The Daily Populous Sunday April 5th, 2026 night edition
Authored by abc.net.au and submitted by sg_plumber

Tens of thousands of baby coral, grown on land or settled from wild spawn slicks, have been transplanted onto the Great Barrier Reef.

It is the first time scientists at the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) have been able to see how efforts to restore the reef are working on a larger scale.

"This year we produced around 40,000 coral seeding devices, which is quite a lot more than has ever been done before in a research capacity," said AIMS acting pilot deployments director Pirjo Haikola.

The coral seeding device protects the baby coral when it's dropped onto the Great Barrier Reef. (Supplied: Australian Institute of Marine Science/Marie Roman)

AIMS is helping train tourism operators, traditional owners and coral aquarists in reef restoration.

"We are working with these people so that we have that capacity, the people, and the logistics to be up-scaling in the coming years to eventually then start making a difference," Dr Haikola said.

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The three-year pilot, which began last year, helps test the research and innovations from its Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program.

The restoration program was formed in 2020 as a collaboration involving AIMS, CSIRO, the Great Barrier Reef Foundation and four Queensland universities.

The pilot is focusing on the northern and southern Great Barrier Reef, the Keppel Islands in the south off the Capricorn Coast, and reefs off Cairns and Port Douglas in Far North Queensland.

Bundaberg coral wholesalers Monsoon Aquatics grew the coral at its Cairns facility before resettling them onto the Great Barrier Reef in January.

Daniel Kimberley says the aim is for corals with ideal genetics to spawn and pass them on. (ABC Wide Bay: Nikki Sorbello)

Director Daniel Kimberley said the work with AIMS was part of a bigger plan to supply corals to the reef that could better tolerate climate change.

"Corals that can go back to the reef and then grow up and spawn and pass on those ideal genetics, better genetics, to other parts of the reef," he said.

A tub of coral seeding devices ready for deployment on the Great Barrier Reef. (Supplied: Australian Institute of Marine Science/Marie Roman)

Mr Kimberley said it would not be possible to restock the reef with aquaculture, growing coral outside the ocean, alone.

"Because at the end of the day, Mother Nature is the best coral farm we have," he said.

"What we can do is just accelerate that evolution and give it a little bit of a kickstart, a little bit of a boost."

The second part of the program involves collecting and releasing spawn slicks, where wild spawn is collected and grown in floating pools on the reef and settled onto the seeding devices.

Fishing charter business Cairns Reef Fishing set up the floating pools with nets on the bottom over a series of days.

"Then we go out on the spawning nights again with scientists and look for coral slicks that have naturally spawned from the reef during the spawning cycles over a three-night period and collect the spawn," the company's general manager Corey Brown said.

Floating pools contain wild coral spawn slicks to capture coral onto seeding devices. (Supplied: Great Barrier Reef Foundation)

About 40,000 baby corals were transplanted onto the Great Barrier Reef through coral seeding devices. (Supplied: Australian Institute of Marine Science/Marie Roman)

The seeding devices are dropped into the ocean to settle on the bottom of a specific site on the Great Barrier Reef.

Reef industry, traditional owners keen to lead

Mr Brown said he believed efforts to restore the reef would eventually be handed over to industry.

"Even to the point where now we're discussing how we may actually have to have a marine biologist in our staffing mix," he said.

Scientists place pools in the ocean to collect wild coral spawn slicks. (Supplied: Great Barrier Reef Foundation)

Woppaburra are the traditional owners of the Keppel Bay Island National Park, and rangers like Ameron Cleland have been taught how to deploy the coral seeding devices.

He said it was about having traditional owners back on the land to look after it, just as they have for thousands of years.

"Not only incorporating our cultural knowledge, but with the help of AIMS giving us that scientific insight on how to look after country as well," Mr Cleland said.

"It's about preserving culture and nature."

Hundreds of coral seeding devices containing live baby coral, ready to be dropped onto the Great Barrier Reef. (Supplied: Australian Institute of Marine Science/Marie Roman)

Dr Haikola said the team was assessing how the deployment went over summer.

"We will monitor how the corals that we've deployed are doing," she said.

"We are working on what are the up-scaling resources, how we're going to move forward, what is the scale that we can reach this coming year."