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# Eleven coral nurseries, one morning, and the whole island turns up
- URL: https://www.earthtoseanews.com/bonaire-reefiesta/
- Published: 2026-09-26T08:41:47.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-26T08:44:25.000Z
- Description: Once a year on Bonaire, divers, snorkelers, dive shop staff and people who simply live there spend a morning tending the island's underwater coral nurseries, then come ashore for a party.
- Author: Nicole McMahon
- Tags: Conservation, All stories

Reef Renewal Foundation Bonaire keeps eleven coral nurseries in the water around Bonaire and Klein Bonaire, structures shaped a little like trees where fragments of staghorn, elkhorn and brain coral grow until they are big enough to be fixed onto the reef itself. Tending them is patient work, cleaning, checking, trimming, and mostly it is done by a small staff. Once a year the island turns up to help. ReeFiesta 2026 opened World Oceans Month with around a hundred and thirty divers and thirty snorkelers in the water across all eleven nurseries in a single morning, working alongside the foundation's team and instructors from seventeen partner dive shops. Counting everyone who came, about two hundred and fifty people took part.

Then everybody got out, dried off and celebrated. There were games and an education session and a coral reef trivia competition, a raffle and a silent auction, and at the end an award for the dive instructors who have been volunteering on the reef the longest. Francesca Virdis, who runs Reef Renewal Bonaire, has watched this become the island's own event rather than the foundation's. Melissa van Hoorn of STINAPA Bonaire, which looks after the marine park, was there, as were Roxanne Francisca of WWF Netherlands and Arno Verhoeven of the Dutch Caribbean Nature Alliance. Close to sixty thousand corals have gone out onto Bonaire's reefs so far. What a single morning like this really grows is the number of people who will keep coming back.

### Sources and links

Our short take: the full story is by Environment Coastal & Offshore (2 June 2026). Photograph: to be chosen, three options on the photo page. Read the full story: ReeFiesta 2026 brings 250 together for coral restoration on Bonaire, Environment Coastal & Offshore | https://ecomagazine.com/news/coastal/reefiesta-2026-brings-250-together-for-coral-restoration-on-bonaire/

- [Reef Renewal Foundation Bonaire](https://www.reefrenewalbonaire.org), The nurseries, and how to dive with them.
- [STINAPA Bonaire](https://stinapabonaire.org), The park authority for Bonaire's marine park.