Putting the Coral Back Into 'Coral Reef Restoration': Proactive Coral Mitigation in Hawaii

The State of Hawaii has recently implemented an innovative program which combines collection of small live coral colonies from within Hawaii’s public harbors; placing them into the State’s land-based Coral Restoration... [ view full abstract ]

The State of Hawaii has recently implemented an innovative program which combines collection of small live coral colonies from within Hawaii’s public harbors; placing them into the State’s land-based Coral Restoration Nursery where they are fast-grown using aquarium husbandry techniques into large-sized colonies in a fraction of the time it would take to occur naturally. The resulting large colony modules are then placed onto degraded natural Hawaiian coral reefs in an effort to restore these reefs back towards their earlier ecologically-complex state. The outplanted colonies are evaluated using the State’s Coral Ecological Services and Functions Tool and the resulting offset can be used by developers and Responsible Parties to pay for coral and habitat loss incurred elsewhere in Hawaii. The result is a dynamic program to put out large, live coral colonies, paid for without large expenditures of public monies, and without the extremely long natural recovery rates for large corals normally seen in Hawaii. The program is now expanding to focus on extremely rare coral species to re-introduce them back into the wild using similar mechanisms.