Before Pemuteran became one of the island’s most important coral reef preservation and conservation areas, it was a remote, barren far-flung village.

Located in Buleleng, north Bali, the local villagers fished using destructive practices, including bombing the coral reef to stun the fish and bring them to the surface.

“I was very sad and very concerned seeing the fishermen ruining the coral reefs and disrupting the marine habitat,” recalled I Gusti Agung Prana, a renowned environmentalist.

In the early 1980s, Prana had made a life-changing trip to Pemuteran, a place where he felt deep spiritual vibrations. Based on the Balinese concept of nyegara gunung, the village has an ideal location sandwiched between the sea and the mountains.

As the village is around 90 kilometers north of Denpasar, or about a three-hour drive, Prana thought it was a great location for a tourist destination.

The first step he had to take, however, was to involve the local community in the rehabilitation of the damaged coral reef and marine habitat.

“It was really difficult to change people’s habits and ways of thinking,” he recalled.

The local fishermen were in a dire situation. Their small catches forced them to take dramatic shortcuts, which critically damaged the marine habitat.

“We are poor. We often fail to catch fish. Our families only eat once a day. How can you stop us from doing what we are doing?” the fishermen often asked him in the early days.

Prana never gave up hope, patiently encouraging the local people to understand the importance of rehabilitating coral reefs and that it would be beneficial for them. At the time, Pemuteran’s coral reef was nearly dead from bleaching, changing sea temperatures, sedimentation and reef bombing.

The coral reef restoration program started in 2000 with the help of two scientists — the late Wolf Ililbertz and Tom Goreau. Together with the locals, they developed the first biorock reefs in Pemuteran. The biorock coral restoration technique provides an environment for the coral reef to recover and become vibrant, where fish swarm freely.

This community-based marine conservation project earned Prana and his Yayasan Karang Sari foundation numerous national and international accolades, including the Equator Prize 2012, The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Special Award for Marine and Coastal Zone Management and the UNDP Equator Award for Community Based Development, which was presented at the UN Conference in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil in 2012.

The village has an education center for marine and conservation study and has become a sustainable eco-tourism site, a favorite place for European tourists. Prana himself invested in the area early on by building Taman Sari home stay.

The Tourism Ministry has put forward Pemuteran village as an alternative marine and conservation-based tourist destination in the upcoming United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) conference in Madrid, Spain, which will take place in January 2016.

“Conservation and tourism can go hand in hand with a new paradigm of preserving nature,” noted I Gde Pitana from the Tourism Ministry.

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