Part of the mission of Project Phoenix (PP) is to give those interested in working with corals the tools to be able to identify the species they work with. Unlike my own undergraduate experience, our aim is to train participants in taxonomy rather than just specimen identification. The fact is that none of currently available field guides identify hard coral species accurately, therefore you have to take the initiative and identify your own coral by consulting the relevant type material, much of which is available by request from PP. Furthermore, at least 25% of coral species are undescribed, so if you are working with corals you should be prepared to describe new species or at least know how to recognise them. Towards this aim, we have made various resources available online at the Project Phoenix website and we also present public talks and the occasional workshops. The latest workshop was run in Kenya over two days by Professor Andrew Baird of James Cook University at Pwami University, Kilifi and the Firefly Eco Retreat in Shimoni.

The workshop was well attended with participants from many different institutions, including Pwani University, REEFolution, CORDIO, the Wildlife Research & Training Institute, Kenya Wildlife Service, the National Museum of Kenya, Kenya Marine & Fisheries Research Institute, Wasini BMU and A Rocha Kenya. A full list of the participants is below.

The workshop was presented in two parts. The first was “A crash course in coral taxonomy” where I explained the need for a new taxonomy and outlined the way forward. The second part, “Coral collection and curation”, had a more practical bent and included collection and processing of coral specimens in the field to serve as vouchers for later identification. Both presentations are available for download in the above links.

The workshop also included a zoom lecture by Dr Tom Bridge of Queensland Museum introducing Coral Bank, a repository of corals collected by Project Phoenix and stored at Queensland Museum of the Tropics in Townsville, Australia.

The workshop was a great success. Participants were left in no doubt about the scale of the task ahead. Indeed, there were very few colonies that we could confidently identify in the field in Shimoni, and it will take collections and a modern integrated approach to put names on these specimens, many of which are likely new to science. Quite remarkably, few corals have ever been collected in Kenya and our preliminary collection will form the basis of a what we hope will be a growing curated collection at the National Museum of Kenya.

Acknowledgements

We thank the Research & Conservation Support Society (RECOURSE) for sponsoring the workshop through the Revive & Restore, Catalyst Science Fund, the Firefly Eco Retreat for looking after us on land and in the water, Asatsa Nabwire for a truly excellent job coordinating the workshop and all the participants for their enthusiastic engagement and excellent questions.