Philosophy & Principles

Overview

This document outlines the Coral Gardeners Restoration Methodology to be used by all Coral Gardeners branch restoration teams to ensure methodological standardisation across all sites. It is based on the best available science and field input from our teams and beyond.

This is a living document that will evolve as we learn more from our restoration.

To advance this methodology, each branch Restoration Manager will maintain an R&D Priority List with ideas and suggestions to improve our work. The R&D Priority List will be regularly evaluated by the Directors of Restoration Science and Operations. Priority items will be identified and addressed using the best possible method, including branch or cross-site experimentation. Improved methodology discovered through R&D will be incorporated into this methodology and implemented across sites.

If something in the methodology absolutely cannot work at a site, please record it on this form, and contact the Director of Science — we will work to adjust it to make the restoration operational.

Pillars of Methodology

1. Strategic site selection is crucial for the success of our restoration
2. Restoration need and site suitability is #1 priority for site selection
3. Nurseries and restoration areas must be in close proximity — Gardeners should be able to swim/move corals from the nursery to the restoration area without removing them from the water
4. We are creating diverse reef habitat to support all the organisms that make up the reef ecosystem, so morphological complexity that creates diverse habitat is as important as species diversity
5. Restoration is conducted on annual cycles, with a defined season for outplanting, seeding the nursery, and monitoring
6. Coral-associate species create resilience for their host corals and the reef, so we encourage attraction and retention of associate fish and invertebrates by:
   • Creating biodiversity sources within/adjacent to nurseries to maintain fish and invertebrates in the nursery operation
   • Staggering the age of corals in our nurseries so we always have older branching corals and their associate communities mixed with younger corals, from 1–2–3 years, so there is resilience spillover to younger corals
   • Outplanting whole coral colonies with their associate species, kick-starting reef ecosystem resilience
7. Whole corals from the nursery are outplanted — not fragments or portions of corals — to minimise damage and opportunity for infection
8. If nursery corals must be re-used to make more nursery ropes, fragments will come from several corals that are completely broken down into fragments, and not pieces of many corals — to minimise damage and infection risk
9. In the nursery, we monitor the success of individual corals. In restoration areas, we monitor the success of the reef ecosystem.
10. Outplanting aims to achieve 50% live coral cover in our restoration areas, and should be done as quickly as possible to dilute predation pressure on newly outplanted corals. Restoration areas are to be maintained at minimum 50% live coral cover — which requires replacement of last year's outplanted dead corals with live corals during each annual outplanting.
11. Our restoration sites are our most important product. Therefore, maintenance of the outplant, and mitigation of threats (e.g. predators COTS, Drupella, algal overgrowth, etc.) takes precedence over all other routine restoration activities and must be addressed immediately. This document suggests minimum occurrences of cleaning, etc., but it is up to each restoration manager to ensure the maintenance of nurseries and restoration sites as required.

The CG Approach

Our restoration efforts aim to transform degraded/algal-dominated habitats into coral-dominated stable-state ecosystems. We will create connected networks of reef ecosystem restoration areas that produce ecologically functional, self-sustaining coral reef ecosystems using corals made resilient by coral resilience, reef ecology and connectivity.

We create networks of reef oases: functioning coral reef ecosystems connected by currents that function as recruitment hotspots, attracting and retaining larvae of corals, fish and invertebrates, and creating spillover of reef organisms and ecosystem function to surrounding areas. Our sites are located strategically based on best available physical and biological data, and local community knowledge and approval, to enhance their success.

The success of our restoration will be based on evaluating the structural, biodiversity and functional responses of our restoration:

We report our restoration success as a Reef Health Index — a compilation of the metrics above into one index. This index will be fully justified, with the weighting and importance of each variable in its equation.