How Did This Start?

Austin Bowden-Kerby, a Marine Scientist and Director of C4C, has been teaching coral gardening methods in Fiji, across the Pacific, and in the Caribbean for over 30 years. However, with the increasing frequency and intensity of bleaching events, he realised that standard methods of coral gardening were having diminishing returns. Since the mass bleaching events of 2014-16, he has worked with colleagues across the Pacific to develop and trial heat-tolerant coral gardening methods, which have now been documented on video as a training resource for Pacific Island Marine Scientists and community “citizen scientists”.

In order to maintain biodiversity, heat-adapted “super corals” are selected from among the local coral species and used to create heat-tolerant coral nurseries. These nurseries are then used to produce heat-tolerant, bleaching-resistant corals, which are planted into small patches on degraded reefs.  These patches in turn help re-boot natural processes of recovery and adaptation to climate change, attracting incoming coral larvae and spreading heat resilience into the incoming corals, allowing the coral reef to repopulate itself over time, restoring biodiversity while building resilience.

Heat-tolerant corals can both be selected from hot pockets, where they have survived much higher temperatures than corals in cooler waters, or during mass bleaching events. Cuttings from these corals are used to set up biodiverse coral nurseries located in cooler waters, as insurance against extreme temperatures predicted for the coming decades. When these corals are trimmed, the trimmings can be out-planted into even cooler waters, helping ensure the long-term survival of corals into the future, while helping degraded reefs recover naturally.