What we monitor, what we do about it, and what we can show for it. Research, conservation and education in one marine protected area in southwest Lombok.
Impact
It is easy for an organisation to say it protects the ocean. It is harder to show what changed, and hardest of all to show whether what you did worked.
Everything below is checkable. We monitor the same sites the same way year after year, we act where the data says action is needed, and we measure again afterwards, which sometimes tells us a method needs changing.
Our reporting goes to the Indonesian authorities and conservation partners responsible for this marine protected area, and increasingly into peer-reviewed literature.
Three strands, one cycle: research tells us what is happening, conservation acts on it, and education makes sure the knowledge outlives any one project.
The three strands
They are not separate departments. Each one feeds the next, and none of them would hold up on its own.
Research
Long-term monitoring across the GITA NADA Marine Protected Area: reefs, fish, priority species, mangroves and seagrass, surveyed the same way year after year so the answers mean something.
Conservation
We carry out coral restoration, artificial reef structures, mangrove replanting and nursery work, and marine debris removal because monitoring showed it is needed. Each intervention is measured afterwards to see whether it worked.
Education
We work with the coastal communities and schools around us, and the Indonesian scientists building careers at SORCE. The training our expedition participants receive is a life-long resource for all of them.
By the numbers
46
Monitoring stations across the MPA
244
BRUV deployments, 2023 to 2025
328
Hours of underwater footage
30,000
Mangrove nursery capacity
18,500
Mangroves planted to date
640
Local schoolchildren engaged
How it fits together
The point of monitoring an ecosystem is not to document its decline. It is to know where to act, and to find out whether the action worked.
Monitor the ecosystem, the same way each time
Find where the pressure or the damage actually is
Restore, remove, protect, or work with the community
Survey the same ground again
Did it work? Sometimes the answer is no
Change the method, and go round again
This is also why our conservation pages carry survival rates rather than just planting totals. Survival, not planting, is the achievement.
Keep exploring
Our data, our reporting and our methods are open to scrutiny - and the figures on this page are updated as the science team confirms them.
