Abstract Summary
Conference Theme: Restoration Operations: best practices, techniques and tools for scaling up Scaling up coral production for restoration and lowering the costs for out-planting: New techniques and alternatives Aquaculture production for marine organisms has always evolved using a three step system of a: Hatchery; Nursery and Field out-planting. Hatcheries have always been land-based, but nursery systems have usually utilized both a land-based system or a field-based system or both. The majority of coral restoration systems have evolved starting with only field-based systems using asexual fragmentation and transporting to field based sites for manual out-planting. Recent successes with land-based nurseries have allowed for implementing more of the massive species thru technologies such as “micro-fragmentation” and have also provided a platform for implementing sexual reproduction into the mix. Increases in the overall production numbers also resulted in a drastic lowering of the costs per unit coral. The use of a land facilities provides also for including sexual reproduction to diversify genotypes plus provide new tissue for asexual reproduction with micro-fragmentation. The utilization of both a land nursery for a shorter period coupled with a field nursery also increases the production capacity and lowers labor costs and the time in the land-based nursery. The hybridization of a first field nursery stage next to the final outplanting site for a “double-cutting” could be the exponential expansion of final out-plants with drastically reducing labor costs. By following these standard methods developed for other marine organism aquaculture production, coral propagation for restoration can optimize both costs and labor to enable production at scale.
