Hope for coral reef rehabilitation: massive synchronous spawning by outplanted corals in Okinawa, Japan
Since 1998, the Onna Village Fisheries Cooperative, Okinawa, Japan, has outplanted more than 40 scleractinian coral species, under permits issued by OkinawaPrefecture. TheCoophas established a unique and successful rearing method for outplants (Higa and Omori 2014) (Fig. 1a) Seeding outplants at the periphery of existing colonies has been suggested as a means of enhancing larval settlement to increase coral abundance, density, and cover during reef rehabilitation. During sexual reproduction, synchronous spawningmaximizes fertilization rate by generating high gamete concentrations (Oliver and Babcock 1992)
Coral Reefs