In March 2018, Plantation Island Resort embarked on a Coral Gardening Project led by Dr Austin Bowden-Kerby from Corals for Conservation. The project aims to restore and enhance the shallow marine environment around Plantation Island as well as reducing the seagrass and promoting increased habitat for grazing fish and enhance the beauty of the surrounding reef. Resort guests have also enjoyed the coral garden and participate in education programs and other hands-on activities.

Plantation Island Resort is an ideal location to kick-start coral reef restoration as it has two barrier reefs which can be used for outplanting heat adapted corals so that they may survive the rapid projected increases in temperature as a result of climate change. The resort also has an inner fringing reef where Corals for Conservation (C4C) can collect heat-adapted corals for the purpose of translocating them to the outer barrier reef.

In the duration of Corals for Conservation’s partnership with Plantation Island Resort, we have constructed six nurseries which have enabled collected corals to grow to adult sizes. When the corals reach a certain size, they are then transported to areas which are projected to not exceed these coral’s maximum temperature range. We have created five restoration sites where the corals grown in our nurseries were placed on degraded sections of reef to restart the process of reef building. We consistently test and adjust our methods to try and select the most thermally tolerant corals.

Through our partnership with Plantation Island Resort over the next two years Corals for Conservation aims to create a network of super coral outplanting sites which will be dotted across the Outer Barrier Reef to restore the reef to what it once was before mass bleaching events and other threats eradicated the living corals in the area. By placing patches of reproductive super corals across the “rubble zone” of the Outer Barrier Reef near Plantation Island Resort, the corals will eventually glue the reef back together and increase biodiversity not only on our reef but on neighboring reefs as well.