Coral Reef Restoration

CCMI’s coral restoration project’s overarching long-term goal is to improve biological diversity by developing a model for sustaining wild populations of restored corals over the next five years.

The objectives of this project are to: 

1) Expand our understanding of resilience  

2) Further improve the outplanting success  

3) Support local education  

CCMI’s research-focused restoration project not only bridges a gap in the coral restoration process but helps

1) deliver a more aggressive, solutions-based research project by enabling us to scale up the work,

2) provides opportunities in the future via a project team with greater skills and professional leverage, and

3) support students as a part of the project team.  

Project results support capacity building within the region and improved coral reef management methods, as we identify genetic resistance and resilience of corals to thermotolerance, storm impacts, and improved out planting technologies, boosting the wild population of corals. 

Outplanting Success – Increasing Coral Cover of Endangered Species – funded by the AALL Foundation

 Over the last 5 years we have seen significant success for the restoration project. In particular, altering our outplanting methods to place corals on top of a dome shaped structure greatly improved survival rate (80%+) in comparison to traditional outplanting methods directly to the reef substrate (less than 9%). It is thought that by elevating coral outplants from the substrate we are reducing the impact of competition and predators, creating a more successful outcome for growth and survival.

Given this success we expanded our restoration efforts to a series of 6 sites across 2 different depths. After 18 months, the survival rate across these sites was 73%, which is extremely positive. Importantly, this work led to increased understanding of how site selection can have a dramatic impact on survival as well as outbreaks of disease. Long-term restoration projects are uncommon, so the success rate of these domes gives us a rare opportunity to understand how the entire ecosystem is being from the restoration activity. 

Complex Ecosystem Services – Positive Impacts on Fish Populations – funded by the Alexandria Foundation

Corals provide shelter and refuge areas for diverse fish assemblages by virtue of their 3-dimensional relief. Corals facilitate both processes of recruitment and biomass production by providing space for settlement, growth and reproduction. While providing shelter, corals also set the stage for biological interactions such as competition and predation. This project sought to understand if creating enhanced complexity reef (ECR) habitats through transplantation of adult coral colonies to 3-dimensional structures (our restoration sites) would not only impact fish population diversity and abundance on the ECR itself but also on adjacent degraded reef sites. Suggesting that restoration efforts may offer a scalable mitigation strategy to restore fish populations, for both herbivorous and commercially important species from our coral restoration efforts.  

Results from 18+months of surveys indicate a significant increase in both the density of fish at outplanted sites as well as the number of species present. These data suggest that ouplanting corals onto our dome structures does in fact have a positive impact on the local reef fish population, and thus as our outplanting efforts increase, so will the health of fish populations.

CCMI is a pioneer in the Cayman Islands in coral restoration. In 2012, a pilot study was established to explore the potential for coral nurseries. With results from this work, the Cayman Islands Department of Environment passed new policy and coral nurseries have spread across the islands, with 5 private entities currently growing coral as a result of CCMI’s work in this area.

This project seeks to have a long-term positive impact on the preservation of corals which provide the framework for all coral reefs. As with many coral restoration programmes, the staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis) is ideal to use, due to its ease of fragmentation and growth, and it’s endangered status. The ultimate goal of coral regeneration is to help nature nurture itself.  To do this, outplanted corals need to establish a viable, locally connected, sexually reproductive population. The more genetically diverse the nursery-reared outplants, the better. When fragments were collected from five parent colonies in 2012, it was unknown if these came from genetically distinct parents or from genetic clones. Fragments were tagged and kept separate from one another within the nursery until genetic analyses could be performed. Recent results from genetic work on an additional 100 corals from across the three Cayman islands by University of Miami scientists (Dr. Diego Lirman and PhD candidate Crawford Drury) has led to a new understanding of the connections of the species across the region. Cayman and Florida corals show the closest relationship and new maps for improving the protection and management of threatened coral species are now in progress. This information will not only help coral nursery managers and stakeholders to select unique donor colonies, but will also assist in guiding future outplant strategies.

Results from the collaborative genetics sampling study were used to create the first map of staghorn coral genetic distribution in the Cayman Islands. Below is the map for Little Cayman, with each yellow dot representing a genetically unique staghorn coral colony.