The interfaces between coral and algal holobionts represent the battle front of fierce competition for space on the reef. Growth of one holobiont over another at these interaction interfaces determines the benthic community structure on reefs. Coral-algal interaction zones frequently promote higher ...

Monitoring of individual ephemeral coral species such as Acropora cervicornis is difficult because of frequent fragment or displacement, yielding individual colonies nearly impossible to track long-term. However, much of the remaining A. cervicornis exist as low density populations comprised of indi...

With the proliferation of local and regional coral propagation and reef restoration programs around the world, there is an increasing need to develop uniform, consistent guidelines to ascertain the status of these efforts that are initiated with differing levels of expertise and a wide range of prog...

Global threats to coral reefs demand novel strategies for conservation and restoration. In particular, interest in increasing the use of corals with robust phenotypes in restoration and captive breeding programs has grown. Recent work has documented intraspecific variation in phenotype among known g...

Acropora cervicornis is a key Caribbean species, both in structural and functional terms. It has suffered an important population loss since the 1980s and exhibited no signs of recovery in the following three generations. Hence, it is classified as a Critically Endangered Species. Its fast growth ra...

A major priority in coral restoration is to increase settlement and post-settlement survival by orders of magnitude. Bacteria have the ability to induce settlement in marine larvae, moderate host-symbiont relationships, prevent invasion by pathogens, and improve gut health. To identify, isolate, and...

Florida Keys coral reefs have experienced seven mass bleaching events since 1987. Many reefs have < 5% coral cover, but some inshore patch reefs have maintained significantly higher coral cover. It has been hypothesized that the inshore corals are acclimatized and/or adapted to recurrent heat stress...

In 2011, Mars, Inc. set-up a Coral Reef Restoration Program in the Spermonde Archipelago off the coast of Makassar, Sulawesi. With local communities and scientists we developed a simple, effective and scalable way to rebuild a coral reef – the Mars Assisted Reef Restoration System (MARRS). We rebu...

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...

This year, Australia embarked on a bold project: to create an innovative suite tools that can be rolled-out at the scale needed to help preserve and restore the Great Barrier Reef. They must be targeted, affordable, risk-assessed and socially and ethically acceptable. The breadth and sophistication ...

Stress hardening, a technique using controlled stress to induce net positive physiological change, has been proposed as a scalable tool to improve the heat tolerance of nursery-grown corals through bleaching and recovery. Public-facing experiments in the Inventors in Residence Lab at the Phillip and...

In the Caribbean, corals are commonly cultured in ocean-based nurseries and outplanted back to reefs for population enhancement. Intraspecific diversity in host and symbiont is an important consideration for nursery and resource managers. We built upon a previous study that quantified Acropora cervi...

Active restoration to mitigate declines in coral cover is an essential component of coral conservation and management plans. However, the availability of monitoring data and success criteria is limited and often leads to criticism of restoration projects. Expanding an evaluation tool developed by Li...

Interventions to save coral reefs are deemed critical and urgent to protect these exceptional ecosystems and those who depend on them. Increasing losses in ecosystem services including coastal protection, fisheries resources, and support for tourism and cultural practices have demonstrated the need ...

Increasing sea surface temperatures and ocean acidification are threatening the long-term survival of corals and the persistence of coral reef ecosystems. The coral microbiome has been identified as a potential factor in the resilience of corals to these changing environmental conditions. Improving ...

An important objective of any reef restoration program that involves replanting corals onto degraded reefs is developing the ability to not just produce reef competent corals in sufficient quantities to effect change, but to produce enough species diversity and genetic diversity to try to duplicate ...

As coral reef communities throughout the Caribbean continue to degrade, in situ coral nurseries have become a common means to support their restoration. Such efforts have predominately focused on the propagation and restoration of the once-prolific elkhorn and staghorn corals (Acropora spp.) and tec...

Scleractinian corals secrete calcium carbonate skeleton to form the solid foundation of the reef matrix. This process of calcification both captures (at geological time scales) and releases (at annual time scales) CO2 at a rate of 0.6 moles for each mole of CaCO3 deposited. Due to the small amount o...

Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument (PMNM) is one of the largest protected marine conservation areas in the world. During NOAA’s 2017 Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program expedition to PMNM, Rapid Ecological Assessments (REAs) were conducted to survey fish, coral, and invertebrate abund...

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...

The counter-balancing factors of value of coral reef habitat and threats to the habitat serve to emphasize the need to address injuries to coral reefs whenever possible at whatever scale necessary. For the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (FKNMS), this is as much of a driver for action as the ...

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...

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...

Presently, one of the most widespread and virulent coral disease outbreaks on record is affecting the Florida Reef Tract (FRT), resulting in the mortality of thousands of colonies of at least 20 species of scleractinian coral, including the primary reef building species. First reported near Key Bisc...

We demonstrated that assisted gene flow between genetically-distinct Caribbean coral populations, using cryopreserved sperm, could be a viable option to help restore coral reefs. We used frozen coral sperm from three genetically-distinct populations of the endangered coral Acropora palmata to fertil...

Introduction to the session: Creating a Regional Vision for Urban Reef Restoration: A Case Study from Biscayne, FL

In our presentation, we will describe the development and achievements of the coral propagation and restoration program started by the University of Miami in Biscayne National Park in 2007. We will describe our research on the growth and survivorship of different genotypes of staghorn coral both in ...

Restoration techniques using sexually propagated corals currently allow cost and labor efficient mass production and outplanting of hundreds of thousands of sexual coral recruits. It is becoming clear however that the effectiveness of these restoration efforts is often limited by the fact that many ...

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...

Tropical coastal resources in the Anthropocene have shown signs of degradation and a declining ability to naturally recover from disturbance. Multiple human factors, including the increasing demand and misuse of natural resources, have contributed to this trend. Climate change has triggered further ...