Abstract Summary
The National Park of Cancún and Isla Mujeres is one of the most visited areas in Mexico, it was established as a marine protected area in 1996 with the purpose of ensuring the conservation of the coral reefs. Some of its greatest threats are storms, hurricans, tourist impacts and ship groundings, so there have been 23 groundings afected 7378 m2 of reefs. In the period of 2004-2005 it was critical because there were 3 different hurricanes, including Wilma, a level 5 in the Saffir-Simpson scale. There were some reefs that were severely impacted and the level of devastation in some of these reefs included not only broken corals, but the destruction of the rocky basement in extent areas. In order to attend the damaged sites, the National Park has implemented two strategies, one was to close the impacted sites for a public use and the second was to implement a coral nursering, transplant and restore damaged reef sites. In 2010 a nursery project started in order to grow coral fragments obtained from broken coral colonies. The project has been working in colaboration with the Fisheries National Institute (INAPESCA) and it has two reef sites where the work has done in order to recover the coral cover, the spatial heterogeneity and some other ecological features. Since 2010 there have been growth 7699 coral fragments of several species in the nurserie and they were trasplanted in two damaged reefs, one of them called Manchones in 2016. Some of the colonies of elkhorn transplanted 6 years ago in Manchones spawned for the first time. Other sites such as "Cuevones" currently present a reef recovery due to the success of the restoration actions and prohibitions for nautical activities promoting their resilience.
