Our Partners

Our main partner in our conservation efforts is NGO Gili Matra Bersama. We work together daily to promote conversation efforts through education and research. Every day we go out to collect abundance data within the zones of the Gili Matra Marine Recreational Reserve to assess the health of the environment and act to enhance marine protection and health where necessary.

Furthermore, NGO Gili Matra Bersama runs a scholarship program called Coral Catch. This program is designed with the help of Gili Shark Conservation with the goal to empower local women to have a career in marine conservation. The ultimate vision is to create a network of local women that protect and restore the coral reefs of Indonesia.

Yayasan Gili Matra Bersama works closely together with the participants* and staff of Gili Shark Conservation on their long-term strategy goals (2023 – 2028).

* It should be noted that individuals joining from Gili Shark Conservation will only be joining for education purposes and will not be conducting research independently.

Not many people are aware that the Gili Islands are actually classed as a Marine Protected Area (MPA) called the Gili Matra Marine Recreational Reserve.

The Gili Matra Marine Park covers roughly 30 km2 as it actually covers the land too. It was created in early 1993 by the State Ministry of Demography and Environment which nowadays is called the Ministry of Environment and Forestry.

All of our conservation efforts will not give significant change without having the government involved. We are actively communicating our research results and new findings within the MPA to BKKPN (Balai Kawasan Konservasi Perairan Nasional) Kupang. In addition, we also provide them with suggestions for better marine park management.

In 2021 we were invited to be a partner in the UN Decade On Ecosystem Restoration. As you can imagine, we were thrilled! The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration is a call for the protection and revival of ecosystems all around the world, for the benefit of people and nature. It aims to halt the degradation of ecosystems, and restore them to achieve global goals. Only with healthy ecosystems can we enhance people’s livelihoods, counteract climate change, and stop the collapse of biodiversity.

The UN Decade runs from 2021 through to 2030, which is also the deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the timeline scientists have identified as the last chance to prevent catastrophic climate change.

As a supporting partner, Gili Shark Conservation aims to inspire, support and activate the (local) government, community and organizations, to work towards our shared goal of global ecosystem restoration, in an urgent race to counteract climate change within the next decade.

We have been closely collaborating with PADI and PADI Aware since we started Gili Shark Conservation. We love that PADI prioritizes safety in its training programs, ensuring that all our people and Shark Warriors are trained in essential safety practices, protocols, and emergency procedures, leading to responsible and secure diving experiences.

As part of their training, all our people and Shark Warriors also receive the PADI Scientific Diver Course and PADI Aware Shark Specialty Course.

PADI Aware has been supporting our Coral Catch program from the start and has selected us twice for their Community Grant Program. We also work closely with them, collecting data for their Dive Against Debris program and supporting citizen science initiatives.

Furthermore, we are part of their Adopt the Blue program and have taken the pledge to protect two popular dive sites, Han’s Reef and Gili Meno Slope, in the Gili Matra Marine Park by adopting these dive sites and conducting a minimum of two underwater cleanups per month.

Last but not least, we play an advisory role in keeping PADI courses related to conservation up to date.

We couldn’t do the work we do every single day without the help of our incredible partner 5-star PADI career development centre Blue Marlin Dive. They facilitate in all our diving needs like boats, tanks, and equipment. Furthermore, their awesome instructors are learning our Shark Warriors how to dive or improve their skills. We also organize community events and weekly beach clean ups together and taking care of our structures on our coral restoration sites.

Blue Marlin offers diving courses for beginners through to Instructor courses and specialises in technical diving. Furthermore they offer several of the Conservation Diver certification courses, and are adding new and innovative projects all the time.

Their beautiful dive centre is located right on the beach, just a 3 min walk away from our HQ.

“No water, no life. No blue, no green.” It’s one of the famous quotes of Dr. Sylvia Earle, a world-renowned expert on marine biology. She holds the record for deepest walk on the sea floor and she was the first woman to lead the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

Sylvia Earle is one of the greatest role models, not only due to her scientific achievements but also because she is a strong advocate for young women in the science fields. You can imagine how proud we are to be one of two hundred organizations that are supporting her organization Mission Blue.

Mission Blue has brought together a global network of ocean conservation organizations that are working towards the common goal of restoring our planet’s blue heart. Their vision ‘to achieve 30% ocean protection by 2030’ is one that we don’t just support but hope to inspire many others to share too.

Conservation Diver is dedicated to training the next generation of marine conservationists and ocean lovers by providing. They developed a wide range of conservation courses with the aim to give people from many different backgrounds the knowledge to initiate action, and realize their goals.

All our people are trained and certified in teaching Conservation Diver courses. Depending on which package our Shark Warriors choose, they receive one or multiple conservation courses designed by Conservation Diver for example: Ecological Monitoring Program, Advanced Ecological Monitoring Program, Sea Turtle Ecologu & Monitoring, Shark Ecology and Population Studies, Plastic Pollution Monitoring and Assessment, Coral Taxonomy and Identification and Giant Clam Nurseries & Population Studies.

The Ocean Cleanup is a nonprofit environmental engineering organization based in the Netherlands that develops technology to extract plastic pollution from the oceans and to capture it in rivers before it can reach the ocean.

