Building a Living Reef: Coral Restoration and the Future

Life Between the Branches: Marine Life, Symbiosis, and the Future of Our Artificial Reefs

When most people think of coral reefs, they picture the corals themselves – branching, boulder, or table formations spreading across the seabed. But the real magic of a reef isn’t just the coral skeletons. It’s the explosion of marine life that lives in, on, and around them.

Every coral colony is a city, and every crevice is an apartment block. Fish, crustaceans, molluscs, worms, algae – all of them use coral for shelter, food, breeding, and protection. When we restore corals in Thailand using our Super Star structures, we’re not just restoring “coral”. We’re rebuilding entire neighbourhoods for marine life.

In this article, we’ll explore:

• The marine life that associates with corals and the symbiotic relationships they support
• What kind of fish life our DiveRACE coral restoration project is trying to attract
• Why those species matter for a healthy reef
• What a future reef built from 10,000 Super Star structures could look like
• What the future holds for us and how you can be part of it

If you care about coral reef restoration in Thailand, this is the bigger picture behind every frame we drop and every coral fragment we attach.

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Symbiosis: How Corals Turn Rock into a Living City

Corals themselves are already built on a symbiotic partnership. The tiny polyps host microscopic algae called zooxanthellae, which live inside their tissue. The algae use sunlight to photosynthesise and provide the coral with energy. In return, the coral gives them a safe home and nutrients. That’s symbiosis at the microscopic level.

But once the coral structure exists, an entire web of larger-scale partnerships forms:

• Clownfish and anemones
  Clownfish shelter inside the stinging tentacles of sea anemones, which often live on or near coral heads. The anemone protects the fish from predators; the fish help keep the anemone clean and may bring in food.
• Cleaner fish and “clients”
  Cleaner wrasses and some shrimp set up “cleaning stations” around coral outcrops. Larger fish – groupers, snappers, even manta rays – visit to have parasites removed. Both sides benefit.
• Shrimp and gobies
  On sandy patches between coral heads, some gobies share burrows with blind shrimp. The shrimp digs and maintains the home; the goby keeps watch and warns of danger.
• Crabs and corals
  Certain crabs and shrimps live within coral branches, defending them from predators like crown-of-thorns starfish in exchange for shelter.

All of these relationships depend on one fundamental thing: a stable, complex coral structure to live on. Remove the coral, and you don’t just lose the polyp–algae partnership. You lose entire chains of symbiosis layered on top of it.

That’s why our coral restoration work in Thailand isn’t just about “putting more coral in the water”. It’s about rebuilding the foundation that makes all these relationships possible.

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What Kind of Fish Life Are We Trying to Attract?

At our restoration site, we’re building a reef from the ground up using Super Star structures – interconnected steel frames that each cover about one square metre and hold multiple coral fragments. As the corals grow over them, these frames become miniature artificial reefs.

We design and place these structures not only for coral survival, but to attract and support specific types of marine life:

Small reef fish and juveniles
We want to see damselfish, chromis, anthias, wrasses, and juvenile butterflyfish and angelfish weaving in and out of the branches. These smaller fish use the fine structure of branching corals as protection from predators and as a nursery ground.

Invertebrates and cryptic life
Shrimps, crabs, snails, small octopus, and countless other tiny creatures move into the cracks and crevices. Many of them form the base of the food web and help keep the reef clean by grazing algae or consuming detritus.

Grazers and algae controllers
Parrotfish, surgeonfish, and some wrasses help prevent algae from smothering corals. A healthy population of grazers keeps the balance between coral and algae in check, which is vital in warmer, nutrient-affected waters.

Predators and schooling species
Over time, as the reef gains complexity, we want to see larger fish returning: groupers, snappers, trevallies, and big schools of fusiliers or baitfish circling above the structures. Their presence tells us the reef is starting to function as a complete ecosystem, not just a coral patch.

We’re not stocking an aquarium. We’re creating the conditions for natural recruitment, where fish and invertebrates choose to move into the area because the habitat is good.

