The Great Barrier Reef is a global icon facing unprecedented pressure from climate change, back-to-back bleaching and Australia’s historical attachment to coal. Securing the public debate over the long-term health of the reef is a battle between environmental advocacy groups and industrial growth. In a polarised public debate between environmental non-government organizations (ENGO), leading scientists, industry representative, and liberal governments, reef restoration is emerging as a middle ground. However, Reef Restoration is also a polarizing and contested area of marine science, drawing both admiration and criticism from many sectors. The tradeoff between ‘doing nothing’ and ‘meddling’ is a fine line, and one that many Reef managers face on a daily basis. From politicians, to philanthropists, marine park managers, geo-engineers, citizen scientists, professional ENGO, and stakeholders, each of them plays a role in shaping public discourse and ultimately un/acceptability of a restoration projects. Getting ‘buy-in’ from ENGO’s often requires a strategic battle over public support. Media coverage and political comments influence public and political debate. ENGO’s such as Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd and WWF, can mobilize public and media discourse as either positive or negative. Through transnational networks, lobbying, a cast of millions, supported by philanthropic organizations and donors, an ENGO can be a powerful broker in shaping the restoration discourse. This paper will examine the role of ENGO's groups in Reef restoration debates; and asks if large-scale Marine Park (LSMP) managers can learn from activists and advocacy groups in public engagement practices? Drawing on transnational literature, new social movement studies, interviews and survey data, this paper will explore the role of ENGO's in the Reef Restoration space. We test how influential an ENGO can be in the debate, and if there can be lessons for the Great Barrier Reef restoration projects.

Coral restoration is gaining increasing attention as a reef management strategy to address dramatic declines in coral cover worldwide. However, there is often a mismatch between the objectives of coral restoration programs and measures used to assess their effectiveness. Here, we used ten indicators to characterize and compare the potential of coral restoration efforts to improve reef resilience at both ecological and socio-cultural and economic scales. Surveys were conducted at four well-established coral restoration programs in Thailand, the Maldives, Florida Keys, and US Virgin Islands. Hard coral cover and structural complexity were systematically increased in restored compared to non-restored (degraded sites). Other ecological indicators varied inconsistently among locations, highlighting differences in methodologies among restoration programs (generic diversity metric) or in the overall health state of local reefs (density of coral juveniles, coral health, fish biomass and diversity). Interviews with local stakeholders at all locations revealed that perceptions of coral restoration effectiveness encompass far more than ecological considerations suggesting that coral restoration can be used as a powerful conservation education tool to provide hope, enhance agency, promote stewardship and strengthen coral reef conservation strategies. Respondents revealed some key points likely to improve the outcomes of coral restoration efforts such as the need to better embrace socio-cultural dimensions in goal setting, evaluate ecological outcomes more broadly, secure long-term funding and improve management and logistics of day to day practices. We suggest that long-term objectives for coral restoration and measures of their effectiveness be better integrated into the design of restoration programs in order to maximise the resilience potential of restored reefs. Authors: Margaux Hein1,2, Naomi Gardiner1, Nadine Marshall3, Roger Beeden4, Alastair Birtles1, Bette Willis1,2 1 College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University, Townsville QLD 4811 Australia 2 ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University, Townsville QLD 4814 Australia 3 CSIRO Land and Water, ATSIP Building #145 based at James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, 4811 Australia 4 Great Barrier Reef Marine Authority, Townsville QLD 4810 Australia

In The Bahamas, effective restoration of coral populations to achieve species recovery is likely to require restoration efforts on large scales at multiple sites. While scientists and conservation NGOs are conducting experimental coral restoration at a number of sites and have demonstrated the effectiveness of these efforts, the scale and geographic scope of efforts is limited and likely insufficient to promote recovery of key coral species. To increase capacity for coral restoration The Perry Institute for Marine Science (PIMS) has created the Reef Rescue Network, a partnership between coral reef scientists and local partners including community organizations, NGOs and dive operators. This approach takes advantage of scientific advances in reef restoration that increase the likelihood of successful restoration, as well as an increase in interest in coral restoration from a large stakeholder base. Within the network, PIMS technical staff and other scientists guide restoration, including selecting sites using available scientific data, conducting population genetics, training local partners to manage nurseries, providing guidance for outplanting, and conducting monitoring to evaluate success and adapt restoration strategies. Local partners, take ownership of their nurseries and restoration sites, including care for and maintain nurseries and conduct outplanting under the guidance of scientific staff. PIMS has also developed a PADI Reef Rescue Diver Specialty Course for local partners to offer to guests to increase capacity for reef restoration efforts and build support for these efforts among key stakeholder groups. To offset costs incurred by local partners for maintaining coral nurseries, the Reef Rescue Network is working with partners to develop revenue streams based on their coral restoration activities, including promoting local partners through the Reef Rescue Network Website and social media, developing marketing materials to promote local partners, training dive instructors to offer the PADI Reef Rescue Diver Specialty Course, and organizing and promoting coral restoration events run by local partners. Through this model, we hope to raise awareness of issues related to coral reefs and how restoration can be used with other strategies to address them, as well as build capacity for conducting widespread coral restoration throughout The Bahamas and elsewhere in the Caribbean.

