January 2022 – Present – Expansion of activities into the Whitsundays tourism hub
Expansion of a new node into the Whitsundays (Coral Nurture Program Whitsundays – CNPW) funded under the Great Barrier Reef Foundation’s Reef Islands Initiative, to evaluate how the approach pioneered in Cairns-Port Douglas translates to the more complex challenges of Whitsundays reef environments and diverse tourism operations. CNPW has a goal of tailoring workflows to the unique context of the Whitsundays to ensure coral re-planting quality over quantity and identify the return on investment for longer term and sustained activities. This work will also provide new insight on local coral reef ecologies and coral diversity, and how it can inform on-going restoration activity in the Whitsundays.