Reef rehabilitation manual

Abstract

This Reef Rehabilitation Manual is intended to complement the Reef Restoration Concepts & Guidelines1 and provide more detailed hands-on advice, based on lessons-learnt from previous experience, on how to carry out coral reef rehabilitation in a responsible and cost-effective manner. The two booklets should be used together. We build on the work of many people, notably Maragos (1974), Miller et al. (1993), Harriett and Fisk (1995), Heeger and Sotto (2000), Clark (2002), Job et al. (2003), Omori and Fujiwara (2004) and Precht (2006)2-9, who have provided a considerable body of advice on restoring reefs (see References). Despite considerable advances over the last 35 years, coral reef restoration is still in its infancy as a discipline. A few rehabilitation projects appear to have been successful at scales of up to a few hectares; many, perhaps most, have failed or not met original expectations. The primary aims of this manual are 1) to reduce the proportion of reef rehabilitation projects that fail, 2) to introduce protocols for methods that could allow larger areas of degraded reef to be repopulated with corals whilst minimizing collateral damage to reefs where corals are sourced, 3) to highlight factors to take into consideration at the planning stage so as to minimize the risk of failure, and 4) to underline the current limitations of reef rehabilitation. The focus is on corals because these are the keystone species that give structure and topographic complexity to coral reef ecosystems. Unfortunately, they are also among the taxonomic groups most vulnerable to global climate change.