S' FUJIWARA and K' KATSUKOSHI

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Coral Reef Restoration using Larvae Collector

• S. FUJIWARA and K. KATSUKOSHI
• IDEA Consultants, Inc., JAPAN

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• Project Site

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Deterioration of coral reefs in the Sekisei
Lagoon since 1998
Background
Acanthaster outbreak
Coral Bleaching
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In order to recover the degraded coral reefs?
by coral transplantation ?Coral reef
restoration
Objective
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Methods

• Survey
• -To select project sites from distribution of
  coral community
• -By Aerial photograph Analysis with sea truth

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• Extract high and law coral cover area from survey
  result

Law cover
High cover
Distribution of coral cover
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Distribution of Sedimentation
Extracting sedimentation area from field survey
Heavy
Moderate
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2. Nominating sites for the restoration (6 sites)
Ishigaki I.
Iriommote I.

• No sedimentation but low coral cover (few
  recruitment)

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3. Transplanting methodOriginal stageFragment
transplantationIssuesDamage to donor colony

Coral fragments transplanted
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New method employed Larvae collector ?No
damage to existing coral Large scale
transplantation Natural diversityFew
predatingStandardized transplantation (same
age, no damage)
Larvae Collector made from Ceramic
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Process of producing coral seeds
Coral spawning
Larvae Slick
Collecting
Coral seeds
Transplantation
Drilling
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4. Evaluation of nominated sites

• a. Recruitment
• 1200 collectors at each sites at coral spawning
  time (full moon of May 2004)
• 5 Sampling (4 and 9 months later )

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Mean number of colonies settled per collector
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b. Contribution to the lagoon
High Coral Cover
Rate of Larvae remained
Less than 25
25 -50
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• Rate of larvae remained in the Sekisei Lagoon

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5. Selection of restoration site

• St. 4 was selected for Restoration site.
• low coverage 24.1
• low recruitment 0.2 colonies
• no sedimentation
• Contribution to the lagoon

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6. Seeds Production
Deploying collectors 15 sites ( inc. nominated
) High coral cover Or Good water exchange
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Sorting of seeds
5400 seeds were collected ( 18 of collectors)
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Species composition of seeds gathered from 15
sites
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Transplantation Feb. 2006 18 points

• Results

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single point

• Allocation of transplanting points
• 10 seeds/?30 q 300 seeds / point

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• Drilling

• Fixing

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• Transplanted seeds

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• Monitoring (10)

Seed in 3 months later
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• Area of seed corals

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• Rate of alive seeds

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• Transplanted seed at 6 months later

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Key Points

• What was done to solve the problem
• -In order to recover the degraded coral reefs due
  to poor recruitment, restoration project has been
  carried out since 2002.

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• What worked, what didnt and why
• -Restoration has not been implemented by fragment
  transplantation that has made donor corals
  injure, but by coral larvae collectors.
• -A total of 5,400 seeds were transplanted in 18
  points(540 ?) in 2006.
• -Results from monitoring in 6 months later show
  that mean survival rate was 78.5.

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• What I would do differently next time
• -We are now developing new transplanting method
  for soft substratum because current larvae
  collector can only be suited for hard bottom.

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• What I would recommend to others facing the same
  problem
• -Our transplanting method can apply other coral
  reefs where poor recruitment continues after
  disturbance such as destructive fishing and coral
  bleaching.

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Thank you very much