This story was originally published by Reasons to be Cheerful
9 min read
When she was 21, Gabriela Nathania H dove underwater with a cohort of four strangers off the coast of Gili Air. The tiny island is one of three that make up the Gili Islands, an archipelago that divers the world over admire for their incredible marine biodiversity.
But on that trip in 2022, Nathania experienced something more powerful than just a scenic dive. “We were girls from all over Indonesia with different backgrounds, but on the dive, we adjusted to each other, helped each other, became a family,” she recalls. Avicenna Wijayanto, a 22-year-old from Surabaya, was also on that dive. It was exciting, of course, she says, but also “made conservation work feel much more real and achievable.”
Nathania and Wijayannto were in the second cohort of Indonesia’s first marine conservation training program for women, developed by the nonprofit Coral Catch. “In Indonesia, many women living close to the ocean had never been given the opportunity to swim, dive or envision careers linked to marine science and conservation,” says its founder, Rose Huizenga. “At the same time, reef restoration efforts often struggle to create long-term local stewardship and ownership.” She founded Coral Catch in Gili Air to create pathways for women to gain diving, conservation and leadership skills while actively participating in coral restoration and ocean stewardship.
Coral reefs are sensitive: They require long-term monitoring, maintenance and stewardship. Restoration structures need upkeep. Coral nurseries need tending. Data must be collected year after year. But as with conservation projects of all kinds, coral restoration efforts don’t always get the sustained attention they need. They rely on foreign experts, short-term grants or volunteer labor — and as a result, they tend to be short-lived. A review of coral restoration projects across the world found that in 60 percent of case studies, restored sites were monitored for less than 18 months.
This is exactly what Huizenga — a Dutch woman who came on a sabbatical to Gili Air and never left — sought to address: How does one sustain the work once the funding ends, or after the experts who initiated the project leave? Instead of treating marine restoration in Indonesia as a conservation challenge alone, Coral Catch, from its very inception, saw it as a workforce challenge.
In 2021, Coral Catch launched a restoration scholarship program, an intensive nine-week curriculum that teaches local women interested in conservation and nature-based careers everything from crafting reef structures with bent steel and monitoring their progress, to organizing beach clean-ups and inspiring local children to care about conservation. “It was a lot of learning,” Nathania says. “But at the end, everyone in my cohort chose to pursue a career or degree in conservation or diving.”
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For Huizenga, the creation of this new workforce dedicated to conservation is as important as conserving the reefs that she fell in love with over a decade ago. “In many small island contexts, employment options for women can be limited or seasonal,” she says. “Building pathways into marine conservation creates opportunities for economic participation while strengthening long-term community ownership of marine ecosystems.”
Initially, Huizenga’s idea was met with skepticism. Indonesia is predominantly Muslim, and some wondered if she would be able to find enough girls willing to trade their hijabs for diving suits — or if their families would even allow them to do so. But over 150 applied to join the first cohort. Coral Catch chose eight young women and hired a local female marine scientist to train them to set up and monitor a coral restoration project.
The second cohort, which included Nathania and Wijayannto, was tasked with building artificial reefs. “This kind of work was considered hard, and people thought it could only be done by men,” Nathania says. “But during the program, we realized, and also showed the world, that this is something women also can do … maybe not exactly how men would do it, but differently. It was exhilarating.”
The training has helped many participants to secure better jobs in the conservation sector. For example, Britania Hasilohan had studied marine science but had no diving qualifications or field experience. After graduating from the program, she became involved in shark monitoring and reef research. Today she helps lead shark population surveys in the Gili Matra Marine Reserve, collecting data on whitetip reef sharks and coordinating citizen science monitoring efforts with local dive operators.
Wijayanto serves as Coral Catch’s project and partnerships manager, overseeing reef restoration and research activities while mentoring younger participants. In 2025, she represented the organization at a national training program on large-scale coral restoration and returned to train other women in restoration techniques. Another alumna, Ivonne Herlina Tani, joined Coral Catch as a research coordinator. The organization calls this long-term support network its “sisterhood” — an alumni community that connects women to jobs, mentoring opportunities and professional training long after graduation.
