Coral Larval Reseeding

In 2019 Reef Magic collaborated with Researchers to collect the millions and millions of coral eggs and sperm released during the annual synchronous mass coral spawning event. This material was collected in a specially designed spawn catching system. The planktonic larvae, commonly known as planula were protected and reared in purpose-built enclosures for ~6 days. After this time the planula are ready to settle, this means they want to leave the open water surrounding reefs, find a nice little patch on the hard coral reef bottom and turn into a baby coral.

Hard coral spawning.

Purpose built spawn catcher/larval rearing enclosure used in coral larval researching project.

Along with larval rearing, we trialled a variety of targeted release methods to improve coral survivorship in this vulnerable phase to highly impacted areas of reef where coral cover was low. These areas include those shallow sections of reefs known as reef flats that were heavily disturbed from the 2017 mass coral bleaching event. The delivery methods trialled included settlement sheets, divers, specialised robots and a very impressive mass release of 28 coral million larvae at once.