The challenges we face are evident. What’s happening to our planet is real. There are facts to convince, figures to corroborate and stories to compel. Yet the message is still getting lost. Why? The easy answer is “People don’t want to hear it.” Which begs the follow-up question, are we doing everything in our power, as leaders in this fight, to make them WANT to hear it? Jim Ritterhoff, Executive Director and Co-Founder of FORCE BLUE, a 501c3 non-profit initiative that retrains, retools and redeploys Special Operations veterans and military-trained combat divers on marine conservations missions, will discuss the unique problems his organization was built to address – namely, the difficultly our returning combat veterans have in adjusting to civilian life and the rapidly declining health of our planet’s marine resources. He’ll share how, in uniting two seemingly unrelated worlds, FORCE BLUE is creating a model of caring, cooperation and positive change with the power to restore, not only coral reefs, but human lives as well. And he’ll talk about FORCE BLUE’s philosophy -- that it doesn’t matter whether you get on the boat from the left side or the right side; we’re all in the same boat – and how the organization is using the Veterans’ megaphone to preach beyond the traditional environmental choir.

Iberostar is a Spanish based luxury hotel group with over 100 hotels focused in Europe and the Caribbean. With more than 80% of our hotels on the beachfront, we have always applied a policy of sustainable and responsible management with the environments in which we develop our activity, because we understand the valuable and invaluable exchange of resources that seas and oceans They offer us. But today we take a step forward and launch a new project that we have called "Wave of Change" with three lines of action that are complementary but clearly differentiated: the reduction of the consumption of single-use plastics, the promotion of sustainable fishing and the improvement of coastal health. In the Dominican Republic, Iberostar proposes to contribute directly to the solution by facilitating reef restoration scientific research, collaborating with and contributing to the reef restoration community locally and in broader Caribbean, and establishing a model for integrating ocean conservation & sustainability directly into the hotel industry. The five Iberostar hotels in Bávaro & Bayahibe will establish coral nurseries through peer-reviewed scientific research conducted by Iberostar employee Dr. Megan Morikawa (affiliate of University of California at Santa Barbara). With nursery efforts focused on building diversity within species, between species, and across geographic locations utilizing the unique resources of the hotel resorts, Iberostar aims to directly support scalability in reef restoration.

Scientists and reef practitioners have been scrambling to discover new techniques to combat global coral degradation. Coral restoration is still a developing field, and many innovations and improvements are necessary for long-term success and conservation. The growing attention towards restoration has led to a number of successful scientific and non-profit ventures, however many of these are limited to small, grant-based projects with constraints on size, scale, and longevity. Coral Vita is developing a new for-profit, for-good business model that can address these issues by creating a network of commercial land-based farms, each supported by a range of revenue streams. As a mission-driven company, Coral Vita is incorporating the latest coral farming techniques developed by marine institutes, including the Mote Marine Laboratory and the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology. Coral Vita’s pilot project on Grand Bahama Island will be the first reef restoration facility of its kind, growing a diverse range of species in various size ranges, while acclimating out-plants to localized changing ocean conditions. This land-based farm will serve as an ecotourism destination, where visitors can pay to tour the farm, sponsor corals, plant corals, or receive restoration dive certifications from SCUBA agencies, while also serving as an education/conservation center for the local community and schools to learn more about coral reefs and ocean conservation. The farm, and its proximity to offshore reefs, will provide an excellent platform to test new aquaculture, monitoring, out-planting, and breeding techniques needed to advance the field of restoration. The company can also sell the service of reef restoration to interested parties that may include: coastal developers, beachfront resorts, cruise ship operators, governments, international development agencies, fisheries associations, the re-insurance industry, coastal property owners, mitigation banks, and high net worth/corporate sponsors. Without having to rely solely upon donations and grants, Coral Vita will be able to inject much needed private capital into reef restoration, benefiting all practitioners. Coral Vita will use this Grand Bahama site to demonstrate the efficacy of establishing large land-based restoration farms that are crucial to preserving coral reefs.

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 restoration efforts in the Manell-Geus Habitat Focus Area (HFA) in Guam. As one of ten HFAs included in NOAA’s Habitat Blueprint, the project seeks to improve habitat conditions for fisheries and improve the resilience of coastal communities. Reefs provide valuable ecosystem services to coastal communities and have direct impacts on human well-being through provisioning, coastal protection, and cultural values. Yet, resource managers often focus solely on biophysical conditions, missing important social conditions that could improve or impair restoration outcomes. To avoid this, both social and biophysical data from baseline monitoring efforts informed the SES framework for the HFA; and managers have used the framework to develop reef and watershed restoration strategies that should improve both reef ecosystem health and support human well-being. We’ll review the SES framework and IM program, restoration strategies, challenges, and recommendations.