Establishing a charity and building large scale land based coral farm to refill local reefs

The Seath family are a 'normal family'; a husband and wife and two daughters, Georgina and Josephine, living the sort of life that most others do. But Karolina and Barry felt the need to make a positive change for themselves, their children and the world they had largely taken for granted.



So they have sold their home, parted company with most of their worldly possessions and will soon be moving to the Seychelles, to start building the first large scale, land based coral farm in the Indian Ocean.

Barry told PutneySW15: "We’re very excited at the opportunity to make a positive difference and we hope that people will be able to support us. Our coral farm will be an entirely charitable entity and we will be growing the corals in our tanks until they reach a size / maturity that means we can then re-plant them in the local reefs. This takes between 6 – 9 months depending on the coral species.

"In addition to growing the coral, we will also be holding daily talks for local school children and tourists who visit the tiny island each day. And we are talking to two different universities, so they can use our tanks to carry out ground breaking research on new techniques. This includes the possibility of using pro-biotics to help the coral survive in higher sea temperatures, which is the main reason for the mass destruction of the coral reefs in this part of the Indian Ocean. This would be a world first as it has only been done in laboratories until now."

The Seath's have established a charity Coral Reef Conservation UK and the farm will be situated on a beach on the island right next to the sea - the area is currently an unused piece of land and there are three dead palm trees that will need to be cut down but no other earth works at all. The inlet pipe for the water will be underneath a jetty so won’t be seen and won’t affect the aesthetics of the area.

There is only one other similar facility in the whole world and this is located on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. That farm was built with a huge amount of financial assistance from the Australian government. The Seath's farm will be based on a tiny island called Moyenne Island which is the world’s smallest National Park. It was owned by a British gentleman called Brendan Grimshaw for 50 years, until his death in 2012. He resisted all attempts to develop the island during his lifetime and established it as a nature reserve, planting thousands of trees and protecting a large population of giant tortoises that wander freely around the island. He bequeathed the island to the Seychelles people on his death and the Seath's believe their plans to create a coral farm would be in-keeping with his wishes.



Let the Seath's explain their plan to you

Barry Seath continued: "We are not a wealthy family but we have enough funds to support ourselves for the medium term, so we are hoping to raise the funds required to build and run the farm for the first two years. After that point, we will be able to make the farm self-financing by securing longer term funding from large corporates / grants etc." To help the charity donate here.

June 25, 2020