Coral Reef Restoration | Pom Pom Island Resort

Why Restoration Is Needed

Blast Fishing

Our house reef has previously been damaged by blast fishing, a method that uses explosives to kill large numbers of reef fish for easy collection.

Although this practice is now illegal in Malaysia, it has caused significant harm, leaving extensive coral rubble fields that lack the structure and ecological function of a healthy reef.

Dead coral rubble caused by historical blast fishing — Dead corals due to blast fishing

Rebuilding the House Reef

Restoration

Since 2014, we have been actively restoring the reef in front of our resort near the arrival jetty.

Over the past few years, we have installed more than 25 cemented-steel-bar structures in various shapes.

Table coral growing on a cemented steel-bar structure — Steelbar – Table Coral

Coral fragments attached to a steel-bar frame with zip ties — Ziptie – Corals

These structures provide a substrate for natural coral recruitment, support active coral replanting, and offer shelter for fish and invertebrates. Corals are attached to the frames with zip ties, which secure them and allow tissue growth around the structure through a process called calcification.

A diver attaching coral fragments to a steel-bar restoration frame — Attaching coral to a steelbar frame

A coral fragment labelled for guest Ou Ou — Ziptie – Guest Ou Ou

Introduced in 2026

Coral Cookies

In 2026, we introduced another restoration method called the coral cookies table, which involves two phases. First, broken coral fragments are collected from the seafloor and attached to a cement cookie structure using epoxy glue.

A guest holding newly prepared coral cookies — Coral Cookie

A living coral fragment attached to a cement coral cookie — Coral Cookie

Once the corals are fully grown and reach maturity, the coral cookies are cemented back onto the rubble fields to stabilise them with living coral colonies, increasing coral and fish biodiversity on our house reef.

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