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Why Does This Fish Life Matter for Coral Restoration?

Healthy corals are essential for fish, but fish are equally important for healthy corals.

Grazers keep fast-growing algae in check, preventing it from overgrowing coral surfaces. Predators help maintain balance among smaller reef species. Burrowing animals rework sediments around the structures, affecting water flow and nutrient availability. Even the constant movement of fish through a reef helps transport eggs, larvae, and nutrients.

When we talk about coral reef restoration in Thailand, success is not just “did the coral fragment survive?”. Real success looks like this:

• The structures are covered in living coral tissue
• Small fish are using the branches as shelter
• Grazers are present and actively feeding
• Larger fish are patrolling and hunting
• The reef sounds alive – the crackling, popping soundscape of a functioning ecosystem

This is why our project is intentionally designed to create three-dimensional structure using thousands of Super Star frames. The more structure we build, the more niches we create, and the more marine life can move in.

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Imagining a Reef Built from 10,000 Super Star Structures

Today, we are working with a growing network of Super Star units, each one roughly one square metre. But imagine a future where we’ve installed 10,000 Super Star structures across our restoration zone.

That’s the equivalent of at least 10,000 square metres of recreated reef framework – and because these structures are layered and interconnected, the effective habitat area would be much larger.

What would that look like underwater?

You’d descend into a landscape where individual frames are no longer obvious. Instead, you’d see:

• Large fields of branching Acropora and other hard corals fusing into one another
• Table corals forming horizontal shelves over the Super Stars
• Soft corals, sponges, and tunicates colonising shaded undersides
• Sand and rubble patches replaced by a complex maze of living structure

Above the reef, clouds of anthias, chromis, and damselfish would hover and dance in the current. Schools of fusiliers could sweep through, pursued by trevallies. Grazers would work the coral edges, scraping algae from bare spots. Turtles might cruise by to investigate, using the reef as a rest stop and feeding ground.

In the cracks between the frames, you’d find shrimps, crabs, and moray eels sharing burrows. Nudibranchs would trace their slow paths along encrusted branches. At night, the entire reef would change – with crustaceans, hunting snails, and nocturnal fish emerging to take over from the day shift.

A 10,000 Super Star reef isn’t just a bigger version of what we have now. It’s a fully functioning artificial reef system capable of supporting thousands of species and acting as a vital stepping stone and nursery between natural reefs.

It would also be a powerful buffer against local damage: storms, anchor scars, or localised bleaching events would be less catastrophic when the reef network is large, connected, and structurally diverse.

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The Future for Us – and How Divers Fit In

Our long-term vision at DiveRACE is simple to say but demanding to achieve:

Build and maintain artificial reef structures that genuinely function like natural reefs – and keep improving them over time.

In the coming years, we want to:

• Expand the number and density of Super Star structures in our restoration area
• Diversify the coral species we plant as conditions and data allow
• Monitor marine life changes systematically: which fish and invertebrates appear, and how their communities evolve
• Involve more divers and volunteers so that every trip has the potential to contribute to coral reef restoration in Thailand

The future we want is one where joining a DiveRACE liveaboard doesn’t just mean visiting beautiful reefs – it means helping build new ones.

We see a model where:

• Recreational divers enjoy some of the best dive sites in the Andaman Sea
• On certain dives, those same guests visit our restoration reef, see the progress, and maybe help with light tasks like monitoring or photo documentation
• Long-term volunteers and returning guests can track “their” reef’s growth from year to year

Most importantly, we want future divers to descend over Super Star reefs that are no longer obviously artificial. They will just see thriving coral, dense fish life, and a reef that “feels” alive – perhaps not realising that it started as bare steel frames and carefully attached coral fragments.

That’s the future we’re working toward: a living, growing artificial reef network built for marine life, supported by divers, and rooted in Thailand’s waters.

If you’d like to be part of that story – not just as a visitor, but as someone who helped rebuild a reef – then our restoration project is open to you.

Every Super Star structure, every coral fragment, and every fish that moves in is a step toward that 10,000-frame future. And we’re just getting started.