PADRE BURGOS, Southern Leyte — Marine biodiversity in this diving capital of Eastern Visayas gets a boost when dive resort operators and the local government unit (LGU) joined hands with the fisherfolk in the area in a coral restoration project.

The Coral Restoration Project was also launched in partnership with barangay officials and marine science experts from the Southern Leyte State University (SLSU).

Alan Binnebose, a diving enthusiast from Wisconsin who has established residency in this town, said the project involves putting up 15 coral beds that will be placed at seven to nine meters deep underwater near the shoreline of Lungsodaan village of this town.

Padre Burgos town — which is the jump-off point in going to the historic Limasawa Island — is at the mouth of Sogod Bay and has a booming diving industry. Many of its resorts catering to divers are owned by foreigners married to locals.

Binnebose has been going around different villages here to teach locals how to re-grow corals using seedlings from a healthy reef as he developed a coral bed using full-length cyclone wire with plastic softdrink bottles filled with stones attached to the cyclone wire serving as seed pots.

Even before the coral restoration project came to be, Binnebose has already laid at least 10 coral beds on his own initiative at the Peter’s Dive Resort House Reef, just off the coastal waters of Lungsodaan village.

In June this year, a team from Peter’s Dive Resort conducted an assessment on the survival rate of transplanted corals onto an artificial substrate — an experiment that was a replication of Binnebose’s previous study conducted at his residence.