Restored coral reefs can grow as fast as healthy ones, provide similar habitats for marine life, and protect adjacent islands from coastal erosion, new research released late last week has revealed.
Published in the Current Biology journal, the paper Coral restoration can drive rapid reef carbonate budget recovery found that coral cover, colony sizes and carbonate production rates tripled following coral transplantation and were indistinguishable from nearby healthy reefs in all investigated parameters after just four years.
Transplanting new coral onto degraded seabed can provide similar marine habitat to healthy reefs within just a few years, according to new research.
However, as transplanted coral fragments are a mix of different branching coral types, the composition on restoration sites differs from healthy reefs, which also harbour many boulder-like and encrusting corals.
This, the study claims, may affect habitat provision for larger marine species and resilience to future heatwaves as branching corals are more sensitive to bleaching.
“The speed of recovery we saw is incredible,” said lead author Dr Ines Lange, from the University of Exeter. “While reef restoration cannot solve the problem that reefs are severely threatened by climate change, it shows that active management actions can help to boost the resilience of specific reefs, and bring back important functions that are critical for marine life and local communities.”
Dr Tim Lamont from Lancaster University described the discovery as “really encouraging”.
“If we can maintain climate conditions that allow for coral survival, it’s possible to restore even very damaged reefs back to healthy, functional systems within relatively short periods of time,” he said.
Carried out by University of Exeter with the Research Center for Oceanography, National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) in Indonesia, Mars Sustainable Solutions and Lancaster University, the study used a “reef carbonate budgets” method to measure the net production or erosion of reef framework over time.
These budgets are a key predictor of the reef’s ability to grow, respond to rising sea-levels, protect coastlines from storms and provide habitat for reef animals.
To evaluate if and how fast these reef functions return after coral restoration, carbonate budgets were measured at Mars’ reef restoration sites after a few months, one year, two years, and four years.
