Saving Animals From Extinction (SAFE) focuses the collective expertise within our accredited zoos and aquariums and leverages our massive audiences to save species. At the same time, SAFE will build capacity to increase direct conservation spending. The program goal of the SAFE: Atlantic Acropora...

As natural habitats are increasingly lost or degraded, there is a need to determine the mechanisms that organisms use to locate suitable habitats and to identify if adaptation is possible to new or altered locations. The importance of chemical cues during the settlement process is becoming well reco...

Although some resilient coral reefs are being monitored in the past decades and still present signs of health and integrity, most of the coral reefs close to unustainable development areas are being exposed to high stress and degradation. The coral reefs scientists should inform industrial developer...

In recent years, a series of natural and anthropogenic disturbances have caused damage to the only coral reef barrier in the Gulf of California, located at Cabo Pulmo National Park. Therefore, the administration of the protected area considered the implementation of management actions intended to re...

Southeast Florida has no shortage of coastal construction projects with permit-required avoidance and minimization efforts to move scleractinian corals out of harm’s way, and mitigation for anticipated project impacts. The authors propose a novel data organization and visualization tool for use wi...

Precipitous declines in coral reef and mangrove habitats worldwide threaten food security, livelihoods, and infrastructure for coastal societies. Is it possible to restore the ecological functionality of damaged habitats? What factors mediate the success of restoration efforts? Here I describe why m...

The health and resilience of coral reefs are dwindling as reefs are confronted by a suite of stressors: elevated seawater temperatures, eutrophication, overfishing, pollution, and disease. In 2014, a new coral disease was first reported off South Florida (USA) and has since spread across the Florida...

Coral reef social-ecological systems (SES) frameworks can provide an important tool for managers as they develop and implement restoration actions. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) developed an SES framework and integrated monitoring (IM) program to inform management and re...

Currently, there is a widespread coral disease outbreak occurring on the reefs of Florida that has resulted in significant mortalities of 11 of the 24 species surveyed. This unprecedented outbreak provides a unique but time-sensitive opportunity to address critical questions about coral disease. Thi...

Since 2014, the Florida Reef Tract has been experiencing a major disease event affecting over 20 species, with up to 80% mortality, that spans from Martin County to the northern extent of the Lower Keys. A multi-agency collaboration is responding to the event. One intervention is to "rescue" fragmen...

The coral gardening concept which follow terrestrial standards for massive cultivation and transplants had varios scientific applications during the las two decades. Nevertheless, few investigation had tried to establish management tools for its use as an educative tool and a community based plan fo...

The Healthy Reefs for Healthy People Initiative (HRI) is an international collaborative program, involving 73 coral reef-focused research, management and conservation organizations, that has developed and implemented a comprehensive framework for evaluating and improving large-scale reef health, thr...

St Martin’s Island is the only coral habitat in Bangladesh marine water. There are 66 known coral species under 22 genera and 15 sclerectinian coral families. During the last decade tourism spread all over the north zone of the island and in winter month’s mass tourism hampers the coral growth t...

Coral communities are productive ecosystems and are recognized for their wide distribution. In the Mexican Pacific there is a relatively low diversity of coral species, but they are adapted to thermal anomalies that under normal conditions cause bleaching. Despite having suffered damage from the str...

Many factors go into decisions of where and what species to use for restoration, including reef-protection status, presence of live corals, historic coral success, and environmental conditions at sites being considered. We report on a study, started in 2009, measuring coral-calcification rates at si...

Tropical cyclones can cause a wide variety of damage to the reef ranging from mild, partial damage and even total damage that includes death of many organisms. Hard corals most affected by hurricanes and tropical storms in the Mexican Caribbean are Acropora palmata, Acropora cervicornis, and some bo...

The goal of restoration programs is to ensure long-term success. In Mexico, coral restoration programs began 12 years ago, nevertheless, there is no reliable information on the location and characteristics of the restoration sites, and no monitoring data post out-planting. To determine if there are ...

In the Mexican Caribbean, reef restoration using coral fragments is extremely popular. Nevertheless, the short- and long-term performance of coral fragments in in situ nurseries and in the reef environment is under-reported. To determine the importance of genotype in the long-term survival of Acropo...

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park has for decades been the pinnacle of marine park management. With global climate change putting great pressure on the Great Barrier Reef particularly through two consecutive mass bleaching events (2016-2017), which impacted reefs globally. There have also been ten ...

NOAA’s Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP) rolled out its new Strategic Plan this fall. This plan incorporates lessons learned from programmatic evaluations and assessments, and its implementation is predicated on employing a resilience based management strategy. The plan takes a multi-pronged ...

Grazing rates of Caribbean reef ecosystems have been in decline for the better part of a century. Top-down trophic cascades driven by a long history of overfishing, disease, and mortality of key herbivore and foundation species, and strong bottom-up eutrophication have been synergistic in shifting C...

Coral reefs are under serious threat from coastal development, pollution and overfishing, in addition to increasing pressure from the impacts of climate change. As a consequence of climate change-related warming there has been global mass bleaching of coral reefs, and more than 60% of coral reefs wo...

Coral reefs around the world are disappearing at an alarming rate, reducing its services to marine biodiversity and human communities. Coral researches, managers and conservationists have been implementing coral restoration methods to help deteriorated reefs go back to functional states or to recove...

Until recently, most restoration efforts in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary focused primarily on Natural Resource Damage Assessment for coral reefs, seagrass, and mangroves following mechanical injuries caused by human activities. Debris removal, framework repair, transplantation, infilli...

The abundance of corals has declined significantly over past decades, to the point where several reef-building species in the Caribbean are now listed as threatened. Active reef restoration has expanded exponentially to help recover degraded coral populations and the ecological services associated w...

Crown-of-Thorns Starfish (CoTS) population outbreaks are one of the major threats to the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). They are also the threat that is most directly and immediately manageable in the short term through active control. The scale of the CoTS problem, however, threatens to dwarf the resour...

In Hawaii, much of the State’s Coral Restoration Nursery’s activities and its out-planting of large coral colony modules is currently being funded through either settlements from Responsible Parties for unplanned coral reef impact cases in State waters, or through cooperatively-derived mitigatio...

The Florida Reef Tract (FRT) spans approximately 595 km along the south and southeast Florida (SE FL) coastline from the Dry Tortugas to Martin County. These reefs continue to experience a devastating coral disease event that began in 2014 and altered the population demographics, effectively elimina...

It is widely recognized that active coral restoration is a necessary component of coral reef habitat management in the U.S. and broader Caribbean. Inevitably, permit(s) of some kind are required to undertake coral restoration, notably when those activities occur within marine protected areas, which ...

The endangered species listing of Acropora cervicornis has prompted the need for restoration. Since resources are limited, sites selected for restoration should not only be suitable for outplant survival, but also contribute larvae to replenish surrounding reefs. However, coral larval dispersal patt...