The Coral Garden That Lost Its Number Tags

In June 2025, diver Tian Sihui from Kunming returned to Fenjiezhou Island with her daughter. She told Hainan Daily that it was their fourth year taking part in coral transplantation at the site. The year before, she had carried seedlings from a nursery to artificial reef structures under the sea. This time, she and her daughter put on their diving equipment and descended to search for the patch they remembered. The scene begins as an act of return: not planting something new at random, but looking for a place where a family had already left a small mark.

The family had photographed the previous planting and left numbered tags to identify the seedlings. Tian told the reporter that the coral had grown quickly enough to push the tags away. The few shoots that had seemed thin the year before now appeared interwoven, and marine life moved among them. Tian’s observation was personal, but the displaced tags made the year between visits visible: the coral had grown around the labels the family left behind.

After finding the earlier patch, Tian and her daughter planted coral seedlings once more. Tian said she wanted her child to understand marine protection by taking part and then seeing the seedlings grow. The relationship between the two visits is the article’s human centre: care is carried not only by divers and restoration structures but through a parent showing a child how to return to the same underwater place and notice what has changed. The account documents their experience; it does not claim that one family’s visit alone determines whether a reef ecosystem has recovered.

A resort executive told the reporter that coral transplantation began at Fenjiezhou in 2004, with research-institution partners, and that coral cover had risen year by year. The mother-and-daughter return is more specific: a section they revisited, tags displaced by growth and a second planting in 2025. It offers a human window into continuing conservation work while leaving broader ecological claims open to independent monitoring.