Help us save coral reefs

Still overwhelmed by the successful crowdfunding, we report back in the new year. A huge thank you at this point to everyone who has actively supported us, and we hope you all got your rewards! Postcard rewards will be sent from Colombia, the Wall of Fame will appear on our website soon, and the ocean lovers dinner in Zürich is obviously dependent on Covid measures. We will keep you informed and can’t wait!

Encouraged by your broad support, we deepened and refined our planning in January with a lot of verve and our vision in focus, and are more than ready to take off.

Since the 20th of January, we have been busy printing bricks, 22 so far. We are making sure to print a variety of different structures so that we can later analyse the structural preferences of various coral larvae species and see which features boost biodiversity most strongly.

If you have not seen it, our work was covered by SRF Tagesschau in their series «Women 2021», which marked the 50th anniversary of national voting rights for women. They portrayed five women who have big plans and visions for 2021. Ulrike was one of them! Check out the TV feature here: https://bit.ly/35hJrrU

And the newspaper Le Temps has also dedicated an article to us in the report «Raisons d’espérer» - which featured Marie as a «reason to hope». What an honour! The article is here: https://bit.ly/2NlYOcu

Finally, we noticed that we can reach many of you only with WEMAKEIT News. We will keep posting updates here, of course, but we invite you to subscribe to our newsletter (on rrreefs.com), and join our Instagram or Facebook accounts @rrreefs.

More exciting news very soon!

Warm greetings from Zürich, the rrreefs team

(for French and German scroll down)

It is done! Wow. 452 amazing humans have supported rrreefs with over 70’000 CHF! We are incredibly grateful for all of you. You are an integral part of the rrreefs community now and we can’t wait to share next year’s journey with you.

In January, we will kick off with the detailed planning of the reef building workshop - together with Corales de Paz. We also have many calls scheduled already for collaborations and possible long-term funding opportunities. In February, we can hopefully go to the Maldives and do the final analyses of our structure tests. Which structure results in the highest biodiversity of small animals? The year will continue with a lot of 3D printing of rrreef bricks, structuring our organization, supervising students that are working on pilot reef 2.0, and much more. And in September, finally, we will build our pilot reef 1.0 in San Andrés, which is the most exciting event of the year. Obviously. September/October is spawning time for corals there, and we can’t wait to see baby corals settle on the new rrreef you all made possible.

We wish everyone happy holidays! You will hear from us again in the new year, we need some time ’almost’ offline now. :)

Warm regards, Ulrike and Marie

Here is a nice article about rrreefs that just came out in the ETH Globe magazine, which may help convince people: https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2020/12/save-the-reef.html

We first prototyped, then built our rrreef brick christmas tree at our dear friends’ coworking space VN residency. And we built it for you!

If you are in or around Zürich, we invite you to meet us OUTSIDE on VN Residency’s terrace for a corona-safe, brief end-of-crowdfunding drink! Come and say hello, pick up your crowdfunding rewards to save packaging and mail, check out your adopted brick on the tree, and have a prosecco with us at a distance (and behind your mask!).

For us all to stay safe, please tell us until Wednesday night (tomorrow) if you want to come. We will limit the amount of people to 10 at a time, which means it will be a short visit, masks mandatory.

Nevertheless, we hope to see you there!

Where VN Residency, Lessingstrasse 15, 8002 Zürich When Friday, 5-7 pm

Please tell us here, if you are coming:
https://bit.ly/3qV6JNl

ar supporters, friends, fellow ocean lovers.

Thank you so much for already being a part of the rrreefs community. We are in the third week of the campaign now and WE NEED YOU to share this campaign around as much as you can.

Christmas is around the corner. There are probably more people out there that would love to dedicate a rrreef brick, soon full of life, to a beloved person.

Let’s make this a success, let’s build that reef and help the ocean with the combined strength of this community!

So please, SHARE our WeMakeIt page (in your favorite language) on your favorite social networks, on your email newsletter, whatsapp groups, or just tell your parents about it. :) The easiest way is to just click the buttons beneath our video on the main page, add a personal sentence, and voila!

Thanks a lot! Danke vielmals! Muchas gracias! Merci beaucoup! Grazie mille!

Ulrike and Marie

We just spoke to Corales de Paz - our partners in Colombia. The Colombian islands of Providencia and San Andrés were both hit by the recent hurricanes. People on Providencia Island, and the coral reefs around the island suffered a lot - they lost everything. But also the west side of San Andrés Island experienced a lot of destruction both above and below water. Some reefs are not recognizable, and important dive sites - a pillar of the island’s tourism - were destroyed.

The building of our pilot reef will be embedded in the local efforts to recreate both reef life and meaningful diving activities! We are so happy that we can support the people of San Andrés Island like this.

Our reef-building workshop will happen IN SEPTEMBER 2021 on San Andrés Island, Colombia, and run for 10 days! The weather and conditions will be good at this time. With our reef, we will create new habitat for reef life, and an attractive spot for ecotourism, helping to re-establish a part of the local economy.

Stay tuned for exact dates, but book the workshop NOW if September works for you. And share this with your friends that might be interested.

Warm regards, Ulrike and Marie.

ar Ocean lovers,

We’ve noticed that a lot of our participants and supporters speak Spanish. We therefore have just made Spanish subtitles! You can now share with more people around you, and help our mission succeed. You may also find French and German subtitles, and for hearing impaired people, we have English subtitles as well.

¡Muchas gracias a tod@s !

Wow, we are so grateful for your incredible support, everyone! It is looking really good for our pilot reef and that gives us lots of energy. Thank you so much.

In the meantime, if you want to dive a bit deeper into the science, check out this talk by our co-founder Ulrike. She was invited to speak at World.Minds Zürich last year in December. What an honor!

Since the talk, Ulrike has left ETH Zürich to pour 100 % of her time into rrreefs and make this project come to life, but we are of course still collaborating with ETH Zürich for our research!

With warm regards from Zürich, Marie and Ulrike