Abstract Summary
Restoring coral populations on degraded reefs using nursery grown corals is an evolving science and an art. A variety of in situ coral nursery and outplanting techniques have been developed around the world in an attempt to “restore” degraded reefs. These techniques often employ a larger central nursery array which supplies nursery reared corals for projects meters to kilometers from the production array. Nursery grow-out may take up to a year, involving regular maintenance, including removal of fouling organisms and flotsam. Once grown to a reef-ready state per the programmatic approach, the corals are removed from the nursery structure, in whole or in part, and transported to the restoration site, where they are then secured to the target substrate using adhesives or cements, nails, fishing line, cable ties, or by simply jamming them into reef crevices. Although these techniques are effective, they are often costly and labor intensive, making it difficult to scale them up to have a meaningful restoration impact in many areas. Because the goal of most restoration projects is to return the site to its pre-impacted state, the limited capacity of most programs results in restoration projects have been successful only on relatively small spatial scales. We propose that a new goal for reef restoration programs be to develop the capacity to restore reefs at landscape scales. In this presentation we will outline a new strategy to significantly scale-up restoration activities by streamlining nursery maintenance, coral transport, and outplanting to the reef. A key component of this concept is developing temporary, biodegradable nursery structures that serve as both nursery and outplanting structure in one. Such “pop-up” nurseries will be developed for branching, massive and soft-coral morphologies, and the specific designs can be modified to take into account the physical conditions at the site (currents, tides and sea conditions), and the consolidation, orientation and topographic complexity of the planting substrate. The ultimate goal of these structures is to produce and outplant large numbers of corals at a minimal effort and cost.
