Mars Coral Reef
Restoration

In September 2025, Mars Sustainable Solutions (MSS) launched an exciting new partnership with the Conflict Islands Conservation Initiative (CICI), marking the beginning of large-scale coral restoration efforts in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The collaboration brings together MSS’s global reef restoration expertise and CICI’s on-ground conservation leadership to build local capacity and restore some of the most remote and biodiverse reefs in the Coral Sea. 

The Conflict Islands, located in Milne Bay Province, are a historically pristine chain of 21 islands surrounded by vibrant reef systems, that have suffered degradation in the last two decades due to storms and thermal bleaching events. Since 2017, in conjunction with their local partners The Coral Islands Limited, CICI has emerged as a model of community-led conservation in the Pacific. Their conservation initiatives have included turtle monitoring, environment and species monitoring and protection, environmental education, and livelihood development programs for nearby island communities. 

Now, with a partnership with MSS, CICI is taking the next step, turning conservation into hands-on restoration. The partnership aims to train the local team in the Mars Assisted Reef Restoration System (MARRS), with a vision to establish the Conflict Islands as a long-term hub for reef restoration training in the Coral Sea. 

The first MSS field mission to the Conflict Islands brought together 19 members of the CICI team for intensive MARRS training. Five staff, including CICI Manager Hayley Versace and rangers Steven Amos, Genevive Paul, Banian Leonard, and Michael Moten, achieved full MARRS Competency Certification. Fourteen additional rangers and operations staff completed Introductory Training, gaining practical experience across coral collection, Reef Star production, and Coral-Clip installation. 

Training sessions combined classroom learning with extensive fieldwork, emphasizing hands-on practice in degraded reef environments. The CICI team developed new skills in restoration planning and implementation, site selection, and reef monitoring, and quickly demonstrated the capacity to lead future projects within their own team.

The partnership’s first in-water project took place at Panasesa Island, where the team established a 300-square-metre restoration site. Over eight days, the joint MSS–CICI team installed 275 Reef Stars, outplanting over 4,000 coral fragments, and attached 804 CoralClips to surrounding substrate. At the end of the week, the team voted to name the site ‘Kulita Garden’. ‘Kulita’ means octopus in the local Bwanabwana language, and it is named after the octopus copal that were seen to happily move in to the new restoration site on the last two days. Since the initial training build, CICI have gone on to install a further 60 Reef Stars and over 1,000 more CoralClips, bringing the total number of Reef Stars in this pilot build to 335 and over 7,000 coral fragments. 

This first collaboration between MSS and CICI marks a major milestone for reef restoration in Papua New Guinea. The partnership has already shown that with the right training, local teams can undertake technically complex restoration work even in remote locations. As the program grows, it will serve as a model for community-driven reef restoration — one that rebuilds both ecosystems and livelihoods. 

With funding already secured by CICI for restoration expansion, the MSS–CICI partnership is turning conservation into restoration and restoring hope beneath the surface of Papua New Guinea’s seas.