“We’re building confidence, self-belief and a sense of belonging in marine spaces that has proven to be a critical first step before technical capacities develop,” Huizenga says. “Once women feel they belong in marine spaces, the technical capacities develop much more quickly.” Across 12 cohorts, Coral Catch has trained 44 women from all over Indonesia. According to its impact report, every graduate remains active in conservation-related work, education or research, an unusually high retention rate in a field that often struggles to create long-term career pathways.
Across Southeast Asia, women’s groups have played critical roles in mangrove restoration, marine protection and community conservation. In Indonesia, an initiative by Wetlands International has trained women to conserve and plant mangroves. Kenya’s Green Belt Movement links environmental restoration to women’s economic empowerment, and is widely regarded as an effective solution to deforestation. In Indonesia, conservation scientist Susan Tsang has found that woman-to-woman mentorship networks not only give women access to technical skills, professional contacts and leadership, but also provide intangible benefits such as emotional support, role models and relationships that can be sustained long-term. Women supported through such networks are, she argues, more likely to train others, build local conservation organizations and foster community trust, creating a multiplier effect.
At the Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, coral restoration researcher Siti NurTahirah Jaafar has trained batches of Coral Catch mentees for the last seven years, and says that the sense of sisterhood among the alumni is palpable. Developing a cadre of well-trained local marine conservationists, especially in the far-flung islands of Southeast Asia, is crucial. “Every time we do coral restoration, it’s kind of like planting a sapling, so you need to tend to it because it’s a living organism,” she says. “Transplanted reefs need careful monitoring and maintenance for at least five years, and this will not be possible without local marine conservation professionals.”
Since 2021, Coral Catch has deployed more than 300 restoration structures — on which its mentees have planted over 5,000 coral fragments — and restored approximately 850 square meters of reef habitat within the Gili Matra Marine Reserve. It is too early to see the broader effects on the reefs as corals are notoriously slow-growing, and the artificial reefs are fragile: Storm surges, rising ocean temperatures and high winds regularly damage or displace them. Still, there are signs of progress: In 2025, Coral Catch researchers documented coral spawning events from seven species — a first for the Gili Islands — and contributed data to a national coral-spawning database.
The project is not without its challenges. Mentorship, trust-building and long-term support require time and resources, Huizenga says. Marine restoration requires long-term investment, as does growing and maintaining a sisterhood of women conservationists. To this end, early in 2026, Coral Catch launched an academy to support graduates throughout their careers. A mobile version of its conservation education program, geared toward women in remote coastal communities who may be unable to relocate for several weeks, is also under development.
A 2025 study found that while planting corals and restoring damaged reefs can help specific sites recover, these efforts are far too small to save the world’s reefs on their own. The authors make the case for restoration to complement, not replace, larger efforts to reduce climate change and other threats that are destroying reefs in the first place. While this is sobering news for conservation, it underscores the importance of projects like Coral Catch, which are training local communities to become protectors of the reefs.
Over time, community buy-in has grown significantly, and Jaafar of Universiti Malaysia Terengganu hopes to replicate the project in Malaysia if she gets enough funding. It will cost, she estimates, at least 50,000 Malaysian ringgit (approximately $12,200 U.S.) to start. “I plan to train a smaller cohort of women here, and because I’m a scientist at the university, I hope to offer them more experience in the laboratory,” she says.
Meanwhile, Coral Catch alumna Hasilohan dreams of becoming a scientific diver and helping lead shark-monitoring projects. But she says the greatest reward may be belonging to a community of women working toward shared goals for the ocean.
Nathania feels similarly. Now pursuing a degree in conservation science at the University of Queensland, she hopes to return to Gili Air one day. “One colony of hex domes in the artificial reef we helped build is even named after me,” she says, laughing. “I want to see how my baby corals are doing.”
The post The “Sisterhood” Protecting Indonesia’s Coral Reefs appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.
