{"id":2065675,"date":"2026-07-04T17:26:42","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T15:26:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.luxsure.fr\/2026\/07\/04\/rolex-coral-gardeners-and-sylvia-earle-restoring-reefs-as-a-way-to-pass-on-our-legacy\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T17:30:47","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T15:30:47","slug":"rolex-coral-gardeners-and-sylvia-earle-restoring-reefs-as-a-way-to-pass-on-our-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.luxsure.fr\/en\/2026\/07\/04\/rolex-coral-gardeners-and-sylvia-earle-restoring-reefs-as-a-way-to-pass-on-our-legacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Rolex, Coral Gardeners, and Sylvia Earle: Restoring Reefs as a Way to Pass on Our Legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Beneath the surface, the urgency is anything but abstract. In the Gulf of Thailand, around Koh Mak and Koh Kood, the coral reefs bear visible signs of warming that can no longer be measured solely in numbers. Bleaching, loss of biodiversity, and the increasing vulnerability of coastal communities: the marine landscape is becoming an early indicator of what is happening on a broader scale in the oceans. This is where Rolex\u2019s Perpetual Planet Initiative brings together two figures from different generations: Sylvia Earle, founder of Mission Blue, and Titouan Bernicot, founder of Coral Gardeners. <\/p>\n\n

The subject might seem far removed from watchmaking. But it isn\u2019t quite as distant as it seems. Rolex has long supported exploration\u2014first as a quest for conquest, and later as a quest for knowledge. Since 2019, with the Perpetual Planet Initiative, the company has taken this history in a new direction: no longer just venturing farther, deeper, or higher, but supporting those who seek to preserve the environments they explore. The initiative now includes more than thirty partners, organized around three pillars: oceans, landscapes, and science, health, and technology. Rolex officially presents this evolution as a shift from exploration to the protection of the planet. <\/p>\n\n

In Thailand, this approach has taken concrete form. Coral Gardeners has opened its third branch there, following locations in French Polynesia and Fiji. The organization is now working on two islands in Trat Province\u2014Koh Mak and Koh Kood\u2014with a local team trained to carry out coral restoration. The Rolex media kit notes that the Gulf of Thailand is home to more than 300 species of coral, but that the region has recently experienced some of the most severe bleaching events on the planet. <\/p>\n\n

The Coral Gardeners\u2019 method is based on an idea that is simple in principle but demanding in execution: collecting fragments of hardy corals, growing them in nurseries, replanting them on degraded reefs, and then monitoring their growth and ecological impact. Since its launch in 2017, the organization has planted more than 200,000 corals in nurseries and on reefs. It is also developing tools that use artificial intelligence to improve reef monitoring and conservation. <\/p>\n\n

The photographic contact sheet provided by Rolex lends this work a distinct sense of tangibility. It shows the underwater structures where the corals are suspended, the fragments prepared in the onshore nursery, the processes of selection and fragmentation, as well as the presence of Sylvia Earle and Titouan Bernicot in the field, moving between diving, observation, and communication. The images taken by Tim McKenna show conservation that is anything but a distant concept: hands, ropes, cuttings, local teams, and repeated dives. <\/p>\n\n

The new Thai facility also marks a significant expansion. The press kit states that Coral Gardeners\u2019 land-based nursery in Thailand is the organization\u2019s first and the largest of its kind in Southeast Asia, supported by the Perpetual Planet Initiative. It will be able to accommodate up to 40 tanks and grow up to 50,000 corals, while the ocean nurseries will produce more than 10,000 corals per year. The press release also mentions 82 ocean nursery facilities and a future capacity of more than 25,000 corals per year, indicating that the program is already in an expansion phase. <\/p>\n\n

Sylvia Earle\u2019s participation gives this initiative a broader scope. An oceanographer, founder of Mission Blue in 2009, and a Rolex Testimonee since 1982, she has spent more than 7,500 hours underwater, led more than 100 expeditions, and discovered thousands of marine species. With Rolex\u2019s support since 2014, the number of Hope Spots has grown from 50 to more than 160, covering a total of 55 million square kilometers of ocean. Mission Blue defines Hope Spots as marine areas scientifically identified as essential to the health of the ocean. <\/p>\n\n

Koh Mak and Koh Kood could become Mission Blue\u2019s first Hope Spot in Thailand. The Coral Gardeners team began the application process after receiving encouragement from Sylvia Earle. Such recognition alone does not guarantee the effective protection of a marine area, but it serves as a catalyst: raising visibility, mobilizing local communities, attracting scientific attention, and exerting positive pressure on governance. Rolex emphasizes that this designation would increase the chances of seeing the waters in question better protected. <\/p>\n\n

What stands out here, beyond the numbers, is the shift between two ocean cultures. Sylvia Earle embodies the heroic age of scientific exploration\u2014the era of deep dives, discoveries, and the documentation of invisible worlds. Titouan Bernicot belongs to a generation for whom exploration is no longer enough. In the photo essay, he articulates this shift clearly: his generation can no longer simply explore\u2014it must find solutions. <\/p>\n\n

This paradigm shift also affects the luxury sector. For a brand like Rolex, prestige is no longer defined solely by mechanical precision, sporting history, or industrial expertise. It is defined by the ability to demonstrate its influence through clear, sustainable, and verifiable commitments. The Perpetual Planet Initiative is not a one-off campaign: it builds on a longstanding relationship between the brand, explorers, and extreme environments. But it shifts the narrative toward a more contemporary question: what should we do with this knowledge of the world as the world deteriorates? <\/p>\n\n

The answer here lies in an almost silent image: a fragment of coral attached to a structure, waiting to come back to life. Nothing spectacular. Nothing immediate. A slow, repeated, measured gesture. On the scale of a reef, restoration is a matter of patience. On the scale of a Maison, perhaps that is also what coherence means: sustaining the long term when it produces not only value, but the very conditions of life. <\/p>\n\n

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Beneath the surface, the urgency is anything but abstract. In the Gulf of Thailand, around Koh Mak and Koh Kood, the coral reefs bear visible signs of warming that can…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2036397,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30122],"tags":[78924,78919,78928,78925,78927,78926,78923,78920,30963,78921,71206,78922],"class_list":["post-2065675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-watches-and-jewelry","tag-coral-gardeners","tag-coral-reefs","tag-coral-restoration","tag-hope-spot","tag-koh-kood","tag-koh-mak","tag-mission-blue","tag-perpetual-planet-initiative","tag-rolex-en","tag-sylvia-earle","tag-thailand","tag-titouan-bernicot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.luxsure.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2065675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.luxsure.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.luxsure.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.luxsure.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.luxsure.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2065675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.luxsure.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2065675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.luxsure.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2036397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.luxsure.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2065675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.luxsure.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2065675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.luxsure.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2065675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}