Coral nurture program brings science and tourism together
Trials of a novel low cost device to help the rapid replanting of coral are taking place on the Great Barrier Reef.
It is sometimes the relatively simple ideas that work best. A novel low-cost device that can rapidly secure coral fragments to the reef has been so successful at helping propagate coral on high value sections of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef that the Australian and Queensland Governments have committed more funding to take the project further.
For Associate Professor David Suggett, who leads the Future Reefs research program within the UTS Climate Change Cluster (C3), colleague Dr Emma Camp and key partner Wavelength Reef Cruises, it’s an exciting and highly anticipated moment. Tour operator Wavelength Reef Cruises led the development of the device over an intense 12 month period in 2018 during the first phase of their project. The team will now be joined by collaborators from JCU TropWater, Reef Ecologic and several other reef tour operators for phase two aimed at proving the concept via scalability across more GBR sites.
