Anuar Abdullah, 61, walks along the beach to a coral nursery where he uses fragments of live coral to spread news. (Rebecca Tan/The Washington Post) Comment on this story Comment PERHENTIAN ISLANDS, Malaysia — For nearly four decades, the coral gardener worked alone. Twice a day, he went out to sea, staying underwater as long as his oxygen supply would allow. He learned the shapes and textures of corals long before he learned their Latin names. He studied the conditions under which they thrive—water temperature, sun exposure, the diversity of marine life—and saw how the disruption of just one of these factors could cause a mass die-off. He dedicated himself to reviving the reefs, but for a long time, no one cared to follow him. Locals whispered about the eccentric diving instructor who spent his holidays in the water, who spoke to the corals as if they were people. “Everyone thought I was stupid,” said Anuar Abdullah, 61. “But I knew I was doing the most important thing in the world.” Anwar Abdullah takes a ride to a spot called “Shark Point” in the Peredian Islands, where locals say conditions on a coral reef have deteriorated. (Video: Rebecca Tan/The Washington Post) Abdullah has spent his entire adult life restoring coral reefs, working until recently in obscurity – and sometimes poverty. In a world rapidly losing its reefs to climate change and environmental damage, he is now emerging as an increasingly influential expert on how to revive them. Governments and resorts came calling, asking if he could help with reefs lost to natural disasters and overtourism. Banks and companies have contacted him, asking to finance his projects throughout Southeast Asia. Abdullah doesn’t have a PhD in marine biology or a research lab, and he despises science that he considers “useless to humanity.” He is adamant when it comes to the methods he has honed over his lifetime. And he identifies himself, first and foremost, as a gardener. The would-be ‘coral factory’ that restores reefs damaged by climate change His resume may be unconventional, observers say, but he possesses the kind of practical expertise that is growing in currency as people look for concrete and accessible ways to act on climate change. Over the past decade, thousands have traveled from around the world to learn from Abdullah how to grow coral, some eventually quitting their jobs to participate in his projects full-time. With its roughly 700 active volunteers, it says, it has already revitalized about 125 acres of coral reef. In 2017, the Thai government asked Abdullah to begin restoring one of its most famous tourist attractions, Maya Bay, which had lost half its coral population after years of rampant tourism. Visitors were kept off site for three years while Abdullah led a team of 120 people, including staff from Thailand’s National Parks Department, in planting new coral. In 2021, after Typhoon Rai devastated the island of Cebu in the Philippines, a group of resorts asked Abdullah if he could save what was left of the coastline’s coral reefs. And earlier this year, Abdullah launched a new effort with officials and companies in Egypt to build the world’s largest subtropical coral nursery in the Red Sea. There was a presentation on the nursery at the UN climate change summit, COP27 this month, but Abdullah did not attend. He hates conferences, he says. And he had work to do. On a recent afternoon, Abdullah zipped up his wetsuit and waded into the warm, shallow waters off Perhentian Kecil, the smaller of two islands off Malaysia’s coastal state of Terengganu. The island is located right inside the Coral Triangle, a part of the Pacific Ocean that contains 75 percent of the world’s coral species. Locals say that the coral in this particular bay was once so abundant that it was impossible to walk on the sea floor. But they are dead now, washed up on the beach in piles of white corpses. The coral in this inlet was once so abundant that it was possible to walk on the sea floor, locals say. But most of these corals have died in recent years. (Video: Rebecca Tan/The Washington Post) Almost all of the materials Abdullah uses for restoration come directly from the ocean. To build his nurseries, he doesn’t use steel pipes or concrete blocks – which he can’t afford – and instead collects rocks from the seabed, stacking them so they don’t get knocked over by currents. While other coral restoration groups may rely on a lab to “shred” live coral that is in turn used for cultivation, he looks for broken pieces of coral on existing reefs and attaches them to the rocks using waterproof, animal-friendly glue. When he needs other materials, he starts cleaning the beach for trash. He has made rafts from driftwood and salvaged old buoys and abandoned fishing line. In Perhentian, he is working to develop a nursery that would help repopulate the bay within four years. Oceans are warming faster than ever. Here’s what could come next. Bending down to pick up a rock where a fragment of coral had stuck several weeks earlier, he murmured, “My little cape.” Abdullah squinted, his eyes gray and his face lined and leathery from years in the sun. He looked for signs that the fragments were sticking to the rock and starting to grow. “My little pen,” he continued, tilting the rock toward the sun to examine another piece. “How are you today?” Born in Terengganu, Abdullah was sent to live in a foster home after both his parents died when he was 6 years old. Curfews were strictly enforced at the foster home, but he stole sea trips when he could. The ocean, he remembered, felt like freedom. In the 1980s, Abdullah settled in Perhentian as a diving instructor and became obsessed with corals. He spent two decades experimenting with how to raise them in the ocean, along the way alienating most of his friends, divorcing his wife and nearly bankrupting himself, he recalls. In 2006, he found success with his low-tech, accessible approach and, excited, shared it with a local university. The teachers, he said, made fun of his grammar. As a field, coral restoration is siloed, divided between scientists and researchers on one end and coral professionals and “craftsmen” on the other. For too long, many scientists have had an “ivory tower syndrome” that prioritized theory over practice, said David Suggett, professor of marine biology at the University of Technology Sydney. “The questions we asked, from a scientific point of view, weren’t always very good – or useful,” Saget added. “But that’s changing.” Faced with disasters like the mass bleaching of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, scientists seek the expertise of professionals—diving instructors, travelers, local fishermen—who know the reefs in their areas better than anyone else. To muster the “manpower” needed to revive reefs at scale, Suggett said, there’s also now an appetite for low-tech solutions. “It’s accessible science,” said Heidy Martinez, 29, a biology researcher who volunteered for the Maya Bay project. Seeing coral fragments grow into little bulbs is a “magical” feeling, he added. “And it hooks people.” But even as Abdullah steps into the spotlight, he knows the field of coral restoration is changing around him. There are for-profit companies with millions of dollars in funding using new technology to operate “coral factories”. There is a push among research institutes to establish accreditation standards that would regulate how remediation is done worldwide and subject businesses like Abdullah’s to evaluations. Debate rages over whether any of this is worth it, given that new reefs may still be killed by global warming. Scientists rush to save 1,000-year-old trees on the brink of death These are vexing questions that, for Abdullah, only take time away from what he wants to do, which is plant as many corals as he can – and get others to follow him. His “army of gardeners” includes people like Sharifah Noor Ridzwan, 39, a dive shop owner in Perhentian, who took the coral propagation course while seven months pregnant. And Sebestian Jungo, 40, who recently quit his job as a civil servant in Switzerland and moved to Perhentian to help build the coral nursery. “For so long, I’ve been part of the problem,” said Jungo, shirtless and barefoot on the island, “Finally, now, I can be part of the solution.” The monsoon season in Perhentian begins in November, bringing torrential rains and strong, strong winds. Except for a few residents of a fishing village, most leave the island for at least a few months. Abdullah plans to stay. He has rented a small wooden chalet near the coast. And twice a day, he will descend into the forest to visit his young corals. He will see to it, he said, that they get through the monsoon.
