Seeing the Forest for the Coral-Trees: Engagement and Perceptions of Reef Threats among Coral Restoration Volunteers in Roatan, Honduras

Despite the global proliferation of coral reef restoration initiatives in recent years, there has been little scholarship focused on the motivations, sentiments, or understandings of the volunteer divers that many restoration programs depend on for regular operational support. Mixed-methods analysis of seven months of surveys (n=83) and interviews (n=15) of a heterogeneous population of coral restoration volunteers in Roatan, Honduras explored these themes. Emergent themes around diver motivations, perceptions, and doubts are discussed, and diver-identified actions to protect coral reef health are summarized. Divers involved in coral restoration are shown to not have significantly different perceptions of how much they protect coral reef health than their diving peers not involved in restoration, despite demonstrating a comparatively robust baseline knowledge of coral reef threats and carbon emission related threats in particular. Divers who chose to volunteer for coral restoration identified lowering carbon emissions as a way to protect coral reef health three times more than control group divers, but were not more likely than control divers to list coral restoration. Overall, divers who choose to participate in coral restoration as volunteers demonstrated high baseline awareness of and concern for threats to coral reefs, but consistently reported learning new information from participation in reef restoration.