To improve the competency of marine protected area (MPA) managers and personnel in Indonesia in protecting coral reefs, CTC conducted an online Reef Health Monitoring (RHM) training on November 02-05, 2020. The online training, conducted as part of our pandemic adaptation strategy, will enable participants to actively take part in assessing and evaluating the existing condition of coral reef ecosystems to anticipate any threats and avoid the loss of biodiversity and marine resources.

The training is part of the recently completed Indonesian MPA Personnel Capacity Building Roadmap, which aims to improve the technical capacity of MPA personnel working in 36 priority MPAs across Indonesia. In total, 29 participants attended the training, representing various Provincial Marine and Fisheries Agencies, and Provincial MPA Regional Technical Implementation Units from the priority sites. The roadmap was developed by MMAF in collaboration with CTC and completed in 2020.

During the four days of training, all participants received learning materials regarding the biophysical parameters of coral reef monitoring, methods on benthic organisms and reef fish data collection, other data collection and data processing, as well as data interpretation. Participants were also required to work on different tasks and assignments according to the given topics.

Acting as trainers were three CTC staff and three staff of the Directorate of Marine Conservation and Biodiversity, Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries. The trainers creatively delivered training materials through online presentations using Zoom application, while virtual simulations and videos were mostly used to replace any field practice sessions.

The results of the training showed that there was an increase in the participants’ knowledge by an average of 35.5 points. The majority of participants also successfully completed assignments with an average score > 50%. Therefore, they passed the training well. However, three participants failed. The failure might be due to the lack of participants’ experiences in joining virtual events, learning difficulties, unstable quality of the internet signal in participants’ respective areas, unfamiliarity with the technology being used, or insufficient experiences in conducting coral reef health monitoring before.

Nonetheless, the training was a success as reflected in the participants’ satisfactory level, where 31% of participants said they were very satisfied with the online training, while 62% of participants said that they were satisfied. In the future, CTC has committed to continuously improve the training quality, including materials and learning methods to be more effective.