Reefs ready for a regeneration
coral spawning. I was out at Fitzroy Island, only last lunar month, about three weeks ago, and we got a bit of spawning there, which was a good sign, but I think all those inshore reefs are more than likely spawn again this weekend, and the outer shelf reefs will follow suit.”
Last year’s coral spawning was regarded by marine scientists as one of the biggest in recent years on the natural wonder, producing millions of baby corals to repopulate degraded local reefs.
Mr Ireland, who has been documenting coral spawning on the Reef for the past 20 years, said it was difficult to know whether this year’s event would be bigger.
“The mass bleaching was 2016-17, so since then, the last 2.5-3 years, we’ve had good reef recovery,” he said. “It’s always good to see spawning – it means the plumbing is working and corals are doing their thing.
“But at the end of the day, it’s still Mother Nature, so it’s difficult to predict what will happen next.”
The potential for about 400 species of hard corals to release all their reproductive material into the water column at the same time will provide the perfect opportunity for a team of scientists who are heading to Moore Reef, about 40km off Cairns, who are working on a large-scale reef restoration project for the second year in a row.
The project, being conducted by James Cook University, Southern Cross University, and the University of Technology Sydney, aims to gather coral eggs and sperm, to be reared and ultimately resettled at key reef tourism sites.
Project leader, Professor Peter Harrison from Southern Cross University, said there was a great deal of excitement among the researchers about this weekend’s spawning event.
“This is another opportunity for us to develop new techniques that will more quickly allow coral larvae to be grown on the Reef, and therefore more effectively start the coral recovery,” he said.
“Providing millions of larvae into the system, will result in more baby corals settling and then of the ones that survive, they will be the ones that in three years or so, will start reproducing again and spreading larvae over more areas of the Reef.”