Designing Structures that Test and Optimize Recruitment: Coral Restoration Using Innovative 3D Technology

Anthropogenic damage is causing a decline in physical coral reef structure, decreasing live coral coverage and consequently limiting ecosystem services coral reefs provide. With over 500-million people directly dependent on... [ view full abstract ]

Anthropogenic damage is causing a decline in physical coral reef structure, decreasing live coral coverage and consequently limiting ecosystem services coral reefs provide. With over 500-million people directly dependent on coral reefs for food, protection, and livelihood, developing effective and sustainable methods to restore coral ecosystems is essential.

           Reef restoration efforts aim to reestablish live coral coverage and/ or increase structure to damaged reefs. Traditional practices have severe limitations and show inconsistent success rates. The inability to retain coral larvae on reefs hinders the sustainability of these methods, without continuous human intervention. Research efforts prioritizing larval dynamics open possibilities for additional restoration tools in the future.

Enhancing live coral on artificial substrates propagates larvae, increasing coral recruitment in physically degraded reefs. Deploying specially-designed settlement substrates provides immediate structural complexity to damaged reefs, encouraging fish and invertebrate colonization, simultaneously facilitating coral recruitment. By testing the role of multi-scale structural complexity on larval settlement, this study identifies characteristics that improve larval recruitment on substrates, adding to the tools available for reef restoration.

This research uses 3D-technology to develop substrates that incorporate multi-level structural complexity, facilitating larval settlement and post-settlement survival. The resulting structures provide an example for 3D-technology use in marine conservation. Novel technologies, such as 3D-scanning and 3D-printing, allow researchers to address questions not previously considered due to experimental restraints, and increases ease of addressing some previously considered settlement questions. Methods in this research also showcase the scalability of 3D-models, setting the stage for this technology to revolutionize future reef restoration.