Climate change is the greatest threat to the Great Barrier Reef, and marine heatwaves have triggered several mass coral bleaching events.
This has resulted in an unprecedented decline in the health of the reef.
The Coral Nurture Program is a partnership between UTS researchers and Queensland tourism operators to rehabilitate reef sites in Australia which have been catastrophically impacted by climate change.
This is done by developing and scaling up interventions that buy time for coral reefs, protecting corals from severe bleaching, helping them adapt to warmer temperatures and actively rebuilding resilient reefs.
According to Professor David Suggett, Marine Biologist in the UTS Climate Change Cluster, the key ingredient to making the Coral Nurture Program impactful is collaboration and exchange of knowledge.
The Future Reefs Program is a core activity within the climate change cluster and we do
something very simple; we study corals, how they grow, how they reproduce. UTS has decided
to invest resources and infrastructure into our program for many reasons. We realised that the
knowledge we were able to bring of how corals can grow and survive could become really
useful in new, low-cost ways to regrow coral to rehabilitate reef sites that have been damaged.
So this gave birth to the Coral Nurture Program. It was totally unique globally. Our impact of
regrowing and replanting coral at scale on the Great Barrier Reef through our operator network
is not only replenishing the natural ecosystems that have been lost through climate change, but
also new social momentum, new sustainable industries for tourism through the capacity to be
better stewards. The partnership between UTS and the operators who are at Queensland is
really essential, because us as UTS scientists and researchers have a unique capability of
understanding how corals grow and we can therefore use our science to give the operators
credibility that what they're doing is not only replenishing the reefs but providing the operations
themselves with new capacity to be sustainable. Now, we have to solve climate change in order
to have reefs into the future, but we can buy reefs time and buy those communities really
essential time by having these new tools to rehabilitate reefs in the short term.
“In discussions with the tourism industry, we realised that our knowledge about how corals can grow and survive could become really useful in new low-cost ways to rehabilitate reef sites that have been damaged,” explains Professor Suggett.
“As scientists and researchers, we have a deep understanding of how coral grows, and we can use our science to rigorously validate our partners’ immense propagation efforts, including trialling new methods. Sharing this knowledge has helped the operators regrow coral at scales never seen before,” he says.
The impact of the collaboration has not only resulted in the replenishing of natural ecosystems but has given industry partners new capacity for sustainable operations, and importantly the ability to be better stewards of their reefs.
Using research in such tangible, impactful ways requires working closely with communities and stakeholders directly, says Professor Suggett.
As university researchers, we have an ethical and moral responsibility to ensure we provide the best knowledge and capacity for the many communities worldwide that rely on reefs to have a sustained and healthy future.
“We speak with the local communities about capacities to realistically regrow coral in a cost-effective and scalable way and faces light up. Suddenly there’s a new and optimistic path by which the communities can do something proactive to retain their reefs.
“We’ve been fortunate in the short time of the Coral Nurture Program to have had an immense impact in Australia. Consequently, we’re seeing so much hunger for the same approach worldwide,” he says.
Based on the success in Australia, the UTS team is now also working with communities worldwide, who can see the potential to transform their communities through this innovative stakeholder-researcher partnership.
