Ever-accelerating global and local pressures on reefs are eroding reef resilience to withstand future stress events. At local high-value reef sites, we aim to support and enhance reef resilience by maintaining, and-or boosting, existing coral cover and diversity. Furthermore, we undertake research with a core focus on advancing reef resilience through identification of coral colonies with enhanced tolerance to adverse environmental conditions such as heat stress. In doing so we advance the potential to build population resilience through selection and propagation of these more tolerant individuals.
Billions of people worldwide are directly dependent on the food, employment and unique cultural resources coral reefs provide.
Traditional Owners are the custodians of reef knowledge, and they have immense insights to share in reef protection. In Australia, reef users include community members, recreational visitors, and fishers, with tourism being the dominant economic activity and key source of livelihoods. Operators visit high-value reef sites daily and showcase the wonders of the coral reefs to approximately 2 million tourists each year. A productive partnership between the reef tourism industry and scientists is central to the Coral Nurture Program, scaling interventions applicable to benefit high-value socio-economic, ecological, and cultural locations.
The Coral Nurture Program builds on commonly applied site stewardship methods, such as Eye-on-the-Reef surveys, the removal of Crown of Thorns Starfish (COTS) and Drupella snails, to provide new tools that stakeholders can apply to care for reef sites. Specifically, the propagation and out-planting of coral where live cover has fallen to boost coral abundance and/or diversity.
Research in the Coral Nurture Program is a two-way street between stakeholders and scientists. The Program collects important data on the growth, health and survival of all out-planted coral, along with targeted functional data on a sub-set of corals. Current taxonomy indicates there are over 600 coral species on the Great Barrier Reef, all of which thrive across different environmental regimes of light, temperature, pH (how acidic the water is), oxygen, sedimentation and nutrients. Only through a large-scale out-planting process sustained across many reef sites over time, can we identify the optimum planting timing and location for different species. Our various research activities provide a core and credible means to ensure that the scale of successful propagation and outplanting is rigorously validated and further optimised. Research into propagating more heat tolerant coral, avoiding risks to population collapse through genetic bottlenecks or genetic erosion, and optimising procedures, is incorporated into field activities. Through collaborations with the Future Reefs Team at the University of Technology Sydney, the program is also trailing novel interventions that include Nutritional supplements to boost the resilience of propagated corals.
The science and practice developed through Coral Nurture Program has primarily been achieved on the Great Barrier Reef. However, the same practices and research questions apply to reefs globally. We publish our findings openly to maximise the knowledge sharing and legacy of the project. We also work with a large national and international network of researchers towards these goals.
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