Abstract:

Serious games and gamified learning are reshaping how complex environmental challenges are communicated, and education represents its largest application sector. Within marine conservation, serious games have proven effective at increasing ocean literacy and fostering pro-environmental attitudes. Few, if any, offer an immersive first-person simulation of the fieldwork itself: the underwater experience of surveying, identifying, and restoring coral reefs. This gap leaves a critical dimension of conservation education underserved: the embodied, procedural knowledge of what marine conservation practitioners actually do beneath the surface.

Reef Rescue is a simulation diving system designed to fill this gap. Players enter virtual underwater environments, from shallow seagrass beds, through coral-encrusted rock walls, to sponge-dominated shipwreck habitats, each informed by published reef survey data and featuring representative coral morphology and species distribution. A two-mission structure grounds gameplay in experiential learning: players first conduct a reef survey, collecting flora samples, investigating shipwreck colonization, and identifying threats through interactive discovery events that trigger contextual educational sequences. They then return to deploy artificial reef structures and transplant coral fragments, directly applying knowledge from their survey.

We also vision to integrate pre- and post-play assessment mechanisms to measure knowledge acquisition across reef ecology, threat identification, and restoration methodology. Reef Rescue demonstrates how simulation-based serious games can lower barriers to marine conservation education, transforming passive environmental awareness into procedural understanding that equips learners to participate in real-world reef monitoring and restoration efforts.

Keywords:

Coral Reef Restoration & Conservation, Gamification, Serious Games, Virtual Diving, Virtual Training, Sustainability Education, Marine Ecology & Biodiversity, Interactive Simulation.