What we do
Our work focuses on assisting the natural recovery of coral populations on degraded reefs in Bonaire. Using an active restoration approach, we produce coral outplants using two techniques: fragmentation and larval propagation. By integrating these two techniques and using them as key tools to restore reefs on an ecological and meaningful scale, focusing not only on species diversity and abundance, but genetic diversity as well.
Fragmentation or “coral gardening” is also known as “asexual propagation” because it takes advantage of the asexual reproduction of corals by fragmenting donor colonies. Using this technique, we generate thousands of clonal fragments in off-shore coral nurseries every year, without harvesting the existing coral populations on the reef.
We also produce corals through larval propagation, or “sexual propagation” because this method takes advantage of sexual reproduction by collecting coral spawn and rearing genetically diverse larvae into larger colonies.