About

The REEFhabilitation Program, developed by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) with local partners in the Dominican Republic and the Booking Cares Fund, is a marketable eco-tourism experience that supports sustainable coral reef restoration efforts led by local organizations and businesses and raises awareness among the coral reef tourism sector. The mission of the program is to enable the tourism sector to act as key allies in the fight to save coral reefs by engaging citizen scientists in monitoring and promoting sustainable and educational restoration programs.

The REEFhabilitation Experience allows tourists to SCUBA dive on coral nursery and restoration sites and participate in coral reef restoration in meaningful ways – through nursery monitoring and maintenance, coral outplanting, or monitoring of restored corals.

The program includes the Online Portal, an open-access site where coral reef restoration data can be collected and transformed into information for restoration organizations. With the Portal, tourists can submit their data to be stored, analyzed, and visualized by restoration organizations and tourism operators. This greatly reduces the time and cost associated with monitoring restoration programs and allows tourists to directly support the recovery of local coral reefs. Monitoring data can also be shared with the public or funders.

Users of the Portal include restoration practitioners, including tourism operators, who run restoration programs. For more information about how to register with and navigate the REEFhabilitation Portal, refer to the How to Use page. For more information about coral reef restoration monitoring, refer to the Trainings and Resources page.

Lead Institutions

Supporting Organizations