Returning Corals to Kahalu'u

A Full Circle Event: The Colonies Have Been Returned, but Our Work Has Just Begun

The ‘Āko‘ako‘a restoration approach covers 3 methods that are currently being pursued in the coral nursery; resilience, reproduction, and reattachment. The recent opportunity for our team to rescue vulnerable corals from the seafloor of Kahalu’u Bay and bring them back into the nursery covered 2 out of 3 of these restoration approaches. A month ago, after the corals were brought back to the nursery, they spawned within 4 days and in correlation with their same species in Kahalu’u Bay. This spawning event created over 250,000 coral larvae which were returned to the Bay in the hopes to repopulate the reefs from the larval level.

Now, a few weeks later, half of the colonies collected have been selected to return to the Bay and be reattached in their original ecosystem. This event was led by the newest member of the team and recent graduate of the ‘Āko‘ako‘a summer vocational training program, Abbey Woodard. Abbey joins ‘Āko‘ako‘a as a research technician working on establishing the Future Reef Bank at ‘Āko‘ako‘a, as well as Teagan Roome, Dr. Asner’s newest PhD student. They were joined by Kathleen Clark from the Reef Teach Program and assisted by Dr. Grace Klinges, our assistant research scientist, it was an exciting day for everyone involved.

The reattachment method our team performed utilizes a mixture of cement, sand, and xanthan gum. The xanthan gum prevents the cement from pluming in the water column so that it doesn’t harm the marine ecosystem and cause any unnecessary sedimentation. This mixture acts as a glue to stick the coral back onto a viable substrate surface, and over time as the colony grows, it will grow right over the cement and fully attaching itself to the substrate. These colonies have been tagged and will be monitored by our field team. As they worked on reattaching the coral colonies, it began to pour rain on the Bay, a good omen and the sign of a blessing from the ancestors in Hawaiian culture and mythology. Overall, this event has given ‘Āko‘ako‘a the opportunity to carry out both the reproduction and reattachment methods we have been focusing on to restore Hawai’i reefs, which makes this another monumental moment in the progress and history of the program.