An unprecedented operation has been underway for the past year off the coast of Eilat, where the Nature and Parks Authority, the Defense Ministry and the Navy are working together on a project called “The Convergence” to dismantle a military pier built in the 1950s. Beneath the surface, a large-scale rescue mission is relocating giant coral colonies that have grown around the structure, including some that have reached exceptional size over decades.
One dramatic example was documented when Eli Nidalah, a Nature and Parks Authority infrastructure inspector, moved a coral colony from one of the pier’s pillars. The coral was about 1.5 meters long and weighed roughly 80 kilograms. Nidalah said the work requires “surgical precision” to avoid harming a colony that had flourished for decades. Before the removal began, underwater robots mapped the seabed and the hundreds of tons of waste accumulated there.
Professional teams, accompanied by dozens of volunteer divers from Dolphin Reef, are now carefully detaching corals and transferring them to safety. Dr. Asaf Haberi, who heads the Nature and Parks Authority’s Eilat Bay region, said more than 10,000 coral colonies have already been moved. Some were placed on special underwater tables that serve as a “coral bank,” while others were deliberately left in place. Haberi said some colonies were so successful that officials chose not to disturb them, even leaving the debris they grew on.
The project is intended not only to save marine life but also to benefit science and the public. Rescued corals are being sent to laboratories at the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences in Eilat for monitoring and future research, and some will be used to create a dedicated artificial reef that will be safely accessible to divers and nature lovers. As the new infrastructure is built, the military base will shrink, its outer areas will be opened to the public, and new stretches of shoreline will become available for urban development. Shahar Yishkarov, the Nature and Parks Authority’s southern district infrastructure official, called it “a restoration project on a scale we have not seen here before,” adding that once the debris and corals are cleared, construction of the new sea wall will begin, protecting national security while preserving the treasures of Eilat Bay for future generations.
