Transcript of These Coral Pyramids are Helping Hawaiʻi's Reefs in a Big Way

They can either recover from bleaching and go back to their normal color, or unfortunately, they can die. They're just not able to cope with the warm water temperatures. This area is our quarantine area. So when corals first come to the nursery, we put them in these tanks here, and we actually cut them into smaller pieces like these. The Hawaii Coral Restoration Nursery is an initiative under the state's Division of Aquatic Resources, and our whole goal here at the nursery is to be able to grow corals here at the nursery faster than they would grow in the wild, and then outplant those corals onto reefs that have been degraded or damaged in some way. Corals in Hawaii are actually some of the slowest growing corals in the world. So if something happens to the reef, there's some sort of impact event, then the corals are going to take a really, really long time to recover naturally. So we're doing is we're jump starting that recovery process to help restore reefs that have been impacted by either physical damages or environmental damages. All of our job is incredibly hands on, from the initial collection all the way to the final outplanting of our coral itself. Our staff does all the scuba diving, all the handling of the coral. So we're directly handling coral, which is pretty exciting, always in a safe way. We'll bring the coral back to our facility, where we have a pretty intense and rigorous quarantine process. So after 30 days of quarantine, it is cleared and it goes into our coral fragmentation systems. So this coral has already been through quarantine. We're going to take that coral and we're going to micro fragment it into many small little pieces. By micro fragmenting it and putting it onto a concrete module, we're giving them a skeleton that they can use during their time, while they're growing here, so that they don't have to extend as much energy into producing a skeleton. And when we space them evenly and as we're gluing them onto these concrete pyramids, when those tissue layers meet together, they'll fuse, they'll actually create one solid, continuous coral colony. And at that point, the coral is then ready to be acclimated to ocean conditions. It'll spend anywhere between 12 to 18 months growing in our special grow out systems. After just a couple weeks, they will start to grow from those initial pieces onto the concrete pyramid, and then they're just going to continue growing until it meets the tissue growing from the piece directly beside it. Here in the frag room. It's called The frag room because this is where we actually grow out our corals as they are fragged into smaller pieces to grow on top of the module. So by keeping our corals here, indoors, in these conditions where we actually control temperature, we'll control the water quality, we'll feed the corals. So all of these things can help the corals grow a lot faster, so maybe five to 10 times faster, depending on the species of the coral that we have in here. We can have an original source coral of maybe 15 centimeters, which is about a five to seven year old coral, after a period of two years, growing out in our tanks, end up as a 42 centimeter module that's fully covered, which would be equivalent to a 25 year old coral. So in two years, we made a large jump for that coral, and then when we outplant that coral, we can actually have a large coral that can survive a lot better than if we put a small piece of fragment of coral out on the reef. so when you're looking in these tanks, you'll see some fish. You'll see urchins, and you see some snails. So all the fish are herbivores. They all help to keep the modules clean by eating any of the algae, the micro algae that starts growing. So that helps us to have less maintenance in a way. If the urchins, the fish and snails can graze in between the spaces on the concrete module as the small pieces of coral are growing, then they can actually grow faster across of that and not be competing with the algae there. So then they can fuse, hopefully a lot faster. So once the corals are fully covered and ready for outplanting, we have to logistically get everything ready. We'll have to get boats ready, we'll have to get all our tanks, scuba gear, everything set up for a particular day that we can pick where surf is down tides are good. Be able to go out and outplant the corals. After we outplant the coral, we do have a pretty intense monitoring program. So for the one month following our outplant, we'll do a weekly monitoring of each individual coral colony, that's where we're taking photos top down from the sides, and we'll track the growth of these corals over time, and we'll be able to see if there's any sort of predation marks. We'll be able to see if there's any sort of algae that comes in and irritates the coral. We will take steps if it gets really bad. But for the most part, our coral has been doing pretty good. We have, I think, a 90% success rate of the coral that we have out here, which is pretty high for any sort of coral nursery to be quite honest. Everything looks really good, and it's exciting to see that. So a lot of the reefs, not just Hawaii, but throughout the world, are pretty impacted by our climate crisis right now, and that's coming a lot from changing ocean temperatures, from increased storm energy, and a lot of times from pollution and runoff from land. And that's one of the big driving forces here for what our reefs are facing, there's a lot of impact from our local onshore populations that are impacting that coral that's just offshore. Hawaii's coral reefs still do face impacts from warm ocean temperatures. So if you hear about coral bleaching, that is when the water temperature gets too hot for the corals, leading to the corals becoming this bright white color. They're still alive, but that is what's called bleaching, and the corals are very stressed out. They have two options. They can either recover from bleaching and go back to their normal color, or, unfortunately, they can die if it's too stressful and they're just not able to cope with the warm water temperatures. We're able to with our fast growth process of coral, help enhance those reefs and restore some of the areas that have been super damaged by human issues, regardless of the reef itself, whether it's caused by human issue or a natural issue, we can come in and enhance and restore those reefs themselves. This is our rare coral arc, and so we have rare, endemic and uncommon Hawaiian coral species in here. This coral right here, this is called Wells' Coral. It's a pretty rare coral. It usually only grows in overhangs and crevices. Corals, or koʻa are one of, actually the first organisms created according to the kumulipo; creation chant, and so, along with corals, sea urchins, sea cucumbers and other sea creatures are all these foundational ancestral organisms, you know, one of the first things to be created. And so not only is the koʻa very significant as an ancestor, but continuing to this day, coral reefs are what are providing food. I've been here long enough that our two year process, I've been able to see a coral from the initial collection stage all the way through the cutting, the growing and the outplanting, which has been really, really rewarding. It's pretty exciting to be able to see something that you physically have collected at the beginning go back out into the ocean in a bigger and healthier way. That's an amazing thing. The outplanting itself involves so much scuba diving and snorkeling, which I love, the fieldwork portion of it myself. I grew up here. I like to fish, I like to dive. So I want to make sure that this is still here, a healthy reef for my kids, too, when they grow up. I think our work is really important, not just that we're planting corals out onto the reef, but also because it's such a process filled with hope, and our reefs may be experiencing, you know, issues, they may have troubles and things that they're facing, but they're not gone, and we can still do a lot of work, and just knowing that we're making an impact on our reefs, that's probably the most rewarding you.