One of the projects The Ocean Clean Up is working on is to catalogue the amount of plastic waste and marine debris that are being collected and removed from the environment from beach cleanup organizations worldwide and have this project published in a peer-reviewed publication. We are collaborating together on the second phase of this project by focusing on the plastic concentrations on beaches located along the coastline in our region. This research allow The Ocean Clean Up to understand better the sources and types of polymers found on local beaches and also allow them to identify local plastic pollution VS. plastic marine debris and hot spot of plastic debris worldwide. Pretty cool right?!

p.s. Did you know that you can support The Ocean Clean Up as citizens scientist from everywhere in the world by using The Ocean Cleanup Survey App?

Women in Ocean Science was founded by a fellow Shark Warrior and one of our ambassadors Mads St Clair. She created a global community to connect, celebrate and empower women in marine sciences. Whether you’re a marine biologist, researcher, student, oceanographer, engineer, chemist, or simply a girl who loves ocean science, Woman in Ocean Science is the place for you!

Coral Catch and Women in Ocean Science are working together to empower women to have a career in marine science and offer them a platform with like-minded individuals.

For over 30 years, PADI and AWARE have built a truly unique voice for the protection of the underwater world. Together, we have set ambitious ocean conservation targets through a shared Blueprint for Ocean Action that commits to actions that combat climate change, help create marine protected areas and protect vulnerable species.

PADI AWARE focuses on marine conservation and aims to protect and preserve underwater environments through various initiatives and campaigns. One of the projects of PADI Aware is Adopt A Dive Site. Together with NGO Gili Matra Bersama, we adopted two popular dive sites in the Gili Matra Marine Park called Han’s Reef and Meno Slope. Minimum twice a month we join forces and organize an underwater clean up dive to collects important information about underwater debris. Together we work towards implementing sustainable solutions to remove plastic from our oceans and prevent it from entering it in the first place.

We are supporting Coral Watch by sharing information about the health of the corals we sight during our surveys. CoralWatch is a global database designed by The University of Queensland. It allows scientists across the globe to contribute data that will help to increase our understanding of coral reefs and the impact of climate change and bleaching.

Did you know that anyone can get involved with this amazing initiative by simply downloading the CoralWatch application on their smartphone or device? You do not need to be a coral expert to provide data!

In 2002 CoralWatch designed the Coral Health Chart which standardizes color changes in coral providing an easy way for people to compare the color of the coral they see with those on the chart and share their findings via the CoralWatch app.

NGO Gili Matra Bersama (GMB) has established a partnership with Wageningen University & Research (WUR) to conduct collaborative marine ecology research. As part of this collaboration, we are hosting research students from WUR at our headquarters on Gili Air. The main focus of these students is the comprehensive study of coral reef ecosystems, including their social dimensions.

In this endeavor, NGO Gili Matra Bersama actively supports the research process by not only assisting with crucial data collection but also providing essential supervision. Through the power of this collaborative synergy, our shared goal is to propel the advancement of scientific knowledge while simultaneously ensuring the ecological and social preservation of marine ecosystems.

NGO Gili Matra Bersma and UNRAM work together to develop students skills needed to work in conservation. Such as, how to do coral restoration, how to collect biophysical data using proven methods, and how to invite the community to participate in conservation. We support their collaboration by hosting their students, professors and other scientists involved in our HQ.

For the minor Development, Sustainability, and Impact of the TU Delft four students’ partnered up with NGO Gili Matra Bersama, Reefy and Gili Shark Conservation to set up a new seagrass restoration project on Gili Air. The goal of this project was to test different methods of how we can replant seagrass in the best way in this area and restore 100m2 of seagrass.

Shoots of Thalassia hemprichii were planted, either stabilized into the sediment with uncorroded iron nails or with bamboo skewers. To investigate the impact of two different prototypes an experiment with five test fields was deployed. The research parameters were prepared using the Seagrass Watch guidelines drawn up in 2007.

Gili Shark Conservation and NGO Gili Matra Bersama continued to work on this project after the students returned home and used their research as a base to continue restoring seagrass in the Gili Matra Marine Park.

Reef Check is an organization that started in 1996 and is present in 82 countries (!) around the world. Reef Check was established in the USA to raise awareness on the importance of, and threats to, coral reefs. In order to assess the health of the reef, they developed a method called the Reef Check Monitoring Survey.

We officially joined the Reef Check Network and all our scholarship candidates are certified as Reef Check Eco-divers by Reef Check Indonesia. This is really amazing as this certification program enables our superwomen to conduct their own Reef Check surveys and take an active role in conserving coral reefs. And as an extra bonus: with the data that our research team collects, we help Reef Check to understand and protect coral reefs around the world.

eOceans was founded by Dr. Ward-Paige’s. She believes that our ocean can be radically more exciting and valuable if we make faster, more informed, and collaborative decisions, and we couldn’t agree more!

We share our data with Dr. Ward – Paige’s via the eOceans mobile app and platform. We love using her platform as it makes her expertise available to small businesses, explorers, researchers, and conservation projects like ours. We believe that Ocean science needs to keep up with business, society, and ocean change and eOceans is the platform that makes it happen.

Gili Eco Trust was founded in 2002, by one of our Coral Catch ambassadors Delphine Robbe, to protect coral reefs around the Gili islands from destructive fishing.

The Gili Eco Trust has grown a lot since then and expanded its activities from marine conservation to waste management and sustainable eco-tourism. In 2004 Delphine started the Biorock project and nowadays manages more than 150 Biorock reefs around Gili Trawangan.

During a masterclass, Delphine teaches our Coral Catch superwomen how to use the Biorock technology to create an artificial coral reef and what the advantages are of using this method. During their scholarship training, Delphine also shows our scholarship candidates several Biorock reefs and teaches them how to check the coral growth.