PETER’S CORAL IVF IS BEEFING UP THE REEF
GOLD Coast researchers are behind new “turbo charged’’ coral nurseries being used to repair damaged sections of the Great Barrier Reef.
The “Coral IVF’’ team led by Southern Cross University’s Professor Peter Harrison has captured millions of coral sperm and eggs off Cairns in large floating nurseries to replenish heavily degraded sections of reef.
This year is the first time the team is using coralnursery rearing pools to “turbo charge’’ the coral larvae with the help of algae before releasing them into the ocean. Prof Harrison said the team had worked tirelessly since a mass spawning “underwater snowstorm’’ began on the night of November 17.
“We are using my newly designed spawn catchers and nursery pool nets which have enabled us to catch more of the coral spawn slick and rear millions more larvae than ever before – and the results are looking very promising,” he said.
Southern Cross PhD researcher Nadine Boulotte was behind the new concept introduced for the first time this year. She discovered that by co-culturing coral larvae with algae in the nurseries, the scientists gave baby corals a “battery pack’’ with the potential to acquire more energy and grow faster.
“If we succeed in increasing their survival rate it can make a big difference in being able to scale up future restoration processes,” Prof Harrison said. He has been successfully trialling his “Coral IVF’’ process in the Philippines and on the Great Barrier Reef for the past seven years. While the Coral IVF process could be used around the world to help restore damaged and dying reefs, the team warned restoration alone could not save ecosystems that require urgent action on climate change.