To collect and propagate as many different species, and genotypes within species, as possible from “corals of opportunity” .
Corals of opportunity are fragments of coral found loose. They are fragments that would otherwise die due to the friction of sand on the seabed floor. Our goal over the next 5 years is to build 25 nurseries and maintain 100,000 coral fragments for research. Tre main reason to collect many genotypes is to build resilience. A defenition of Resillience is “To withstand damage or, given sufficient time, recover well enough from a disturbance to sustain substantial ecological function.”
Why is resilience important for a healthy reef and how does it influence our work in restoration?
Corals can reproduce both asexually – that is by producing clones of themselves – and sexually. Sexual reproduction results in genetically unique, new individuals being produced, which, if they settle on a reef, increases the genetic fitness/adaptability of that reef, which is directly correlated to the ability of the reef to resist and survive climate change-linked effects such as warmer, less salty and murkier sea water and ocean acidification!
Propagating corals from fragments has the limitation of being an asexual form of replication/reproduction.
By collecting fragments of opportunity of the same species (and also different species) from many different spots in Chole Bay and surrounds, our team is hopefully creating a genetically diverse coral gene bank that includes both different species and also multiple genotypes within species. The living coral gene bank will help to maintain biodiversity and provide future coral gardeners and researchers with an invaluable resource for coral restoration attempts and understanding coral genetics and coral symbioses and the multiple symbionts resident in coral tissues and in their microbiomes, all of which appear to be important for their resilience.