team remains raising awareness of an issue that is invisible to the majority of us. “Coral reefs remain out of sight and out of mind for most people around the world – and the crisis they are facing is lacking public awareness,” says Titouan.

“That’s why we made it one of our main missions early on to tell the story of the reef worldwide. We’re trying to bring a new approach to raising awareness to make ocean conservation so inspiring and attractive that people want to join the action, through social media, powerful visuals, and campaigns.” The photos that illustrate Coral Gardeners’ work are a huge part of the story, bringing to vibrant, technicolour life a world under the waves that most of us only know from Finding Nemo. As a result, Coral Gardeners has collaborated with celebrities, ambassadors, media and storytellers to expand our reach and inspire us.

“Ever since we’ve started to plant corals I’ve dreamed of sharing my passion with the world and making coral gardening a full-time job,” he admits. “So today I’m excited to bring our project into new regions and create opportunities for locals to make a career out of restoring the wild places they love the most, in their own backyard.

“Each new site and island presents unique ocean conditions and environmental factors that require us to adapt. We’re collaborating with local communities to develop the right strategies and empower them with the tools needed to take care of their reef ecosystems. They have so much knowledge about their marine environment and are so motivated to protect it.”

Reading this in a chair, whilst dreaming of the Tropics? Titouan has an eye on the global movement, too – anyone can adopt a coral on the Coral Gardeners website, tracking it on a dashboard and following its growth. I already know that this will become my go-to Christmas gift this year, imagining the candy pink brains of the cauliflower coral, or the Chipstick fingers of the acropora muricata, blooming and flexing their lacy limbs.

This year, Coral Gardners teamed up with Earthrise Studio and Bailey Bass, the American actor and activist who starred in Avatar, to bring attention to the coral crisis happening underwater as part of World Oceans Month. Titouan describes it as something which happens “in near silence” – stifling knowledge of the worst bleaching event yet on record.

Coral Gardeners got in touch with award-winning filmmaker Alice Aedy, who runs Earthrise Studio. “She brought together an amazing storytelling crew who came to Mo’orea to witness and document first-hand the bleaching event. We were delighted that Bailey Bass joined the crew to bring the campaign to life – she’s an amazing advocate for our ocean. Our campaign raised awareness and funds for coral restoration work, responding to the current coral bleaching event,” he says. “More than 60% of the world’s corals are metaphorically on fire, experiencing enough heat stress to trigger bleaching. The funds we raised directly support our work to further coral science and our climate adaptation and restoration efforts.”

Coral Gardeners’ growth has been as rapid as the blooming of the reefs they work with and Titouan admits he’s learned a lot in a short space of time. “It’s been an interesting journey and learning process,” he says, describing its growth from his “back garden to global project”. “There was a lot of trial and error and, eventually, I surrounded myself with the right people – all experts in their different fields. I get to work with my childhood friends, alongside other amazing talents who’ve joined the project over the years. It feels good to have the right people helping you to get closer to your vision. It’s like a reef ecosystem – everyone is playing their part for the mission.”

Photographs courtesy of Coral Gardeners x Earthrise, Killian Domingo, Hiva Czermak, Ryan Borne and Noe Langronier.