Coral reefs cover only about 1% of the ocean floor, but they house about 25% of the animals and plants that live in the ocean. Coral reefs are also incredibly important economically and socially. They provide food for people, support large tourist industries, and protect coastlines by buffering wave energy and make it possible for communities to live in those areas.
Over the past 30 years, approximately 50% of the world’s coral reefs have already been lost, and it’s estimated by 2050, only 10% of the world’s reefs will persist. These reefs are threatened by a combination of factors, but the most serious is the impact of global climate change, specifically ocean warming. Reefs are also exposed to multiple stressors and threats on a local level, including overfishing and destructive fishing practices, pollution, chemical exposure, sedimentation, invasive species, physical destruction, storm damage, and coastal development.
Photo Credit: Laura Bailes
Restore with Resilience
As a partner on Restore with Resilience, Mālama Maunalua is working with a consortium of NGOs, academic institutions, and government agencies to restore coral reefs in Maunalua Bay. The project goal is to outplant 4,000 thermal stress-resistant corals in the Bay to rebuild our coral reef and mitigate natural hazards caused by reef loss. This is a multi-year project that began in Summer 2021.
Coral reefs are necessary for our marine ecosystem and human well-being. Worldwide, coral reefs are in danger. Maunalua Bay is no exception. As our reefs continue to degrade, Hawai‘i is losing our important recreational and commercial industries, protection from natural hazards, and marine life. With community involvement on this project, together we can rebuild our Maunalua Bay coral reefs for recreation, culture, livelihoods, and marine life. Learn more about the restoration process and how to get involved below!
Photo Credit: Lila Lee
The Restoration Process
The Restore with Resilience project relies on community engagement to benefit and enhance future reef resilience. We seek dialogue and reciprocal collaboration with the community through neighborhood board meetings, talk story, social media, and partner communications before engaging in any in-water activities. We believe in the value of place-based knowledge and in stakeholder involvement through volunteering and partnerships. Most importantly, we work together to identify ways our team can give back to the community.
A PERMIT IS REQUIRED. A platform is installed near the restoration site using a professionally engineered, tested design that maximizes holding area, corrosion resistance, symmetry, and strength, while minimizing weight, bottom impacts, and shading. These tables allow corals to acclimatize and grow in their home prior to outplanting.
A PERMIT IS REQUIRED at all times to collect and handle corals. Corals of opportunity are those detached from the reef, that have a lower likelihood of survival as compared to intact colonies. These are sometimes seen upside down on the seafloor near reefs. COO are collected from the same area where outplanting efforts will be conducted.
Identification tags are attached to individual corals to track them throughout the process. The tag is removed during fragmenting, cleaned, and reused at other sites.
COO are transported to off-site water tables for tagging, photographs, and species identification. The Koʻa card is used to track the color and tissue health of the COO over time.
Two finger-sized test fragments are taken from each COO using clippers. A diamond blade band saw is used to cut a flat base for each coral fragment. Fragments are glued to numbered aragonite plugs and placed on a tray in a large cooler filled with seawater to be immediately transported back to the Coral Resilience Lab (CRL) at HIMB.
Test fragments are quarantined and acclimate at HIMB for a minimum of 1 week before stress testing. Test fragments are exposed to elevated temperatures through gradual ramping that incorporates diurnal and seasonal fluctuations. Test fragments are monitored daily over several weeks using photographs and visual bleaching scores. The test fragments are flash frozen for further analyses.
The COOs that perform well in the stress test are fragmented for outplanting. This process is the same as for making the test fragments (clippers, diamond blade saw, plug, glue) but the entire colony is fragmented. The plugs are placed in a rack and returned to the nursery platform to acclimate at least two weeks before outplanting. When corals are fragmented into smaller pieces, they tend to have a faster growth rate, which encourages new tissue to develop.
The fragments from the more resilient COOs are outplanted to existing hard substrate at pre-determined suitable sites using an underwater drill and epoxy. These fragments will grow and reproduce over time to further enhance the resilience of the reef. The COOs that were identified as less resilient will not be fragmented. Instead, a rod will be applied to the entire colony and it will be outplanted at a deeper site to reduce exposure to future warming events.
3D photogrammetry is a tool to monitor the progress of coral restoration efforts over time. These images allow the health and growth of the outplanted corals to be checked. Surveys are conducted before outplanting, directly after outplanting, and quarterly for as long as possible. These surveys are compared to pre-determined control locations with no outplanted corals and are performed for as long as possible.
Hana Pūkoʻa – “Working together for coral”
This project is intended to be for the community, by the community. We invite you to share your mana’o and join us on the project! From taking photos of coral, to fragmenting it for outplanting, to monitoring, there are many ways YOU can get involved. You don’t even have to get in the water! You must pre-register to attend. Stay tuned for details on our next event.
Photo Credit: Lila Lee