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TOURISM OPERATORS KEY TO LARGE-SCALE CORAL RESTORATION
arge areas of damaged coral reefs across the length of the Great Barrier Reef could soon be restored thanks to a unique partnership between scientists and tourism operators in the Whitsundays. Coral restoration efforts have so far only been conducted on a small scale, but a new project has expanded the programme to partner with tourism operators to deploy an innovative technique to grow baby corals and settle them onto damaged reefs. The technique, successfully pioneered on the Reef by Distinguished Professor Peter Harrison working with the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, is known as Coral IVF. Hundreds of tourism operators and citizen scientists could soon learn how to use it to help restore large areas of damaged coral reefs. This month, four Whitsunday tourism operators joined researchers on the Reef for the annual coral spawning event, when corals release trillions of eggs and sperm into the water in a mass breeding phenomenon. They learned how to collect the spawn and grow baby corals in special floating nurseries. Great Barrier Reef Foundation Managing Director Anna Marsden said operators worked hand in hand with scientists to collect the spawn using specially designed larval pools that are small enough to be controlled by their boats. “This is a critical next step in reaching kilometre-scale coral restoration by working with the hundreds of tourism operators and citizen scientists who are passionate about helping save our Reef,” Ms Marsden said. “Right in the heart of the Great Barrier Reef, the Whitsundays is a critical sanctuary for the Reef’s diverse marine life. However, like the rest of the Great Barrier Reef, it’s also an area that needs our help to recover from the effects of climate change such as coral bleaching and increasingly severe cyclones. “Innovations like Coral IVF bring us hope for the future of the Reef, but we were previously only able to do it on a small scale. “Through our Reef Islands Initiative, researchers have been upskilling local tourism operators to ignite a local reef restoration movement that is grounded in science and is scalable.” Southern Cross University Distinguished Professor Peter Harrison said the coral larval restoration technique known as
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