CORDAP has released a technology roadmap providing key recommendations for future coral restoration strategies, based upon the development of cheaper, more scalable coral aquaculture practices.
Restoring corals on a scale that will ensure survival of the world’s reefs requires the development of more efficient and effective methods. By artificially replicating coral reproduction to scale up coral breeding and support reef recovery, aquaculture has a critical role to play in rapidly increasing our ability to restore reefs worldwide.
CORDAP has released a roadmap with recommendations on priority R&D areas to enable transformative, cost-effective coral aquaculture practices and outplanting at scale. The report was created by an international group of ecologists, coral reef biologists, and specialists in marine restoration, engineering, and aquaculture, following a workshop exploring the challenges around coral aquaculture. It was hosted by CORDAP and the KAUST Coral Restoration Initiative (KCRI).
Experimental coral farm at the WorldFish Nusa Tupe research station, Solomon Islands. Photo by Eran Brokovich (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0), 2010.
Defining the challenges for coral aquaculture
Coral reef restoration ranks as one of the most expensive types of marine and coastal habitat restoration, and current efforts are mostly limited to small projects. The high cost is largely due to labor-intensive processes and a dependence on expensive marine and underwater operations. Low-tech aquaculture methods are urgently needed in low- and middle-income nations. These countries host greater coral cover and will need these technologies to successfully ensure coral recovery and restoration.
Other restoration challenges include a lack of monitoring of 1) long-term survival rates post-outplanting and 2) post-transplantation reproduction rates and the potential contribution it could make to increasing coral abundance.
Coral farming in village Marau, Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands. Photo by Jane Harris (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0), 2001.
Identifying 5 priority areas for R&D investment
CORDAP’s aquaculture roadmap defines five priority areas for investment in R&D, laying out the specific challenges faced in each of these areas and outlining key recommendations to overcome them.
Priority investment areas:
1. Infrastructure for coral production
Coral reef restoration technologies are currently non-commercial and custom-made, with few standardized, “off-the-shelf” designs available. Modularity has the potential to significantly streamline coral husbandry workflows and enable cheaper, more widespread adoption of the key materials and technologies needed to cultivate corals (either in aquaria or in the ocean).
2. Management and workflows
Massive time and labor are invested in maintaining the health of coral stocks, as well as managing and tracking this stock inventory. Machine-learning simulations will be instrumental in optimizing inventory management, devising better ways to automate the various data analysis workflows, and inform any necessary management actions.
3. Integrating resilience into coral reef restoration efforts
Restoration projects often fail due to corals’ vulnerability to thermal stress. For coral reef restoration efforts to succeed in the face of climate change, resilience-focused strategies must be developed, particularly those that can integrate assisted evolution-based approaches at scale.
4. Efficient outplanting
Some of the main opportunities for cost improvement are centred around reducing or eliminating dive time. Streamlining dive-related tasks, and potentially automating some of the tasks currently performed by humans, would help coral outplanting methods become more efficient, as would improving the design of coral-bearing structures, so that they can be more easily and effectively distributed.
5. Monitoring
There is a clear need to develop and implement effective, affordable monitoring systems for long-term data collection in coral reef restoration projects. Current methods to monitor coral aquaculture procedures rely heavily on manual, resource-intensive techniques, but advances in technology, such as nanotechnology, cloud storage, AI, and improved data processing, offer the potential to revolutionize and enhance the efficiency of coral reef monitoring.
Photo from CORDAP’s workshop, co-organized with KAUST Coral Restoration Initiative (KCRI), at Shushah Island (Saudi Arabia), in 2023.
CORDAP’s recommendations:
- Standardize substrate and husbandry materials for coral rearing, while adopting approaches associated with reduced maintenance efforts
- Develop automated and standardized inventory systems for stock management, data collection, and analysis
- Increase coral resilience through selective breeding, manipulating their microbiomes, exposing them to controlled, sub-lethal stressors, and culturing them with “coral-friendly” organisms
- Create automated outplanting tools and coral-bearing devices that eliminate or reduce the need for divers in their deployment
- Enhance the scale, efficiency, and accuracy of coral reef restoration monitoring by developing and implementing advanced, cost-effective monitoring systems that use sensors and automated data collection methods. Back this up with AI-driven data analysis, supported by efficient cloud-based storage and well-integrated databases
There are numerous ways to enhance aquaculture efficiency, either through existing methods or by adapting techniques from other fields, such as fish aquaculture or mariculture. However, there is currently a gap in the strategic implementation and integration of these approaches.
This roadmap illustrates and details a clear way forward, setting out the technological advancements needed to enhance the scalability and efficiency of coral reef restoration efforts worldwide. Despite the technology focus of the workshop and roadmap, it is important to note that in many instances this does not mean that only expensive, cutting-edge equipment and solutions will be effective; indeed, the seafood farming industry has successfully scaled up the culture of key fish and shrimp species using relatively cheap, widely accessible materials.
Ultimately, enhanced and optimized coral aquaculture practices will contribute to achieving a major objective of the Kunming-Montreal Global BIodiversity Framework: to restore 30% of degraded marine ecosystems. To reach this goal, corals and coral reefs must be part of the equation. Science, technology and innovation are crucial to do so. In 2023, CORDAP launched a series of Scoping Studies and workshops to bring together experts from around the world to assess priority R&D investment goals in key areas to help save the world’s corals. As an outcome of these studies, CORDAP published Research and Technology Roadmaps to guide national, regional and international programs.
Explore our detailed recommendations by reading the full roadmap: CORDAP R&D Technology Roadmap for Exploring the Frontier of Coral Aquaculture
Learn more about our other roadmaps and scoping workshops: Studies & roadmaps – CORDAP
Explore the R&D projects we are currently funding to help restore and conserve corals around the world: Projects Awarded – CORDAP
Cover photo: experimental coral farming at the WorldFish Nusa Tupe research station, Solomon Islands. Photo by Eran Brokovich (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0), 2010.