It’s an impressive expanse of 344,000km2 (133,000 square miles). Importantly, it spans 2,300km (1,400 miles) or 14 degrees of latitude, which traverses multiple climatic zones and bioregions, and is adjacent oceanic trenches and cool water upwelling. These factors give it some buffer against mass coral bleaching, but that buffer is diminishing as mass bleaching events grow in severity and geographical extent.
Our Work
What’s At Stake?
The Great Barrier Reef is a global hotspot for biodiversity.
Its diversity includes:
- More than 3,000 coral reefs
- 450 types of reef-building corals
- More than 1,000 species of soft corals
- More than 1,600 species of fish
- More than 3,000 species of molluscs, including gastropods and cephalopods
- 6 of the 7 sea turtle species found globally
- 600 species of echinoderm, including starfish and sea urchins
- 14 species of sea snake
- 30 species of whales and dolphin
- More than 200 bird species
Resilience & Recovery
Our signature Resilience & Recovery program is specifically designed to counter the increased frequency, severity, and geographical expanse of coral bleaching.
It is not a coral gardening program and we do not plant corals to the reef.
Our program initially involved outplanting nursery-reared corals to the reef and we achieved spawning success at Fitzroy Island in 2022. However, we needed to apply the same principles of success differently if we were to progress along a scale of larval production. Resilience & Recovery emerged from that success.
The program aims to achieve two core objectives:
- Create species rich and genetically diverse spawning stock in mobile, midwater nurseries to produce hundreds of millions of additional coral larvae every year to help build reef resilience in the good times.
- Lower the nurseries into cooler depths during periods of warm water and wild weather to preserve the additional spawning stock, and turbo charge reef recovery in the bad times.
The program follows simple steps:
- We use a broad range of coral species from pioneers to specialists. And we use 10 genotypes of each species gathered from spatially dispersed collection zones for genetic diversity.
- The fragments fuse back together to grow as a single colony until they are ready to participate in the annual synchronous spawning.
- Successfully fertilized larvae enter their pelagic phase of distribution on the currents. And the larvae settle on a section of reef according to chemical cues evolved over millions of years.
- Our midwater nurseries can be easily lowered to cooler depths in times of thermal stress.
- Irrespective of any consequences from warm water on the reef, we preserve species rich and genetically diverse spawning stock to turbo charge recovery at the next synchronous spawn.
The more spawning corals there are, the more new corals are added to the Great Barrier Reef.
Monitoring
Mitigating ecological risk is an important component of any effort to assist reef resilience. Maintaining species diversity and genetic diversity within species in our spawning stock nurseries is key to avoiding genetic bottlenecks during spawning that can reduce resilience in subsequent generations.
We map, track, and monitor every genotype that is sourced from the reef, fragments of which are placed into our spawning stock nurseries. We know the date and location of genotypes sourced and can cross reference their location in the nurseries.
To monitor our program for internal continuous improvement, we use photogrammetry in a time series to track changes in the corals in the nurseries. We additionally use cameras to monitor coral health and efficiency through growth.
During the annual synchronous spawn, we partner with scientists to collect the spawn and quantify gamete production and fertilisation rates. From a sample, the total gamete and larval production can be estimated and tracked year after year.
Our trajectory has been to maximise reproductive output to minimise unit costs. This takes innovation and experimentation. Our program of monitoring helps us to understand how much we are speeding up the process to reproductive viability and to quantify the number of additional corals we are adding to the system.
Resource Centre
Learn more about why efforts to help adaptation on the Great Barrier Reef is important in our Resource Centre.
What’s Next?
The billions of corals that we seek to add to the Great Barrier Reef must be the offspring of corals that have demonstrated an ability to endure stress, including thermal stress that results in bleaching or mortality in other corals.
To make our contribution to adaptation on the Great Barrier Reef punch above its weight, we will complement our mobile midwater nurseries with shore-based coral aquaculture.
The initial purpose of our Coral Conservation Centre will be to undertake the bulk of the process on dry land.
Seasonally, we will use the facility for sexual reproduction and use the larvae to complement our ocean-based nurseries. And to collaborate with other programs where appropriate.
Ultimately, this is where we will breed the environmentally hardened corals that are central to assisting adaptation of the living habitat.
Importantly, the Coral Conservation Centre will give our operation visibility and serve to raise awareness of what we are doing and why.
The plan is to be operating the Coral Conservation Centre in 2026.