The restoration of coral reef habitats by coral transplantation is a hot topic in the news today due to the accelerating degradation of the coral reef ecosystem all over the world. There is much discussion about research programs for the transplantation of corals and about actual field realizations and the motivation for coral reef restoration. But the implementation of such a project depends on a social request considering local or global cultural and economical situations. Projects are very costly and only applicable when important economical interests are involved such as the fight against erosion or tourism development. In the lagoon of Bora Bora in French Polynesia, a fringing zone, degraded by coral sand extractions, led to an erosion of the coast damaging local private property in a sector well oriented toward tourism activities. The reconstruction of this degraded site (20,000 sq.m) required physically filling up holes, implementation of spurs, and putting into place artificial concrete structures to promote the natural colonization of corals and other reef organisms in order to reduce swell impacts. The creation of a coral reef garden was also part of the project with the transplantation of corals collected in the vicinity. Fifty groups of three different types of concrete blocks have been set out on the site and six others constitute the coral reef garden on which 311 coral colonies are transplanted. Two and a half years after this restoration, the project proved to be successful. The coral reef garden flourished ; it showed much diversification and little mortality among the corals colonies, and the natural colonization on the concrete substrate was teeming with corals, sea-urchins, mollusks, and fishes. But thirty months later, an exceptionally violent meteorological and oceanographical situation led to a catastrophic event which caused many transplanted coral as well as natural colonies in the vicinity to be killed off. Lagoon waters temperatures were recorded as high as 34 °C and of the 311 transplanted coral colonies only 119 survived, most of them bleached or partly dead. All colonies of the genus Acropora died, while those of the genus Psammocora survived. Methods for restoration and creation of coral reef gardens are highly controlled but they cannot always escape such catastrophic events such as the one in Bora Bora in December 2001. Physical restoration was successful but the biological transplantation of corals failed. Thus, when we consider how expansive a restoration project is, it is essential to conduct an historical inquiry on a potential coral transplantation site before implementing any project.